Not sure. I wasn't hugely encouraged by his inability to use possessive pronouns, but that's the grammar fascist in me talking.

Cool -- we've got a review. And yours truly got a mention. Anyone who likes a bit of Lovecraft, come on down to the Courtyard. http://www.remotegoat.co.uk/review_view.php?uid=7717[^].

Thanks guys. Great advice in each case. -- Rob

Hi there: Does anyone have any tips for accountants? And for staying out of IR35? Thanks people! -- Rob

I imagine, being a lecturer and presumably a bit of a Radio 4 listener, he would have been more offended by your use of "shouldn't of" than your use of "b****cks". I learned that lesson the hard way too. I used to log out of my Unix system by typing "f*** off", whereupon the system would reply with an equally charming "p*** off" and then log me off. I was demoing my work to my postdoc supervisor, and totally forgot where I was, so at the end I logged off in my normal puerile way. My supervisor helpfully suggested that I should try and avoid doing that in front of our business partners.

By the way, here's a potted history of Laban's life. http://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/about-us/our-history/rudolf-laban.aspx[^]

Joel's argument about the cost of bug fixing is a compelling one. Your "wontfix" may be benign at this point in time, but who says it isn't going to turn malignant just before you're due to ship? But yes, if you're so dogmatic about the rules that you cross the line between running a project and practising a religion, you may end up cutting off your nose to spite your face. A talented manager is hired to know the difference.

For sure. 1 to 5 are absolutely indispensable, and 9 to 12 are very important. As to 6, 7 and 8, I'd say that depends on the nature of your business. Let's have a look 6, 7 and 8 in a bit more detail. 6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule? I don't disagree with this one, but I will point out that schedules can sometimes change very quickly. I remember working on a financial application, when a change in the law came in, and we had to add a component pretty much yesterday, in order to keep the FSA off our back. (OK, that might be a slightly bogus example, because as any regular reader of Private Eye can tell you, the FSA is often perceived as more of a kitten than a lion, but run with me for now.) So when requirements like this come in, your schedule needs the flexibility to keep up with the changing landscape. Another thing to point out is that you may be in an outfit where you're expected to know the business well enough to come up with your own ideas, and present them to the business accordingly. If you have enough reusable components, and you have built your system from the ground up using the right set of best practices, you'll be surprised how quickly you can release a component. We used to play the "start the clock game" in our team. When a requirement came in, we could sometimes fulfil that requirement by making config changes, generating a couple of derived classes, and adding one or two lines of code. Because we were adding very thin layers on top of code that was already thoroughly tested and trusted, we had a high degree of confidence in what we turned out, and could target our testing accordingly. I guess what I'm saying here is yes, keep schedules, but don't let them constrain your creativity: they're there for your benefit, not the other way around. 7. Do you have a spec? You can go a very, very long way by naming libraries, classes, methods and variables intelligently, and by observing the Single Responsibility and DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles. Again, if you're working on an internal app in a small team, then if you have a straightforward method for code reuse that you've all bought into, then the need for a spec starts to fade. Under those circumstances, enforcing a "no code without spec" rule feels like you're adding unnecessary red tape to an already efficient process. On the other hand, with a larger team and thousands of users, a spec can add an indispensable layer of clarity to your project. My attitude to schedules and specs is similar: use them, b

Good afternoon people. What do you make of the "Spolsky Score" as a measure of an organisation's quality? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html[^] I've got my reservations, but I'd like to hear what the rest of the world thinks.

I recently started doing parkour training, so I like to keep my eye on the clock and do 10 press-ups every half hour. Might get funny looks if I started doing that in an office.

This is just a thought, but maybe it would be possible to register certain users as testers, and then when they're using the site, record logs of everything they do. I would say that, being Mr "If it moves, automate it".

Hm. I got a slap last time I asked a girl about it a bar. Maybe that's why.

I'd love to use IE9 in place of Google Chrome, but its Silverlight implementation prevents me from using the Windows Azure Management Portal. Until that's fixed, Chrome remains my default browser.

FAO any London-based developers: a quick plug for my show over Halloween. It's an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation (surely popular with the dev community?) at the Courtyard Theatre in Shoreditch. http://www.londonhorrorfestival.com/shows/the-dunwich-horror[^] You can also check out our Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ororo-Productions/102438153187431[^] Feel free to come and meet me at the bar afterwards, and we can chat about Dependency Injection. ;P Have a great week, everyone. -- Rob