VDubinator Coder

Have you ever been frustrated with how something is at work? Have you ever found yourself feeling powerless to improve or change a certain part of your job? Have you ever wondered why things are done the way they are? Have you ever wanted to have an impact on how things are done at your job? These are some of things I've been thinking about recently. Last year the company I work for transitioned from a semi-agile process to using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Overall, it's been a huge success for the department and for the company. The fact that we even considered changing things up speaks volumes to the type of people that lead this company. The way we've been able to transition with relative ease has been outstanding to be a part of. Even with the surprisingly smooth transition, there were still bumps and there are still things to complain about. While these items bother different people to different degrees, there are some that seem to get frustrated about the c

This is and entry in a series about  Starting Out In Development . The goal of this series is to provide brief introductions to critical tools, concepts, and skills you'll need as a developer. By now you should be familiar with what version control is. If you're unsure, check out  my article  introducing it. Now that you know what version control is in general, it's time to get familiar with some of its specific implementations. In this article, we'll discuss Git, it's take on version control, and how to use it. Git: What is it? Git is a software implementation of version control. It was created in 2005 by the famous Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux). It's currently maintained by Junio Hamano and is updated regularly. There are a number of popular tools that help manage Git repositories. Among these tools are TortoiseGit, SourceTree, and others. In this article, I won't be using any of these tools. We'll be running commands via th

This is and entry in a series about  Starting Out In Development . The goal of this series is to provide brief introductions to critical tools, concepts, and skills you'll need as a developer. By now you should be familiar with what version control is. If you're unsure, check out my article introducing it. Now that you know what version control is in general, it's time to get familiar with some of its specific implementations. In this article, we'll discuss Subversion, it's take on version control, and how to use it. Subversion: What is it? Subversion  (often abbreviated as SVN) is a software implementation of version control. It was created by CollabNet and is now a major Apache project. It's been around since the year 2000 and is fairly actively developed and updated. There are also many tools that can make using SVN a bit easier and more convenient. Among the most popular of those tools is TortoiseSVN . I'll be using that later in the

If you know me personally, there's probably no doubt that I have a few quirks or things that I do that may seem odd. One of those things is that I tend to keep up with my LinkedIn notifications. Most people I talk with tend to log into LinkedIn only once in a great while. For some reason, I'm not that way. I tend to log in at least weekly to clear out notifications and respond to recruiters (usually with the canned, "Hi Bob, thanks for reaching out. I’m not currently interested, but let’s keep in touch"). As a Software Engineer, I generally have a few recruiters a week messaging me. As I've looked over each of these messages, I feel like I've seen some good recruiting messages and some poor ones. Unfortunately I don't think I've seen any great messages. In this article, I want to share some thoughts on what I would like to see in a recruiter's message to me if they were really serious about me joining their team. It's more than technology.

I've recently had a few discussions with coworkers about the Online Master's of Computer Science program that's offered by Georgia Tech. It's a pretty revolutionary program that puts a top-10 graduate degree within the grasp of many, many more people than previously possible. There are many articles and blog posts written about it. PBS even highlighted it in a recent episode. There have been some people that have written about their experience in the program and even created a flowchart to help you decide if it's for you or not. I wanted to take a moment and capture my experience and answer some common questions I get about the program. Backstory First, let me start by telling you my story. This section should help you understand some of my reasoning behind selecting the OMSCS Program. Honestly, you can skip this section if you'd like and jump straight to the FAQ at the end. I grew up in a somewhat non-traditional home. I had a dad and a mom but my dad