Don't Be a Fafner Developer! I'm going to talk about a type of developer you should not want to be - a Fafner developer. What do I mean with this expression? First, I need to digress. Fafner is a character in Wagner's massive 4-opera "Ring of the Nibelungs" cycle. He and his brother build the gods' castle Valhalla. In payment they receive a vast treasure (the Rhinegold), which includes a magic helmet (the Tarnhelm) and a ring of power (the basic idea should be clear to you if you've ever read the Lord of the Rings). Fafner kills his brother, takes the treasure off to the woods, uses the Tarnhelm to turn himself into a dragon, and settles down on top of his hoard. Much time passes. Finally a hero emerges who is brave enough to take on Fafner (Siegfried). The evil dwarf Mime tries to warn Fafner of the approaching danger. Fafner's response? "Ich lieg und besitz…lass mich schlafen" (I lie here and possess…let me sleep). Of course we know what h...

(I gave this talk at the FlixTech Summit convention in late June, here's my attempt to transcribe it. The video should be posted to YouTube soon, when it is I'll link to it. Here are my slides .) Technical interviews are one of the most important and difficult things we do, yet often there's a haphazard approach to conducting them, with predictable uneven results. A few numbers from the Net: Only 25% of technical interviewees are consistent in their performance.  -   interviewing.io Strong performers mess up technical interviews 22% of the time.  -   interviewing.io Most interviews can only explain 14% of an employee's performance  -   Wired   Obviously we need to improve our technical interviewing! Interview Goals The technical interview is one step in the process that usually starts with a CV entering our recruiting pipeline, and hopefully ends with an excellent new team member being hired. It's probably the most important step in thi...

Most of my readers are probably firmly in the Microsoft Windows world when it comes to using a computer. What is Microsoft (MS) Windows (in any one of its many incarnations, whose most common and recent members are Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7)? It's the operating system (OS) of the computer - for most people computers aren't very usable without an operating system. The operating system sits on top of the hardware and provides the complete logic for everything you see when running a computer - it connects to and registers various hardware devices while booting, like graphics card, sound card, mouse and monitor, and provides functions like user management, a graphical user interface (GUI), process management, and much more. The operating system does not include things like web browsers, mail programs or office suite programs (yes, there are alternatives to MS Office, see OpenOffice ). There are many other operating systems, some with restricted niche usage ( RISC ...

OK, this post is shameless advertising for Jentro's newest mobile application ( Jentro is my employer, for those who didn't know). foxNav is a mobile navigation application which has just been uploaded to the Android Market for the UK and the BlackBerry App World (also for the UK and Ireland). I know most of my legions of readers are in the USA; sorry, a US version is not immediately in the cards, but could come in the future. Other European releases are planned for the near future, as is a version for Windows Mobile smartphones. You need to have one of the supported BlackBerry models (with GPS) or an Android phone (currently HTC Dream, HTC Magic, Samsung Galaxy or HTC Hero) to use it today. So what does the application do? Here's the quote from our description in the BB App World: foxNav turns your BlackBerry phone into an advanced GPS navigation system. - Vehicle and Pedestrian navigation. - Automatic up-to-date NAVTEQ map material included at no extra char...