http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog All the bits fit to spread around the salt marshes Tue, 01 Jan 2008 03:41:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When we were last heard from, we felt stupor (or at least a lack of excitement) towards the embedded world. Speedplane provided some good examples of exciting products but his rebuke does not addresses the core issue I was trying to articulate. I talked about buzz, but maybe it ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/31/ushering-in-a-new-year/ Ostensibly, this blog is about software development, and while I'm trying to write about embedded, I'm struggling. I find most embedded practices less than exciting and am more drawn to what is happening in non-embedded systems: .NET, F#, TDD, C# 3.0, Behavior Driven Design, Agile, Ruby. There's a ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/19/wheres-the-buzz-tell-me-whats-happening/ Sitting at a Restaurant in Stockholm, catching up on various blogs, I read Steve Pavlina's 200 things I love about writing. This got me thinking about why I started this blog. This blog is essentially an outlet for my need to express myself. As I suck at drawing and ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/18/why-did-i-start-this-blog/ This is the follow up article describing our tribulations trying to find tech workers in small town Beaufort, SC. As I mentioned earlier, we were looking for experienced embedded engineers and a tester, which we were willing to train. How did we go about it? Company Web Site I hesitate ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/16/how-to-find-tech-workers-in-a-small-town/ For a while at my previous employer, I was in charge of finding technical people we could hire. We had two types of positions to fill: programmers/engineers and testers. We were looking for experienced employees, but were willing to hire relatively junior employees (e.g. 1 to 2 ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/14/finding-tech-workers-in-a-small-town-obviously-not-obvious/ I have been in this industry for a long time. Not quite punch card long, but long enough to have experienced the Personal Computer revolution hands on. I have fond memories of typing programs out of magazines in a TRS-80 Model I in a small room at the ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/12/how-long-lived-is-your-software/ Thanks to Chris Sells for pointing out the group Richter Scales and their song Here comes Another bubble. While the song is funny as everything, I believe many a tech worker can identify with the themes. Heck, it even covers ageism, my favorite angst inducing subject. Go have a listen! http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/12/they-almost-sing-about-my-life/ While perusing the TIOBE report, I noticed REXX made an appearance. This brought back memories of being a co-op student in the early '90s. My employer, Bell Northern Research (aka BNR), was the research arm of Northern Telecom. They were eventually fated to be absorbed and re-branded at Nortel. ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/11/tales-from-the-trenches-build-dread/ Recently, I wanted to purchase a new alarm. We have a perfectly functional alarm clock. One of the original Sony Dream Machine. A white cube with a fairly simple interface: On the front: - LED display for the time - A slider bar to display the ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/10/why-should-you-care-about-the-human-interface/ Reading an article on the "D" programming language, I can across the TIOBE survey of the top 100 programming languages. This piqued my curiosity and I decided to see for myself. I'm classifying my experience as one of 4 categories: Competent, Dabbler, Heard of it and huh? In the ... http://www.benoitlavigne.com/blog/2007/12/08/of-languages-and-men/