Areas of Expertise:
- software development
- Ruby
- Java
- agile development
- programming
Biography
Books
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Blog
Dave's blog posts are hosted at:
http://nuts.redsquirrel.com/
http://nuts.redsquirrel.com/
The Publication of Apprenticeship Patterns
October 25 2009
Now that I’ve had the pleasure of holding my book in my hands I feel like it’s time to (re-)tell the story of how this book was born. In the Spring of 2002, I worked at a big, old (bloated) non-profit organization in Chicago. My boss (IT manager) handed me… read moreOctober 07 2009
I’m running the Chicago Marathon this Sunday. I’ve done a bad job of preparing for this race, so I don’t expect my time to be better than my first two marathons. One of the reasons I haven’t had much time to prepare is that I’ve been coaching football 3 days… read moreThe Growing Role of UX at Obtiva
September 11 2009
[P]eople are recognizing that UX work is important, but I don’t think they realize quite how important yet.Michael Feathers in Thoughts on the Future of the Boutique Software Shop In his post about “boutique software shops”, Michael pondered the future of companies like 8th Light, Obtiva, Hashrocket and Edge Case.… read moreBe careful what you are good at
September 10 2009
Michael Feathers wrote about his shift in focus from people to programming, which got me to thinking. To me, the two pivotal points of Michael’s post were: He feels himself pulling away from a deeper involvement in teams and organizational change Be careful what you’re good at Being the self-centered guy… read moreWho are you comparing yourself to?
September 01 2009
One of most important moments in my 9 year career came in year 2. I had spent the previous two years diving head first into Perl and had quickly become a strong-ish Perl developer. But then I saw some of the leaders in the community talk about books and ideas… read moreAugust 08 2009
My colleague and friend Todd Webb and I were riding the train to the office discussing my motivation for writing my Breeding post. Todd is very good at asking questions and our conversation helped me verbalize my motivations for a couple ideas I’ve been pushing recently. The two ideas are that: Software developers can remain… read moreJuly 16 2009
been around the world and found that only stupid people are breedingFlagpole Sitta, Harvey Danger As Obtiva has grown to about 20 people in the last few years, we made a key decision that was guided by a simple principle. We decided to make Obtiva a Chicago-focused company. At the time,… read moreJune 24 2009
A couple weeks ago, Uncle Bob tweeted: At the time I was finishing Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, a book that digs deep into the stories and counter-cultural explanations of successful people. Having someone so close to my context tweeting about a topic related to the book I was reading helped me… read moreJune 23 2009
Todd and I met with a couple guys last week who are in the process of bootstrapping a web startup, specifically, a web startup using Ruby on Rails. First off, I need to say that I love talking with people who are trying to bootstrap, especially when these people are… read moreApril 30 2009
I’m always a few degrees separated from current events in technology, so the conversations are already dying down about the GoGaRuCo CouchDB presentation while I’m just getting up to speed. So if you’re even further removed than me and don’t know what I’m talking about, please educate yourself about the… read moreApril 20 2009
Jason Gorman riffed on a blog post by David R. Heffelfinger in which David was lamenting the move away from the sort of setups that computers of the 80’s shipped with. Specifically, David misses BASIC and the way that “it was expected for end users to write their own applications.”… read moreApril 17 2009
A few months back I was riding the train home from the Studio. I had recently finished a big writing push on my book and so I finally had some free time on the train again. So I just sat there for a while doing nothing (not as easy as… read moreMy Take on Master Craftsman Teams
April 05 2009
I enjoyed reading Uncle Bob’s post on Master Craftsman Teams. My first reaction was that I was happy that Bob was focusing on the people-side of software craftsmanship to balance out his ongoing message of technical excellence. My second reaction was that of being slightly amused since I knew that… read moreChoosing Measurement and Leverage
March 25 2009
I’ve spent almost my entire software development career in Chicago. I say “almost” because the seeds of my career were planted during the years before and after college when I lived in Seattle. It was in Seattle in 1999 that I taught myself HTML to get a side-gig at About.com.… read moreMarch 18 2009
In April 2009, 8th Light and Obtiva will each send a senior developer to the other company for a week. Neither will be charging their existing clients for the developers’ time. The presence of the developer will mean exposing client lists, proprietary projects, and the endless details of running a… read more
