Steve Neiderhauser

Unit Testing Rules

Michael Feathers provides these unit testing rules. 

A test is not a unit test if:

• It talks to the database
• It touches the file system.
• You have to do special things to your environment to run it.

Read the blog post to see the other two rules.

Geriatric Java

A year ago I attended a talk given by a CIO of a large financial services firm. He said his dev teams were using Java because it’s the most modern language.

I laughed and stepped out.

This well-intentioned fellow is like many IT executives. Out of touch, out of tune, and out of time.

Take the time to read Neil McAllister's article about Java's struggles to remain relevant.

Six Cool Cloud Companies

CIO.com looks at six cloud companies that presented products at Demo Spring 2010.

FathomDB impressed me with its database as a service offering. Great for startups. You can stage your investments and limit the need for database staff.

Expect larger, established companies to become interested in this kind of product. You see, there's a trend developing.

With each passing year the real outsourcing will be to companies like FathomDB, companies that are reducing the complexity of software and making it easier to focus on development and modeling.

It's true. Take a look at another of the six: Cloudscale.

Avoid these common IT mistakes

InfoWorld lists 20 IT mistakes to void. In light of the Terry Childs' soap opera in San Francisco, mistake 6 (creating indispensable employees) may spark a debate in your office.

After the debate, it might be a good idea to review mistake 7 -- Raising issues instead of offering solutions.

Tip: If you're going to bring a problem to the boss, make sure you pair it with a solution.

Does display size matter?

Anyone who has worked as a developer or graphics artist knows how important screen real estate is. This InfoWorld article explores an Apple-paid study that says -- Yes, larger computer monitors make life easier. Although, if you ever walked into an Apple store and tried to use a 30-inch Cinema Display to edit a Word doc, you might think it's overkill. So I agree with those experts who claim that in many cases, two displays are better than one.