If you're interested in a more general Knowledge Management solution, check out the Zettelkasten Method[^]. There are a number of free (e.g. Emacs org-roam[^]) and commercial (e.g. Roam Research[^]) implementations.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Write an app that solves a problem YOU have or makes YOUR life/work easier. If you like it and find it useful, others may as well. That's the place to start.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Here's a must-read: Object-Oriented Programming — The Trillion Dollar Disaster [^]. Clearly, an OOP-hater, but he does make many good points (also read through the comments). The take-away for me was this: "Trying out Functional Programming will make you a better developer."

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Most local papers are really not that good (mine included). I think of my subscription as a donation trying to save an endangered species. They are most likely doomed, but it's a worthy cause nevertheless.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Mostly old-school: 1. Local paper delivered every morning. 2. Sunday New York Times (also delivered). 3. Twitter 'Trends for you'.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

IntelliJ IDEA is the gold standard. Large and active community as well as many relevant plugins.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Cell Phone Dominoes[^] This is pretty cool. I wish I had that much spare time!

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

I've been around longer than most (VAX-11, Sun-1). The excitement for me has always been about learning something new. This industry is perfect for people that are mesmerized by shiny new objects (technologies) and have a passion for solving problems with them. What could be more fun and rewarding?

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Don't worry, you're fine. Only an insane person would not feel the pain and frustration of working with JavaScript these days. Everyone talks about how wonderful the democratization of open source is because it has allowed a flood of participation. On the whole, I think the benefits have far outweighed the negatives. Unfortunately, JavaScript is the poster child for that double-edged sword and is suffering under the weight of its own success. My favorite example is also NPM bloat and how fragile it is. Change one dependency and you're likely to fall into a world of hurt. Always remember, nothing is free, especially OSS.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

A few years back I wrote The Zigzag Career[^] in respoonse to Udi's article[^]. In rereading both I think the bottom-line advise still holds true: make this type of decision with your eyes open and treat it like a real career change. Personally, I've been back and forth between manager and IC roles but have always gravitated back to the technical side. That's just me though. I didn't even find the "architecture" role that appealing. I like to build things. Try it. You may (or may not) like it. Either way you'll end up better off (IMO).

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

On a related note. In case any of you 'Stralians'[^] missed this one.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Recently went through the same process. My 2001 Honda Accord w/ 150K+ was usable, but the short term repair needs would have cost twice the car's value. Time to bit the bullet. Tested your list (except the Chevy) plus the Sonata and Optima. Ended up getting another Accord (EX-L V6, I love my V6!). Got a great deal by buying a 2015 model off the lot. Hope to get this one to 200K! BTW: I hope no one takes offense, but car salesmen suck. Glad I don't have to go through that again for another 15+ years. My condolences on your ruined Saturday.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

I'm not sure if they're considered "poor style", but C/C++ macros are very powerful. I've worked on projects where they were used to essentially provide a DSL. That was many years ago, but I have fond memories of the C preprocessor and C++ templates (the 'real' thing). Still miss both in Java/C#.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Yes. In my experience the major advantage of VE instances over a full VM is the incredibly fast start-up time and minimal system load. If you're looking to distribute pre-configured machine instances you should also evaluate Vagrant [^]. Vagrant can provision both Docker containers and Virtualbox VMs.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

+1 for knockout -- easy to learn and use. Like angular, it can be applied to the DOM selectively so you can start out small. IMHO the well argued catch-phrase "JavaScript is the Assembly Language of the Web" is mostly correct. CSS should also be included. The JS/CSS chaos is of course what's spawning all of these compilers, frameworks, and tools. The evolution of these higher level abstractions is still in its infancy (think fish with feet) so the ride is going to be rough for a while.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

- Team collaboration. - Good search! - Integration. IMO (user for 2 years) the Atlassian[^] tool set (Jira, Confluence, etc.) is very good and worth the money. If you do Agile, the latest Greenhopper [^] is outstanding. They have lots of products so there will always be something else you'll want to buy! Those Aussies are pretty smart. :-D Trello[^] is light weight but pretty good for smaller projects.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

It's like any other big life decision (marriage, having kids, etc.) -- there's never going to be a perfect time. You prepare yourself as well as you can, just do it, and hope for the best. :)

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

I've been using VirtualBox on XP for several years and have not had any problems. The network interruption during the install is annoying, but tolerable because connections always seem to be reestablished properly. Installation on Windows 7 also works like a champ.

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

Now using http://rdn-consulting.com/blog/feed?alt=rss[^] and turned off SmartFeed, but it looks like the generated XML is still ATOM. One of my posts does have:

<category><![CDATA[CodeProject]]></category>

How will I know if the changes I made work with the CP aggregator?

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]

I think I may have the same problem. My feed re-directs to FeedBurner. Here's what they're sending:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?>
<rss xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Bob on Medical Device Software</title>
<link>http://rdn-consulting.com/blog</link>
<description>Software Development and Biomedical Engineering</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:26:27 +0000</pubDate>
<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1</generator>
<language>en</language>
sy:updatePeriodhourly</sy:updatePeriod>
sy:updateFrequency1</sy:updateFrequency>
<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/BobOnMedicalDeviceSoftware" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
<title>Software Verification vs. Validation</title>
<link>http://rdn-consulting.com/blog/2009/03/26/software-verification-vs-validation/</link>
<comments>http://rdn-consulting.com/blog/2009/03/26/software-verification-vs-validation/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:59:14 +0000</pubDate>
dc:creatorBob</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[FDA]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Software Quality]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[verification vs. validation]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://rdn-consulting.com/blog/?p=257</guid>
<description><![CDATA[For some reason it just really bugs me that these two terms are incorrectly interchanged so frequently.
...

Bob on Medical Device Software [^]