development

While 2013 may appear calmer compared to 2012 due in part to fewer “big” events scheduled this year, the information technology (IT) industry and profession advances forward. The IT industry, interestingly enough, shapes events in addition to being shaped by events around the world.

Developers must have good feedback to ensure productivity. Most shops have a continuous integration (CI) build process that allows the developer to quickly know if a build failed, and some shops have an automatic deploy of the CI build to provide website feedback. Lance Lyons writes about an approach to automating the update of databases in a CI environment.

Beware of the hidden sirens in your rewrite project. They will sing the words you want to hear--that the project is easy to complete. Don't be fooled: Sirens are mythological, but the lure of rewrite projects can be quite real. Rewrite may seem a simple task, but it isn't until you're deep into it that you'll start to realize the true nature of the project. In this article, James Shore offers some words of wisdom (and warning) to help guide your rewrite project in the right direction.

This article is dedicated to telling you how good developing software can be. Austin Hastings describes many software development practices working together, some of which you don't have. If you like an idea you see here, implement it. After your first implementation steps, you can return here to find yet another idea to implement.