My point -- always -- is that I'm not here to convert anyone. I'm just here to respond to the need for open source consulting skills.

As a parallel example, TH explained (at length) that there was NO earthly reason to retire a perfectly good IBM z-series mainframe. The z-series represents cheap …

This is something that elevates Doctest into the realm of Pattern. Perhaps even above that.

The idea is so elegant: the document is the test, and the test procedure is the document.

There's a DRY clarity to the whole thing that is rather exciting. It is an elegant application of …

Ian Bicking: A Blog http://blog.ianbicking.org/, provided some info on Py3K and Python Introspection http://blog.ianbicking.org/introspecting-expressions-in-py3k.html.

For me, the interesting part was his summary of Object-Relational Mapping. Mr. Bicking identifies two broad approaches: lambda introspection and operator overloading.

The following weirdness often happens when we encounter complex business problems.

1. The users hate something and want new software. They justify a project to spend $100K replacing something that appears broken.
2. The Business Analyst notes a control issue that is really a conflict between software functionality and business rewards.
3. The …

First, let me get this off my chest: Django http://www.djangoproject.com/ rules. There are a number of reasons, but they aren't the point of this posting.

When someone creates a twenty-minute application, they walk a fine line. The minimalist approach to software development can be viewed from two …

In Rat-holes of Lost Time [Rat-Holes of Lost Time ], I thought out loud about software development and how the resulting software product may or may not be of any value. In SEI terminology [view_qm ], this is Need Satisfaction. Sometimes I call it Solving The Problem ™.

I tried to distinguish two …

A comment on Offshoring Shows How Valuable Code Is floored me: "Another answer [to the 'what do you value?' question] could be to show cost reduction for the quarter. Its the old short term thinking to make Wall Street happy."

First, I concluded that "cost reduction" is somehow separate from …

See Schrage in CIO magazine on March 15 http://www.cio.com/archive/031506/schrage.html?page=1.

When we outsource of offshore some coding, what are we saying is valuable?

We're saying that the net effect of the installed software has value. We're saying that no existing product does …

I've been using the Apache FOP http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/ to transform XSL:FO into PDF's. FOP works well enough for some DocBook processing, but it can't handle really complex stuff gracefully.

Can we also use this XSL:FO technology for producing PDF form letters as part of a …

First, I've had some opinions on this "one language" ideal After PERL what?. We have a variety of languages for a good reason: the languages express different kinds of things. Shell command languages really have little to do with markup languages, database manipulation languages or "general-purpose" programming languages.

One of …