Posts by Robin 467 posts • joined 25 Feb 2007
"My general rule of thumb was to multiply my estimate by 4 to get a believable number and then multiply by 4 again."
When calculating an estimate, I was advised by my first manager I ever had to think how long it would probably take, then double the number and increase the time unit by one (e.g. 2 days becomes 4 weeks)
At the time, I thought he was joking...
If I could travel back in time, one of the things I would do is have a 'quiet word' with whoever came up with the idea of prefixing everything with "My..." back in Windows 95.
It's responsible for endless lazy variable names too.
Then I'd move on to whoever had the bright idea of calling both the browser and the file viewer "Explorer".
I used it in the last place I worked and yes I agree, the integrations for e.g. Jira, Git and Hubot were pretty useful.
In the same conversation group where a particular subset of people are discussing a feature of a project, you can get quick updates on Jira tickets, issue Hubot commands and see the responses, all out in the open so everybody knows what's going on. We used to do deployments and all sorts this way.
People here suggesting it's a poor replacement for email have never used it properly, or at all.
This isn't something that stopped me doing my work as such, but it was my first encounter with that level of security.
I was lucky enough to get to do my pre-GCSE work experience week in a military facility.
On the Monday morning my Dad dropped me off just down the road from the main gates on his way to work. The 14-year old version of me was still enthusiastic and ready to experience the world of work, because at that point I hadn't had my soul crushed into an uncaring pulp. I merrily walked up to the gate and was confronted by the guard, with huge machine gun in hand. After changing my underpants I managed to nervously blurt out why I was there and he called the relevant person to come and meet me, and I began my week.
By the time the end of my week came around, I was greeting the same tooled-up guard with a cheery "morning mate!" and he even shook my hand when I left. Good times!
"Call from developers based in USA to UK at (of course) about 16:00 on Friday."
Ah the good old 4pm emergency. It's why I started working 10am-6pm shifts. I get a lie-in in the mornings and my 8am-4pm colleagues get to go home on time, while I spend 15 minutes finding out that's it usually not an emergency after all.
Some security questions are terrible.
On the phone, HSBC ask for your sort code and account number first off. Then as one of the security questions, they ask you to confirm which branch the account is held in. You know, that publicly-searchable sort code lookup information?
I've wondered about app download sizes before. For example, Facebook's last iOS update was about 200 meg if I remember rightly. Seeing as it's all online content, WTF is in there to make it that big?
I realise the answer is probably 'all the spyware' but it would be interesting to know what goes in there.
It actually looks and feels like the kind of space-age 21st-century that was enthusiastically shown to families in the 1970s, along with the self-cleaning laundry basket, automatic lawn mover, robot butler and flying car.
I'm fed up of having to move my lawn myself* all the time, I can't wait until it does it itself!
* I say myself, my robot monkey butler actually does it.
Bezel-less screens, wireless charging and on screen home buttons. Wow, that's so innovative - where do they get their ideas from?
To be fair, during the presentation they didn't claim to be first with any of those things (even though the X doesn't have an on-screen home button).
In addition to some basic UI tweaks, the updated design comes with a paginated sign-in where you enter your username on the first page and a credential (password, probably) on the second."We've done a lot of testing of this design and our telemetry shows that people are able to sign in with a notably higher success rate using this approach," Microsoft notes.
Wait, so it's: type username ... wait for page to reload ... type password?
I don't get how that would yield such a supposed improvement in sign-in success?
Imagine if there was an iPhone or Andoid phone that was HALF as rugged and had HALF as much battery life as these ancient Nokias.
While Timmy and Jony continue being obsessed with thinness, that's never going to happen to the iPhone.
I wonder if anyone ever thinks, "You know what I hate about this iPhone I have? It's so fucking THICK."
Meanwhile, the one device that would actually benefit from being thinner is the Watch, yet the focus is on the ability to put a new strap on it.
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