This was the third consecutive year I’ve attended the PHP UK conference. I bought a ticket for Friday only (this is the first year PHP UK has spanned two days). While I think the event is better organised every year, the quality of the talks for 2012, overall, was not the same standard as last year (with exception to Ian B’s, who’s always good).
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I’ve always found the people side of software development interesting, and have read various books about what makes developers tick: Peopleware, Smart & Gets Things Done, The Psychology of Computer Programming, Coders at Work, Slack etc.

I asked myself what really motivates software developers?
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I’ve just finished reading Tom DeMarco‘s Slack, a book aimed at dissolving the myth that total efficiency within an organisation is “a good thing”.

This book is more general than Peopleware, DeMarco’s software development oriented book (which I found to be a more engaging read, probably because I’m a developer).
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Thanks to Kevin Worthington for his installation instructions. Comments are closed on his post so I’ve added these notes to my own blog.
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This isn’t my affidavit of being a copy and paste programmer. vim has recently become my code editor of choice, having used Eclipse for years, and Netbeans for most of this year. Poor network performance at work means both of those IDEs slow me down.

One annoyance with vim is pasting text from another application. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve watched the world eulogise Steve Jobs over the last 48 hours. To me, there’s no better testament to his brilliance than quantity of profound quotes. I found one particularly poignant on focus and simplicity:

Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple

This quote stood out to me because it epitomises what I strive for in my code, I can’t say I’m always successful.

Farewell Mr Jobs, consumer electronics will be a little less brilliant without you.