Monthly Archives: October 2008

Java Memory Management Improvement Proposal

For the umpteenth time, I had to deal with the dreaded Java OutOfMemoryError, this time when trying to run Fisheye Subversion browser.  My problem deals with a known issue in Fisheye where a background indexing task sometimes runs causes an OOM error.  Of course, an OOM does not just effect the indexing task, it can

Respect the Silent Evidence

I have been reading The Black Swan : The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (a.k.a. NNT) and been thinking about its impact on some of the assumptions that I have made.  One of the main points is how often accept as proven fact theories which ignore silent evidence.  Software professionals fall

No Rock Stars Need Apply

Interesting article from fortune on why talent is overrated.  As a society, we tend to overvalue innate talent.  However, most success comes from focused hard work rather than pure talent.  Tiger Woods is great because of how focused he is on constantly improving his game. As i talked about in Effective Technology Teams, what someone