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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. |
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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? |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Government’s Federal Source Code Policy Mandates 20 Percent Open Source In an attempt to reduce duplicating government IT and software resources, the US federal government recently announced the “Federal Source Code” policy, which requires new custom-developed source code used by federal agencies to be made available for sharing and reuse government-wide. |
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Before Jumping into Software Testing Tools, Get Your Code Straight Software testing tools can be incredibly helpful, but only if you're implementing them from a good starting place. If your code is a mess, a tool won't fix that; you'll end up simply adding layers on top of the mess. Matt Heusser explains how your team would be better off learning elements of code as craft. |
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The Internet of Things Has Changed the Definition of Good Software As the Internet of Things takes hold and more common appliances are run by software, people will be increasingly reliant on programmers’ ability to write good code. But how do we define “good code” or “good software”—and how do we get there? Stefano Rizzo explains eight requirements he thinks are essential. |