Random knowledge shared...
-
Sane defaults over Exceptions
Part of our work is defensive programming. A lot of webdevelopment is centered around taking input from a customer, processing it in some way and returning output. Since the source of input is out of our control we are used to writing all kinds of guards. Is this an integer (in case of a dynamically typed language), is it greater than zero, is it smaller than RANDOM_THRESHOLD, etc.
What I see a lot is people using exceptions or even intentional fatal errors for this. I think the reasoning is that since the application will always generate the correct values, the only thing to worry about is malicious attempts and we can show those people 404's or error pages without feeling remorse.
-
Switching jobs
After almost nine years I'm leaving Procurios to start a new challenge at the Netherlands' national airport Schiphol. I've really enjoyed my time at Procurios. It is a company where you're encouraged to challenge the status quo and has a lot of friendly people and skilled professionals. Over the years I started to feel itchy though.
-
Final, private, a reaction
I read a blog by Brandon Savage a couple of weeks ago and it triggered some thoughts. He refers to a blog by Marco Pivetta which basically states "Final all the things!". Brandon comes back with a more mild opinion where he offers the notion that this approach might be overkill. Since both posts got me thinking I tried to organise my thoughts on this in the following post.
-
Sharing knowledge and starting discussions using lightning talks
Since lots of people at Procurios work in multi-disciplinary teams it is not uncommon to have only one or two direct colleagues that perform exactly the same tasks as yourself. A threat to this approach is knowledge on a certain discipline never goes beyond the virtual walls of an agile-team. Other disciplines have other challenges. Our servicedesk for instance is quite large and not everyone can share every bit of knowledge with every other employee. To share knowledge accross these boundaries most disciplines organize lightning talks.
Read more about "Sharing knowledge and starting discussions using lightning talks"
-
Three eventstorming workshops - a report
Since we learned of event storming at Procurios it felt like an interesting tool to me. Several teams started experimenting and using it for two main reasons. Getting to know the customers business and helping the customer realise that their business is much more complex than they always assumed.
To help everyone in the company understand what we mean when we talk about event storming Pim and I organised a series of three workshops open to any employee. Bonus? I got three free tries at facilitating and learned loads.
After about 10 years of professional development at both