How have you supported software?

Vote on this quick poll, how you feel about paying for software (subscriptions, donations, ads, etc.):

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Z7LXFKT

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Reality Checks to Demystify Buzzwords

As an IT insider, I feel I have something valuable to offer nontechnical people in terms of correcting misinformation. Here are a few simple tests for some popular buzzwords in tech. When evaluating a product or service, if you can honestly answer Yes to the reality check question, the buzzword probably truly applies. If the answer is No, it is probably fake. agile Does it make the developers happy? blockchain Does it cut out the middleman? cloud Does it automatically scale? microservice Does it only do one thing? object oriented Is it mostly made of interfaces? RESTful When requests arrive at a certain address, are they ready to use (without parsing)? unit test Does it prevent the tested code from touching anything outside itself?

The Importance of Direction

Which would you say is more important: getting somewhere faster, pushing something harder, or going the right direction? It should be obvious that no matter how much speed or power you use, that won't do any good if you're going the wrong direction. It could also be pointed out that early in a journey, even a small change in direction makes a big difference in where you end up. Therefore, we should make sure we have our direction correct, as the first priority.

How (Not) to Handle Different Exceptions

Came across this sample from a certain multi-billion-dollar company, purporting to show how to implement exception handling. I slightly changed a few cosmetic details to make it anonymous. try { // ... } catch (GeneralException e) { if (e instanceof SpecificExceptionA){ // ... } else if (e instanceof SpecificExceptionB){ // ... } } This is a true actual story--you can't make this stuff up. Yeah, I thought it was pretty hilarious; so I felt like I had to share it.

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