oandre.gal

Category: English

  • Google Wave

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    And this is the essential broader point — as a programmer, you must have a series of wins, every single day. It is the Deus Ex Machina of hacker success. It is what makes you eager for the next feature, and the next after that. And a large team is poison to small wins. The…

  • Analysis of free software communities (III): activity

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    This post is part of a series: introduction (I), adoption (II), activity (III), work hours (IV), generations (V), and coda (VI). Data patterns Certainly, not the number of features developed or bug fixes. It is even barely possible to compare activity between projects, as there are a high variability in terms of changesets: some people could send several little…

  • 4 big ideas in sw development according to PragProg

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    I found interesting this serie of posts titled “4 big ideas in software development” according to Tim Ottinger and Jeff Langr. The serie was published monthly in Pragmatic programmers magazine: Code coupling, or Reducing dependency in your code. Cohesive software design, or Cohesion makes code easier to understand, debug, and test. Abstraction, or How to tell a…

  • Analysis of free software communities (II): adoption

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    This post is part of a series: introduction (I), adoption (II), activity (III), work hours (IV), generations (V), and coda (VI). Find below the statistics for mailing list activity in GRASS, gvSIG and QGIS during the period 2008-2010. The first one shows data from the general user mailing lists for each project. Take into account that data for gvSIG…

  • How gvSIG MapControl works: flow of control

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    Within gvSIG design, MapControl is one of the core components. Its main responsibility is to allow users to interact with a map of layers (zoom in/out, edit geometries, …). That goal is achieved through two concrete tasks: Route the user actions to the proper tool which will execute it. Manage the drawing of the layers. This…

  • Analysis of free software communities (I): a quantitative study on GRASS, gvSIG and QGIS

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    This post is part of a series: introduction (I), adoption (II), activity (III), work hours (IV), generations (V), and coda (VI). When selecting an application, it’s very common to consider technological factors -what the application enable us to do?- and economic ones -how much money do we need? And yet, there is a third factor to take into account,…

  • Wiki update

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    Done some reorganization on wiki contents and wrote a bit on refactoring and code smells. I’m proud on the pace and themes the wiki is evolving: I have grown quite a bit of software development topics, which is a reflection on my readings and focus last years. Although could evolve later, the topics on software…

  • Automattic creed

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    I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before…

  • Growing a community: some texts

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    I’m a longer passionate on community-oriented products: I’ve researched on how they work, have led one to their goal and participate in some. It’s not a new story what they are considered a powerful way to build your products (sometimes, a better one than doing in through the market or internally in a firm/closed-group-of-people). Nevertheless, I’m still…

  • gvSIG vs QGIS

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    I’m not such a fan of comparatives to rank things. But I find them useful to know your pros and cons, or at least to know how the surrounding community perceive your product. While having a coffee today I found this article on gis @ stackexchange: QGIS and gvSIG comparison. Made me happy than 2 out…

  • Code quality matters

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    «It may be impossible to despise your client or users and still deliver a quality product.» – Advi Grimm, There is no such a thing as a good field programmer

  • Apple’s release early, release often

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    Real artists ship. – Steve Jobs, 1983. Related: how Apple releases its products and why it’s one of its strengths.

  • Warren Buffet on taxes

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    «My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.» – Warren Buffer, NYT 15/08/11 On the differences between the taxes to labor and the taxes to capital in the USA.

  • How gvsig manages the snappers

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    Last week I paired together with Francisco Puga to review the status of opencadtools. As Fran is doing a great work in preparing the integration of opencadtools as default CAD tools in gvSIG, I wanted to know first hand how it was going. iCarto and Cartolab were kind enough to sponsor this pairing session. One of…

  • Success and failure of building software

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    Two stories on developing software applications. In both cases the client is the public administration, but the way every one was managed and build was quite different:

  • Who needs an architect?

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    One of those good old texts to revisit from time to time: Who needs an architect? by Martin Fowler. If you are in the software industry, please, make yourself a tea and get 10 minutes of good reading. Will help you to understand what technical leadership means.

  • On the closure of code

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    Code should grow by addition rather than mutation. – Measuring the closure of code, Michael Feathers. Via: Software volatility.

  • On lines of code

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    If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as “lines produced” but as “lines spent”. – Edsger Dijkstra. Quoted on Are all patches create equal? by Jonathan Corbet.

  • gvSIG codesprint in A Coruña: a personal summary

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    As you may know, iCarto and Cartolab have hosted a gvSIG codesprint at the nice city of A Coruña. iCarto was kind enough to support my attendance to the event to work on gvsig, navtable & navtableforms. Find below some comments on my personal experience. Some general impressions on the event It’s great to see…

  • TripAdvisor: behind the scenes

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    «No architects. Engineers works across the entire stack» – TripAdvisor engineering team TripAdvisor is one of the largest travel sites: 40M Visitors/Month, 200M Dynamic Page views/Day, … how do they make this possible? Here the answer. As I’m a culture/development process junkie, I’ve search how they work. Their approach: an extremely agile culture (as they put it:…

  • On Social Networks

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    «Social networks are the modern Romeo and Juliet story. If Romeo is on Facebook and Juliet is on MySpace, there’s no way that they can ever be together» – Evan Prodromou at OSCON 2009

  • Software: an utility or a strategic asset?

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    «One of the most important ways in which these efforts differ is where the risks lie. For utility projects the biggest risk is some kind of catastrophic error – you don’t want the sewage pipe to break, or to miss payroll. So you need enough attention to make sure that doesn’t happen, but other than…

  • RMS on leadership

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    Free software communities have a system much better than elections: you can choose which leader you wish to follow and how much. If you want to be a leader, start leading, and see who wants to help. – Richard Stallman.

  • Hi osgeoers!

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    That’s my first post going to Planet OSGEO. Just want to say hello people! 🙂 Well, as for someone who is new in the community, I think it feels right to introduce myself. My name is Andrés Maneiro and I work as a GIS programmer for iCarto, a firm specialized in GIS based in A…

  • The hardest thing

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    The hardest thing [for a programmer] is to go to sleep at night when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. – Donald Knuth.