8GB on a Vista 64 bit box, quad core. Works great, and RAM is so cheap these days, why not load it up?

The answer depends on several things: Do you like the station selection where you live? How broad is your musical taste? How annoying do you find morning talk shows? How important is it to have no advertisements when listening to music? Do you tend to purchase music you like from listening to the radio? How long is your commute? I don't listen to talk radio, and the 'morning shows' here in Nashville are awful and hardly play music at all during the commute time. Add poorly written advertisements to the mix and switching to XM was the way to go. I've been an XM subscriber since 2001 and would never switch back to FM. The local stations only play a small mix of music so you hear the same 50 songs over and over, sometimes every day at the same time. I like discovering new music and have purchased many CD's from hearing new songs on XM. I also have a wide musical taste and listen to probably 20 of the stations on a regular basis based on my mood. Classic jazz, smooth jazz, new age, heavy metal, rap, old school soul, 80's music, classic rock, current hits, etc. If you're strictly a top 40 person or R&B, then satellite radio may not be for you. I also enjoy being able to drive across the country and not have to hunt for stations that aren't full of static, but if you don't travel much, that may not be important. I have XM radios in each of my cars and at the office. I don't use the online steaming due to the reduced quality and the bandwidth usage. To me it is absolutely worth the money. My 2 cents worth.

I have a programmer on my team that decided to write part of the project he's on using Iron Python. I'm concerned about this because he now has to teach one of the other developers how to code in this language since he will be the one maintaining the code. He says Iron Python is used by Millions, but I find that hard to believe. I'm concerned that if we have to hire new developers to maintain this Iron Python code, we'll be hard pressed to do so. I did a search for jobs that listed Iron Python as a skill and only came up with 1, and it was a Linux job. Any thoughts? Dan

If your chair was less than $250 USD, you are doing yourself a disservice. You spend more time in your office chair than you probably spend anywhere else in a single stretch. Go to Office Max or Staples and get a height adjustable, ergonomic chair and you won't ever sit in a cheap chair again. I've seen people pay as much as $1500 for a quality office chair. If you're a contractor, it's a tax deduction. Also, if you have to ask if you need to lose weight, the answer is probably yes.

And why is someone that washes dishes or flips burgers for a living weighing in on WPF? Considering his posts on the SB, maybe he thinks WPF stands for White Power Fries? :cool:

Our VP of Sales was trying to come up with a catchy name for our new document scanning software. He decided on 'Paperless Office System', and even ordered brochures and had the contracts changed to reflect the new name. I told our CEO that I thought marketing our new product with the acronym of POS was probably a bad idea, and opened up a lot of doors for our competitors to market against us with things like 'well, it's not called POS for nothing'. The CEO didn't seem too concerned, so I got a lot of the employees to begin referring to it as the POS. He got the hint and had the name changed. Dan :cool:

I'm not looking for shortcuts to quality at all. On the contrary, I'm looking to improve quality 10 fold. Before I got promoted, you gave the developer a basic description of the feature to be developed, and sent them on their way. There was no real "end case" defined, no description of what would consider the feature complete in the eyes of the stakeholders, and certainly no definition of test cases to consider the item ready for QA. That is all changing now, but it will be an evolving process.

That is going to be part of my review method for sure, but I'm still interested in what the rest of the world does. There might be some little tidbit that will fit my style.

I have done reviews, but they were all the canned reviews that the entire company uses. I just feel like a developer should be reviewed differently than the secretary. The tech support people should be reviewed differently from the QA people, and so on. Each position has totally different requirements and qualities. One template the company downloaded 8 years ago when there were only 5 employees is outdated now that we have 30 employees and the developer isn't some guy who was writing Access in his mom's basement while he worked at Wendy's for his day job. The only reason I needed permission was because HR was giving me grief about not wanting to use the template, so I went to the CEO so it could be "official". Also, I never said I get promoted before my work reaches production. All of my work has reached production, I was just trying to keep up my skills by retaining 1 project that I had when I was part of the development team. My previous reviews have been conducted with the canned review templates and didn't address my coding ability at all. That's what I want to change with my new position. The current template doesn't address the core piece of a developer's job, the code! Dan

No, there are certainly personal skills and teamwork that need to be worked on, but churn was on my mind when I wrote the first post.

Actually, I disagree with your comment. I'm not asking for help in managing developers. I can manage them just fine, otherwise I wouldn't be in this position. It wasn't created just for me. Since I do not have experience in being reviewed as a developer, I was asking for guidance on how other developers get reviewed at their companies, and whether they feel that's a good approach. I don't think it should really matter whether you have 5 or 500 developers, because performance can still be measured the same way. You have the same potential for code churn, you still have the team relationship aspect unless you're the only coder, etc. The components of how your performance is reviewed should be relatively constant across companies of different sizes. My post was concerning ways I could better review my employees rather than grading them 1 through 5 on how often they are tardy, or 1 through 5 on how they interact with customers and so on. A developer's performance isn't tied to the business except by management. If you're not meeting the goals of the business, that's because your manager didn't properly map those goals into work items for your position. On the other hand, if I placed goals directly on you that I felt contributed to the overall business goal, and you fell short, now I have something to review you on. You didn't fail the business goal, you failed my goal for you. I failed the business goal as a result of you not meeting your goals, and that will be addressed in my review with the CEO. The developer does the project laid out before them, and if they completed those projects in the specified time, they probably met their goals and as a result, I met the goals placed on me by my boss. I'm simply looking for ideas on reviewing developers that don't involve ranking them 1 through 5 on their language and grammar. I want a more productive approach than "What are the employee's shortcomings and weaknesses?". Nobody in this forum is going to create "my mthodology" for me, but the insight I receive from the developers on this site might certainly highlight methods to avoid, try or embrace.

Well, that's the thing. In each of my jobs in the last 10 years, I was either the only developer, or I was only a developer for a short period of time before I got promoted to lead or management. I have never really had a "developer" review. I was always reviewed on how I got along with others, whether I was late for work or excessive absences, etc. My code or output was never put into question because there was nobody qualified to review that. They figured the product worked, and it had new features, I must be doing my job. So as much as I would like to come from my own experience, I have none in this area. Dan

I am a former C# developer, turned CIO for a commercial software company. I say former developer because even though I open VS2005 every day with the hope of writing some code, it never seems to happen with everything else going on. I am now faced with doing performance reviews on the people who I used to code beside. The "official company document" for reviewing employees seems completely useless when it comes to developers. I have been given permission to take any approach necessary to create a more appropriate review document, so I am asking for input! What should I be reviewing the development staff on? One of my issues is code churn. There is too much back and forth between development and QA for something the developer could have easily tested for. We're going to be getting into TDD, but the review topic is still valid. How do you expect to be reviewed in a development shop where you are one of numerous developers, DBA's, architects and testers? Dan

I use 2 22" Samsung widescreen monitors. They were $230 at TigerDirect, have 1000:1 contrast ratio and no bad pixels. I liked them so much I bought the same setup for my entire team. Not a bad pixel out of 14 monitors. Dan

Wow. Too bad there's not spam filters on this board. This reminds me of something I invested $500 in when I was young and stupid. I bought into the same BS you are slinging, which is why you generate millions of dollars annually like you say. I don't think his wife is looking for a class to take, unless it's absolutely free with no strings attached, which judging by your own writing, that's not the case. The class is only a doorway for you to suck money out of their bank account with the promise of a brighter and richer tomorrow, which for 90% of your patrons never happens. There is nothing at your so called "University" she can't learn from other sources that won't make her feel cheated when done. You'd be better off spending $4.95 and watch "The Secret" online, or buy the DVD for about $12. It talks about the same "amazing minds" on the planet, and is actually a very good film. It's motivational and the price is right. http://www.thesecret.tv. I have no ties to this site, but I know several people, including myself that have put the practices in this video to use and have seen the results.

Tell her to check with the Home Shopping Network. If you have a computer at home, they will equip you with the software to take calls and place orders. I know someone who does this. She picks her own hours, walks over to the computer, presses a button and gets placed in the queue. I think they pay decent too.

QA does not have access to the code. They are testing items, and if it's broken, sometimes they simply kick it back as broken with how they broke it, or they will spend more time trying to figure out what the solution might be so they can go inform development of what they need to do to fix the issue. That's where the pissing match comes in. The time they're spending on troubleshooting the issue beyond running their tests and explaining how they broke something is time they're not spending on the remaining items. In almost all cases, the developer could probably find the real issue faster if the QA guy simply detailed what he did to break it. I spoke to the QA manager at another company, and he said that in most cases, QA should be testing the issues and kicking back any broken ones, and leave the developer stuff to the developers. He did however say that on the front end, when features and bugs are being listed to be included in a build, that QA should be sitting down with development and they should be defining the unit tests and QA tests together.

I'm having conflicts between QA and development (go figure). Is QA's job to find the problem in the UI and simply report it back to development? Should they go further and give ideas on what they feel the solution is? Should they always be in the UI, or should they also be doing database comparisons from one version to the next to verify schema and data changes? Development feels like QA should point out the problem and leave the rest to them, but QA feels like they should do as much as possible to troubleshoot the problem, going as far as making their own database changes to test possible solutions. This is the first company I've been at with a formal QA department, so I have no idea what the norm is. Thanks

I don't think he was saying that all programmers in third world countries have no skill, and if you are a skilled developer, you should not be offended. If however you're some 16 year old kid in Romania taking these rent-a-coder jobs for $2 an hour, then you are the person he is speaking of. These online rent-a-coder sites are not designed for Americans, who generally work for $50+ an hour. Their market is all of the countries where $500 for a 2 month project is great money. If you are used to making at least $45 an hour for your work, your only option is networking, writing articles, etc. Belonging to programming listservs also helps. The more you contribute, the more your name gets out there as a trusted, skilled developer. There might be a freelance developer on that list that needs an extra coder, and he may just email you for the gig since he's seen what you have to offer the list. I have hired developers from programming listservs in the past, and they have always worked out well.

Well! That's something entirely different. According to the previous poster, you legally own the source code to that application, which puts you in a better position than he is. You now have a lot of clout in asking for part or even half ownership in the company. I still think you'll be met with a bit of hostility if you try for half, and if you pull the "the code is legally mine" argument, don't be surprised if that ends your relationship. Don't show this card to him unless you have to. You really need to talk to a lawyer about how to best approach this with the owner. You did all the work for free, so you must believe in him, his vision and the product. That's the angle you want to use. Make sure he knows how personally invested in this company you are, and that such an investment should warrant part ownership in the company. If he agrees, get a lawyer to draw up all the particulars so you don't get into this position in the future.