Editor’s Note: I had initially scheduled this post for last Thursday. Due to some things that were going on related to depression (not for me, but for a friend), I elected to put off the posting.

Depression is something I’ve noticed that is remarkably common among software developers and other IT folk that I’ve worked with. I’ve had some pretty unpleasant experience with it myself. It’s a strange thing when it comes up. There often seems to be little reason, or what reason is there is vastly overblown. I also don’t have a cure for it, and neither does anybody else. Anybody who tells you otherwise is trying to sell something, and you’ll be solicited for whatever it is in short order.

Wise generals of the past have an old saying. No battle plan survives first contact. It’s true. Whatever you have planned is subject to the whims of fate. I had plans going out on my own as a freelancer. Some have come to pass. Others have been…adjusted by experience. I think everybody that makes it through their first six months or so has a list (and everybody further out probably has updated their list as time goes on). This is my list so far of the things I’ve noticed that nobody really told me (or they suggested, but I didn’t listen very well). Here are my top 16 things that I just didn’t really understand fully until I started freelancing.

I frequently evaluate potential user interface layouts to determine which of a set is the most appropriate for the intended application. Usually I break this process down into three parts, all of which have to pass for the design to be considered acceptable. Frequently parts from multiple prototypes may be combined that are the best of the set in particular categories. These parts are as follows:

Since I’m going to soon start adding some book reviews as part of my regular blogging rotation, I’m going to share an insight that I didn’t really realize was insightful. That is, for a very long time, I read a lot of books incorrectly, in way that not only insured I would get little value out of them, but that also insured that I couldn’t act upon any value I got with much success.

I think about code a lot. I expect that a lot of other developers do as well. But one thing that I think most of us miss while we are building huge systems to automate tasks for other people is how easy it is to code up simple things that improve our own lives and make things easier for us. Sometimes, all you need is a stupid little script and I’ve decided to have a feature on this blog for highlighting these sorts of things in the hope that it will generate some interest, both in programming for people just getting started, and in automating some of the drudgery out of life for those who are a little more seasoned (this is a polite way of saying “jaded”, “cynical”, or “old” in some quarters). Note that this code is for a very narrow task, probably won’t be repeatedly used, and thus does not meet particularly good standards for cleanliness, code commenting, etc. I believe that this sort of coding would be tremendously beneficial to the general community of computer users and I find it incredibly sad that such minimal skill levels aren’t taught. I imagine people actually spending the time to click through and manually download over a hundred (currently 192) episodes of a podcast in order to get the whole set (RSS will get you some, but it cuts off) and my mind reels at how much time and effort they will waste doing that (or worse, they miss out on an awesome podcast that can teach them a lot).

Judging by the actions of a few companies I’ve encountered over the ten and a half years of my full-time, professional programming career, many companies would like to quickly lose their most talented people, preferably to their competitors and preferably for easily and cheaply avoidable reasons. Towards this end, I’d like to offer a list of suggestions of ways to make absolutely certain that your development staff is interested in greener pastures, no matter how much barbed wire they have to climb to get to them. Here are my suggestions for how to achieve near perfect turnover (except for sadists) within a three to four year period.

Today I finally went to the effort of setting up an account on IFTTT. For those not in the know, IFTTT stands for “If This Then That” (yeah, that acronym isn’t quite right, but the service works great). Essentially what you can do with this tool is set up various sorts of automation for tasks on the internet, using what IFTTT refers to as a “recipe”. A recipe has a couple of pieces:

Today I’m starting my journey into blogging. I expect things will be slow for a bit as I am currently working on the following items for the business: