The title is based on a quote from the 2007 movie, Ghost Rider. Johnny Blaze catches Blackheart, son of Satan, in his apartment, where he is searching for a contract that would cede him the souls of Earth. The two fight briefly. Johnny backs Blackheart up against a wall, and Blackheart admonishes him: “They say […]

As each generation comes of age, they find ways to adapt to the world (or adapt the world to themselves). I’ve been around long enough to see this a few times. But I don’t recall any generation receiving quite as much explicit attention as the Millennials. No one really worried, with respect to previous generations, […]

Warning: Preachy content. In working with technical people at the individual and team levels, I often find attitudes that pull toward one extreme or the other: Either our work is inherently uninteresting, and we’re only in it for the paycheck; or our work is a boundless source of joy, learning, and achievement through which we […]

A tweet from Kevlin Henney in August 2018 reopened an old can of worms: The “issue” has never seemed a Big Deal® to me. Even so, a couple of things came to mind when I first read Kevlin’s tweet: Java is designed to work both ways: With wildcard imports or with specific ones. So, programmers […]

Large organizations are often hesitant to replace very old legacy applications that have served mission-critical business operations for many years. In fact, they are reluctant to modify the applications at all. Why is that? Before answering that question, let’s answer this one: Who Cares? Looking back over the course of the “agile” movement, it seems […]