I’m excited to announce that 8th Light has agreed to acquire WisdomGroup, the leading voice in Chicago’s vibrant Ruby community. This acquisition combines two powerful...more.
Sustainable pace is an early Extreme Programming concept that was intended to protect programmers from going on “death marches” to meet deadlines that are arbitrary...more.
As kids, we learned to listen and to speak before we learned to read. We started our lives cooing indecipherable nonsense, and slowly adopted the...more.
What does it mean to be a software craftsman? You can read the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship and draw conclusions; but if you posed that...more.
Estimates are a fundamental part of our business. We rely on them to schedule our workflow and to communicate honestly and openly with clients. We...more.
In his recent post, Doug Bradbury claims that aiming for gender equality runs the risk of further homogenizing our culture. Instead, he suggests that we...more.
We humbly demonstrate our expertise by delivering quality software. We do not inflate our abilities or claim expertise where we have none. —from the 8th...more.
I have been reading on blogs and tweets the sentiment that "software craftsmanship is elitism". This perception is formed around comments of code, process, or...more.
Software apprenticeship programs are popping up all over the place in software. They are a response to the common notion that contemporary academia is not...more.
This blog is for non-technical people looking to purchase custom software. Purchasing software is very difficult and very expensive. It is a decision that is...more.
It is unrealistic to think of even the most master craftsmen as isolated geniuses. Craftsmen do not exist in bubbles, and their interests vary just...more.
Time and materials vs. fixed bid is the classic duo of billing models in software services business. Time and materials puts all the pressure on...more.
This February 13th will mark a decade since the creation and signing of the original Agile Manifesto. The lean development thought leaders who came together...more.
Many small software contracting companies (boutiques) have been popping up in the last few years with our company, 8th Light, featuring among them. Their fundamental...more.
Michael Feathers recently wrote about boutique software shops. He drew a parallel between master chefs and software shops and made a few great points to...more.
While there are a host of reasons to attend the Software Craftsmanship North America Conference, here’s a list of some of the best: The speaker...more.
8th Light and Obtiva have partnered up to provide a journeyman program. Traditionally, a journeyman program is when a master craftsman hires a journeyman for...more.
My path in becoming a craftsman was not through conventional academics. I did get a Bachelor degree in Computer Science. During those years of learning,...more.
8th Light has an apprenticeship program whereby an 8th Light craftsman will mentor an individual for three months. During that time, the craftsperson becomes responsible...more.
There is no perfect software. At least I have never seen it. Bugs and minor feature changes are indications people are using your software. Real...more.
One of the famous studies on peer pressure was the Stanford prison experiment, conducted by a team of researchers led by then Psychology professor Philip...more.
Often times while writing meta programming code, I am using the eval function and doing manipulation on method/class/variable names. Today I needed to un–Rubify a...more.
Recently, I started reading Knuth’s Art of Computer Science. To spice up the exercises, I am writing them out in Ruby. Thinking about the basic...more.
In Paul Graham’s Book, Hackers and Painters, he talks about patterns and Human Compilers. I started to think about how some traditional Object-Oriented patterns are...more.
The self-shunt method of testing has been conflicting for me. Self-shunt is a good testing pattern to test observers/views. A colleague of mine has started...more.
I’ve noticed using more mocks lately. Instead of using them sparingly for controlling services which are not instrumental to what I am testing, I’m essentially...more.
