programming

Magic Bench The Disney Research Mixed Reality Bench Is More Than Magic

Disney Research's Magic Bench, which previewed at SIGGRAPH 2017, demonstrates the magical possibilities of mixed reality by combining physical space—a bench—with virtual space, allowing a single user or a group to share the same experience and see, hear, and feel animated characters.

Pamela Rentz's picture
Pamela Rentz
Toyota's Human Support Robot Coming Soon: Personal In-Home Robots

Toyota is developing personal helper robots, and it recently got one step closer to making them commercially available by conducting the first in-home trial in North America. This robot can fetch, carry, open doors, and pick things up off the floor, helping people with limited mobility be more independent.

Beth Romanik's picture
Beth Romanik
Technical manager Do Software Teams Need Managers with Technical Expertise?

Soft skills matter in how effective a manager is, but what about technical skills? If you're a software engineer, how important is it to you for your manager to have the same background and to fully understand your job? Ideally they would, but in some cases, that role can be better filled by a technical lead.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Computer detective Investigating Interface Architecture in Legacy Systems

Programmers working with legacy systems often seek to understand how the program is designed, but that's not enough. When trying to understand legacy systems, special care must be taken to also explore, identify, and take inventory of interfaces, which can be integral to the entire system architecture.

Payson Hall's picture
Payson Hall
Continuous delivery What Is Continuous Delivery Doing to Software Testing?

Software teams using continuous delivery focus on building software in small pieces so that new code can be pushed to production multiple times a day instead of on a sprint cadence. There is also an explicit focus on code quality before production and monitoring afterward. Is this putting testing in danger?

Justin Rohrman's picture
Justin Rohrman
Cover of the fall 2016 issue of Better Software magazine What’s in the Fall 2016 Issue of Better Software Magazine?

In the cover feature article of the fall 2016 issue of Better Software magazine, “The Evolution of Software Monetization,” Michael Zunke details how software vendors misfire in an attempt to balance protection of their intellectual property with complicated software licensing schemes that frustrate customers.

Ken Whitaker's picture
Ken Whitaker
Stop Faking It: There Are Better Ways to Acquire Technical Skills

Everyone wants to hire someone who can “hit the ground running.” But seeking a candidate who has all nine of the core skills listed on the job description shouldn't be the goal; instead, it's more important to find someone who can learn quickly, collaborate with others, and acquire those skills through work.

Matt Heusser's picture
Matt Heusser
What It Takes to Become an Expert

Malcolm Gladwell introduced the 10,000 Hours of Practice rule, which he claims is how long it takes to truly master a skill. The exact number may not be important, but it surely does take time and practice to hone our skills. Taking a quick coding course is useful, but to be an expert, there's no shortcut.

Lee Copeland's picture
Lee Copeland