Today we released our one-year anniversary episode of Improving Podcasts. It’s a huge milestone for us, 27 episodes released every other Tuesday with no missed weeks. It hasn’t always been easy to come up with content, but Mike and I have held each other accountable (Mike’s the one with the real discipline) and we’ve lived up to the challenge we set for ourselves. It’s been a lot of fun and some content has been outstanding (if I do say so myself) while some really hasn’t, but I think it was worth the effort.

In the latest episode I get together with Ed Grannan and Gary McCants to discuss some of our favorite episodes and add some new perspectives and opinions. If you haven’t listened to the podcast before, it’s a great place to start because it can point you in the direction of some of our best episodes, and those are the ones you should listen to first .

When surveying Improvers about their favorite episodes, I was pleased that more than half of them made someone’s list. Some that would have been in the bottom half of my list were first on other’s. I wasn’t expecting that, but it was a pleasant surprise.

Listen to our one year episode and tell me what you think.

I started with a theme I really like called Arthemia by Michael Hutagalung and customized it a bit. I added a custom homepage and added a few other tweaks. Check it out and let me know what you think!

On June 3, 2010 I led the Visual Studio 2010 LoadFest at the Visual Studio Launch Event in Austin, Texas. It was a lot of fun. You can find the content here.

Get the slides

Get the code

If you’re in Dallas, Houston, Austin, or Bryan/College Station (or within an hour or so), take advantage of Improving’s lunch and learns. We’ll come out and present to your team on a topic of your choice, free of charge. Our topics cover the latest in .NET development, Java, Object Oriented fundamentals, and, of course, lots of perspectives on Agile Software Development. If you need an easy way to expose your team to the latest in Agile development from the comfort of your own office, here’s your chance. Here’s a list of topics, but feel free to request a different one if the one you need isn’t listed. To schedule a lunch and learn, drop me a line or hit us up via our website.

Agile Adoption Strategies – Business/PM Track

Slides

ASP.NET MVC – Advanced Development Track

Slides

Code – Team Management App

Code – User Group CMS

I’m now completely addicted to evernote.  I’ve installed it several times but, until recently, never really used it.  I always thought “what am i supposed to use this for?”. I guess I just didn’t get it. Well… now I do. I watched Merlin Mann’s desktop tour, and it convinced me to give it another shot.  I’ve had DevonThink, Yojimbo, OneNote,  and Evernote all installed, but never really used any of them.

I now dump almost everything into Evernote. I used to use Stickies, random disorganized text files, notes in the margins of notebooks, and half a dozen other tools to record random bits of data. Now, it all goes in Evernote. It’s the bag for all the stuff that has no place.

Evernote is indexed (even uses OCR for text in images), allows tagging in multiple notebooks, syncs to the web and iPhone, and has, I’m sure, dozens of other awesome features I haven’t even used yet. It supports audio notes, which has helped me get my SpeakEasy and old Outlook recordings catalogued for the sake of having a “SINGLE” repository for all of my keepsake junk. I can only imagine the possibilities for how this will help me organize the random emails i’ve sent to myself and all the other inaccessible and redundant pieces of data I have lying about. It is changing the way I use my computer and how I see and organize data.

Evernote even inspired me to start using 1Password for all my password archives. Evernote doesn’t really do this well yet, but 1password is working out great. I used to have passwords listed in plain text in text files in a notes directory on my computer. Since the notes directory is becoming history (all bit by bit getting merged into Evernote), I had to put the passwords somewhere, and it’s a load off my mind having them somewhere secure and available on all my computers and iPhone. 1Password’s browser integration is freakin awesome (it used to annoy me, but now I love it, I guess I just had to submit to the tool .

Evernote and 1Password have now joined Quicksilver, Path Finder, Text Mate, Cyberduck, OmniFocus, vmware Fusion, and Sound Source as my must have Mac applications. There’s currently no Quicksilver plugin for Evernote, but there is a useful applescript for quick note entries. The applescript tool is still not as functional as the (awesome) Quicksilver text file manipulation actions (my former primary notekeeping tool), but maybe it will convince me to investigate Quicksilver’s plugin architecture and try to implement it myself.

Thumbs up evernote for the great work (and for being free so that stubborn people like me will actually use it .

I chose WordPress because of the flexibility, extensibility, and availability of plugins, extensions, themes, etc.  Basically, I chose WordPress because that’s where all the cool kids are!

“Define polymorphism”

“What’s the difference between a value type and a reference type (primitive and object)”

“How is an object different from a class”

I had a conversation with a fellow Improver a while back where we discussed object oriented and development questions often asked during tech interviews. My colleague had a low opinion of these questions for reasons you might expect: people have rehearsed answers, they don’t necessarily test knowledge that is relevant to being a talented developer, they make you look like a tool because they’ve already heard the question in every other interview, etc. I tend to ask this type of question from time to time because I find them very interesting, but since our conversation I’ve been wondering if I should discontinue them. I’m hoping for some feedback on whether or not the questions have any merit, but first, here is my defense.

- General reasons to ask these questions
• I mostly ask these questions to junior candidates, not all of them have heard them a thousand times.
• After they answer, I usually ask them if they’ve had that question before (people are very eager to say yes if they have, not sure why), if they have and they still don’t have a good answer, that’s a good data point.
• If someone rolls their eyes or scoffs at the question (it’s happened to me), that’s a good data point. Politeness, restraint, and tact are very important to teamwork and client relations, an eye roll indicates arrogance or at least lack of restraint. If you want to work here, don’t act like my questions are beneath you.
• If these questions are so simple and pedestrian, how come so many people don’t have an answer or answer them badly?
• Every once in a while someone gives me an excellent response showing particular insight. If someone teaches you something new, really makes you think, or turns “What’s the difference between an interface and an abstract class” into a master class on object oriented development, you probably should hire them.
• Most of these questions have several levels of depth, the answer they give tells you a little about how they think, more on this later.
• If the candidate has a canned answer, you can throw them off guard with an insightful follow up and tell whether or not they actually understand what they’re saying. If the candidate is trying to BS you, this tells you something about the way they operate.

- Detailed defense of a couple choice questions

- “Define Polymorphism”
• This isn’t just a vocabulary quiz. That being said, whether or not they’ve heard the term is a data point. If they’ve heard the term but still don’t know what it means, that’s a data point as well. If they tell you straight up, I’m not familiar with that term, 0 points deducted, if they try to BS you, -10 points. If they are unfamiliar with the term you can explain it, then give them an example and have them predict the behavior, hopefully they catch on fast and recognize it from their development experience. You can see the epiphany, if they don’t recognize the behavior once you’ve worked through the example, they are missing some basic OO knowledge. No one cares that it means “many forms”, at least I don’t, tell me what it means in object oriented programming. Some people must be impressed by the etymology of the word because a lot of people make sure to include that in their answer (not necessarily a data point, but is interesting nonetheless). There are two forms of polymorphism, overloaded methods and overridden methods, I like it when they mention that. If they mention only one, you can ask them about the other. This is also an easy way (depending on the target language) to segue into a discussion of virtual methods, C#’s “new” keyword, abstract classes, etc. Some candidates have a one sentence answer, some give you an example, some discuss both types of polymorphism, etc. These all show you a little bit about how they think.

- “What’s the difference between an interface and an abstract class”
• I have to admit, I don’t really like this question. I prefer to ask them to define one, then the other and discuss the merits of loose coupling, the impact of inheritance on the rigidity of your object model, etc. But the spirit of the question is the same no matter how you structure it. Discussing these concepts at the definition level allows you some insight into the way the candidate considers these constructs and the value they place on them. Some people don’t have much to say about interfaces because they haven’t built very many (not good). Some people have well defined scenarios in their mind for when each construct is valuable, this indicates a mature sense of object-oriented design.

Many other common and overly-asked questions provide merit for similar reasons. I’m always interested in hearing the questions people ask, and why they ask them. I don’t subscribe to the belief that just because a question is asked often that it is a bad question. In fact, the opposite is likely true! Maybe some people just don’t have good reasons for why they ask them?

If you don’t have an iPhone, go get one! The AppStore is the missing killer feature of the iPhone and there’s nothing like it for any other mobile platform. Way to go Apple!