August, 2017

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Roy sells ThoughtWorks to Apax

Martin Fowler

ThoughtWorks, my employer, had some big news to share today. Our founder and owner, Roy Singham, has decided to sell ThoughtWorks to Apax - a private equity firm based in London. Apax wishes the current management team to continue running and growing ThoughtWorks, using the same model that's driven our growth and success for the last twenty-odd years.

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The software engineering rule of 3

Erik Bernhardsson

Here’s a dumb extremely accurate rule I’m postulating* for software engineering projects: you need at least 3 examples before you solve the right problem. This is what I’ve noticed: Don’t factor out shared code between two classes. Wait until you have at least three. The two first attempts to solve a problem will fail because you misunderstood the problem.

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Three Simple Secrets to Running a Remarkable Meeting

Let's Grow Leaders

“This is so stupid–they asked for my opinion and then ignored it. I don’t know why I even bother! From now on, I’m going to just shut my mouth and do my work.” “Arghhh. We keep rehashing the same conversations. Why can’t we make a simple @#%*&% decision?” “I don’t know why we even try! We make a decision and by the time we get back together, no one has done anything we agreed to.” Sound familiar?

Meeting 165
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DeCluttering – Your Way To Brilliance

General Leadership

“Keeping baggage from the past will leave no room for happiness in the future.” Wayne L. Misner. Here’s a tip to add brilliance, shine and value contribution to your work and your personal brand. Try it. I defy you to tell me it doesn’t get you noticed and known as an original workplace thinker when you work it right and apply it to a business direction, project and strategy piece.

Strategy 144
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Peak Performance: Continuous Testing & Evaluation of LLM-Based Applications

Speaker: Aarushi Kansal, AI Leader & Author and Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO at Aggregage

Software leaders who are building applications based on Large Language Models (LLMs) often find it a challenge to achieve reliability. It’s no surprise given the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. To effectively create reliable LLM-based (often with RAG) applications, extensive testing and evaluation processes are crucial. This often ends up involving meticulous adjustments to prompts.

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Developer Testing

Henrik Warne

I recently found out about the book Developer Testing – Building Quality Into Software by Alexander Tarlinder , and I immediately wanted to read it. Even though I am a developer at heart, I have always been interested in software testing (I even worked as a tester for two years). I think the subject of the book, developer testing, is timely. There seems to be a broad trend where more and more responsibility for testing is given to developers.

Testing 116

More Trending

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The Rise of Test Impact Analysis

Martin Fowler

Paul Hammant shines a light on Test Impact Analysis: a modern way of speeding up the test automation phase of a build. It works by analyzing the call-graph of the source code to work out which tests should be run after a change to production code. Microsoft has done some extensive work on this approach, but it's also possible for development teams to implement something useful quite cheaply.

Analysis 270
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Google diversity memo, global warming, Pascal's wager, and other stuff

Erik Bernhardsson

There’s about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple of weeks ago. I think the case for any biological difference is pretty weak, and it bothers me when people refer to an “interest gap” as anything else than caused by the environment. Maybe because I have a daughter, maybe because I have too many female friends who told me stories how they were held back or discriminated against.

Course 102
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5 Sentences to Energize and Support Your Volunteers (and everyone is a volunteer)

Let's Grow Leaders

I was cycling from Breckenridge, Colorado up Vail Pass on a recent Sunday afternoon. What I hadn’t anticipated was that the Copper Triangle, a major cycling event, was happening at the same time, and I soon found myself slowly climbing up the steep […].

Energy 159
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High Performing Leaders Live a Balanced Life

General Leadership

Anyone can put their head down and power through life, however, it takes a mature person to understand that how you live is equally important as what you accomplish. -The Five Be’s. We sat in the Officer’s Club at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho: three lieutenants with cold beers in hand trying to impress each other with the hours we were working.

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Top 5 Challenges in Designing a Data Warehouse for Multi-Tenant Analytics

Multi-tenant architecture allows software vendors to realize tremendous efficiencies by maintaining a single application stack instead of separate database instances while meeting data privacy needs. When you use a data warehouse to power your multi-tenant analytics, the proper approach is vital. Multi-tenant analytics is NOT the primary use case with traditional data warehouses, causing data security challenges.

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Merck Cyber Attack Will Cause Loss Of Innocent Life

CTOvision

For years we have heard warnings of cyber attacks against manufacturing processes and against infrastructure, and for years we have seen these attacks grow from theoretical to real. We have also seen many who do not know how connected these systems are say that all is well and the threat is being over stated. We […].

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50 Reasons Why People Resist Change

Change Starts Here

Despite our best efforts to influence change, people often don’t transition as easily as we expect them to. Instead of becoming frustrated, try to understand the reason for their response. There’s probably something you can do to help them through it. When someone seems to be resisting change, consider the following 50 reasons that might […].

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Guide to Spring Boot REST API Error Handling

Toptal

Spring Boot gives very useful error messages to engineers building REST APIs. Yet, those same messages are noisy and useless for the API consumer, not to mention they reveal implementation details. Luckily, there are simple ways of handling this.

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Machine, Platform, Crowd

Erik Bernhardsson

I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it mentions my blog – in particular the post When machine learning matters. Ok, I lied a little bit. I didn’t discover it serendipitously. Someone actually emailed me saying I was mentioned, and so I ordered the book for same-day delivery. But I was seriously planning to read the book anyway – having read both The Second Machine Age and Rage Against the Machine – they are great books and I’m not being biase

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7 Pitfalls for Apache Cassandra in Production

Apache Cassandra is an open-source distributed database that boasts an architecture that delivers high scalability, near 100% availability, and powerful read-and-write performance required for many data-heavy use cases. However, many developers and administrators who are new to this NoSQL database often encounter several challenges that can impact its performance.

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How to Get Noticed as a Leader– Before You’ve Led a Team

Let's Grow Leaders

Last week “John” shared his “No Diaper Genie!” frustration in the middle of our high-potential leadership development program. Yeah, I get that I’m here… and the company is investing in me and all that. But my boss keeps saying, “You’re not ready to be promoted, you’ve never led a team. I can’t recommend you for that particular promotion now, give it time” but the truth is, my job is 18 times more complex than any front-line super

How To 151
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Security chatbot empowers junior analysts, helps fill cybersecurity gap

Kacy Zurkus - CSO Online

The alarming number of unfilled jobs in information security has many leaders in the industry wondering how to solve the manpower problem. Awareness is part of the problem — in that the pipelines aren't getting filled fast because many young people don't know about jobs in security. A second problem of awareness, though, is the inherent problem in a majority of security operation centers (SOCs) — programming language.

Training 101
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Big Data Management: A Few Pointers First-Timers Should Remember

CTOvision

There is no doubt about it, data is becoming vital for small and large companies. One of the major reasons data is becoming more important probably deals with its power to save money and optimize performance. Still, to many, using big data is pretty new, so it might be a good idea to consider the following tips […].

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How to Avoid Resentment When One Project Replaces Another

Change Starts Here

The wheels of progress require continuous improvement in organizations. What was once a change becomes the status quo. The people who implemented the existing way of working may feel like the latest change is trampling on their hard work. How do you help those who were involved in creating the current state to support the […].

How To 114
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Entity Resolution Checklist: What to Consider When Evaluating Options

Are you trying to decide which entity resolution capabilities you need? It can be confusing to determine which features are most important for your project. And sometimes key features are overlooked. Get the Entity Resolution Evaluation Checklist to make sure you’ve thought of everything to make your project a success! The list was created by Senzing’s team of leading entity resolution experts, based on their real-world experience.

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3 Ways Virtual Reality Will Transform eCommerce

Toptal

The rise of mobile VR technology is about to create a new playing field in the retail industry - and everyone needs to adapt. Learn how retailers and consumers alike, can thrive in the new era of online commerce.

eCommerce 110
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The software engineering rule of 3

Erik Bernhardsson

Here’s a dumb extremely accurate rule I’m postulating* for software engineering projects: you need at least 3 examples before you solve the right problem. This is what I’ve noticed: Don’t factor out shared code between two classes. Wait until you have at least three. The two first attempts to solve a problem will fail because you misunderstood the problem.

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5 Sentences to Energize and Support Your Volunteers (and everyone is a volunteer)

Let's Grow Leaders

I was cycling from Breckenridge, Colorado up Vail Pass on a recent Sunday afternoon. What I hadn’t anticipated was that the Copper Triangle, a major cycling event, was happening at the same time, and I soon found myself slowly climbing up the steep mountain while hundreds of cyclists were racing down. A mile and a quarter before the summit, one of those speeding cyclists clipped the wheel of another rider and was thrown from his bike about 10 yards in front of me landing on his head.

Energy 149
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How to Start an Online Business

Women on Business

We've Moved! Update your Reader Now. This feed has moved to: [link] If you haven't already done so, update your reader now with this changed subscription address to get your latest updates from us. [link].

How To 100
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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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 FBI vs Apple: History, Policy, Sovereignty and Individual Rights

CTOvision

Editor’s note: This is the third in a five-part series on this topic. This examination by Arnold Abraham provides insights and nuanced lessons from history, the law and the tech world that can inform all of us interested in both privacy and security. For a detailed legal analysis accompanying the article, please visit TheCyberLawTeam.com/publications-1 […].

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Interview: Combine Research and Practice with Evidence-Based Change Management

Change Starts Here

In this episode, industrial-organizational psychology consultant Paul Thoresen shares how to combine research with practice when it comes to organizational change. Listen in to hear why you’d want to take an evidence-based approach to change, and what barriers stand in the way. You’ll also hear examples and where you can find research to help inform […].

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Orchestrating a Background Job Workflow in Celery for Python

Toptal

In this article, I will try to give you a good understanding of which scenarios could be covered by Celery. Not only will you see interesting examples, but will also learn how to apply Celery with real world tasks such as background mailing, report generation, logging and error reporting. I will share my own way of testing tasks beyond emulation and explain a few tricks that go beyond the official documentation and took me hours of research to discover myself.

Report 106
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Machine, Platform, Crowd

Erik Bernhardsson

I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it mentions my blog – in particular the post When machine learning matters. Ok, I lied a little bit. I didn’t discover it serendipitously. Someone actually emailed me saying I was mentioned, and so I ordered the book for same-day delivery. But I was seriously planning to read the book anyway – having read both The Second Machine Age and Rage Against the Machine – they are great books and I’m not being biase

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IDC Analyst Report: The Open Source Blind Spot Putting Businesses at Risk

In a recent study, IDC found that 64% of organizations said they were already using open source in software development with a further 25% planning to in the next year. Most organizations are unaware of just how much open-source code is used and underestimate their dependency on it. As enterprises grow the use of open-source software, they face a new challenge: understanding the scope of open-source software that's being used throughout the organization and the corresponding exposure.

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Frontline Festival: Leaders Share About Team Building (with video)

Let's Grow Leaders

Welcome back to the Let’s Grow Leaders Frontline Festival. This month’s festival is about team building. Thanks to Joy and Tom Guthrie of Vizwerx Group for the great pic and to all our contributors! Next month’s Frontline Festival is all lessons learned, overcoming setbacks and resiliency. Submit your relevant blog posts here! Leaders need to adjust to the skill and abilities of the people, and don’t expect new people to fit into the team exactly as those doing the job previously.

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Social Media Business Pages vs. The Traditional Business Website

Women on Business

We've Moved! Update your Reader Now. This feed has moved to: [link] If you haven't already done so, update your reader now with this changed subscription address to get your latest updates from us. [link].

Media 93
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Artificial intelligence: the megatrend that’s first among equals

CTOvision

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t business as usual. Because of complementary advances in natural language processing, machine learning, and image recognition, the range of tasks for which AI is well-suited is growing daily. And when a critical level of AI saturation is reached, we anticipate profound disruption in the world of work. Imagine a barrel perched […].