<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>RoyalSloth Blog</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/</link><language>en-us</language><lastBuildDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="/posts/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>The complexity that lives in the GUI</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/the-complexity-that-lives-in-the-gui/</link><pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/the-complexity-that-lives-in-the-gui/</guid><description>The user interfaces are a weird thing. There are all sorts of libraries and frameworks that are supposed to help you on your journey of writing a GUI, but despite all the best practices and frameworks forcing you to eat your vegetables, the GUI always ends up being a ridiculous mess. After pondering some more about this topic, I&amp;rsquo;ve finally realized what is the cause of this problem.
Suppose you start working on a greenfield project for managing a warehouse (gasp).</description></item><item><title>On navigating a large codebase</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/on-navigating-a-large-codebase/</link><pubDate>Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/on-navigating-a-large-codebase/</guid><description>A while ago, I&amp;rsquo;ve been working on a very large codebase that consisted of a few million lines of code. Large systems are usually a big mess and this one was no exception. Since this is a rather common problem in software engineering, I thought the internet would be littered with stories about this topic. There is a lot of talk about software carpentry, while software maintenance is rarely debated.</description></item><item><title>OKRs for the masses are bullshit</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/okrs-for-the-masses-are-bullshit/</link><pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/okrs-for-the-masses-are-bullshit/</guid><description>As the small company is growing towards the mid sized company, at some point the pointy haired bosses will realize that their company has become a wild west and will try to impose some order. They will look around to see what other companies are doing and eventually they will come up with salary policies and all sorts of rules that people low in the pecking order should fulfill in order to be worthy of a promotion.</description></item><item><title>The power of text files</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/the-power-of-text-files/</link><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/the-power-of-text-files/</guid><description>I didn&amp;rsquo;t really notice how much of my daily workflow is wrapped around text based files, until I had to work with some people who insisted on sending Word documents around. I couldn&amp;rsquo;t help but wonder what makes them so determined in their ways, and they couldn&amp;rsquo;t help but wonder why I am still bothering with the plain text files? Didn&amp;rsquo;t we like move on years ago, once the word processors took over?</description></item><item><title>Keep your sink clean</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/keep-your-sink-clean/</link><pubDate>Sat, 01 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/keep-your-sink-clean/</guid><description>Working in a corporate environment is loads of fun and oftentimes it feels more like an adult kindergarten than a serious work environment. The clowns will always make sure to keep the rest of the employees entertained. First thing that happens in the morning is the arrival of some overly dramatic email that is complaining about yesterday&amp;rsquo;s destruction and it usually goes something like this:
We found out blah blah blah yawn, that the dirty dishes in the sink are the real problem, because we might bring the customers here and what will they think about the sink full of dirty plates blah blah blah and therefore we pronounce the hotshots from office A as great as they keep the work environment clean, but the office B is full of pigs because they keep making this mess.</description></item><item><title>The true cost of knowledge</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/the-true-cost-of-knowledge/</link><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/the-true-cost-of-knowledge/</guid><description>A while ago I was pulled into a discussion about the speed and magic optimizations of a particular container within the standard library of a coworker&amp;rsquo;s programming language of choice. They were claiming how there is a special container that somehow magically performs better than a normal array when it&amp;rsquo;s used for adding a number to every element within that container.
For some reason in a corporate world you will always find such pieces of wisdom floating around.</description></item><item><title>DSL is not the answer</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/dsl-is-not-the-answer/</link><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/dsl-is-not-the-answer/</guid><description>Large software projects are often renowned for being late and vastly over budget while not doing half of the things that were imagined in their conception. The stakeholders will claim the unwashed programmer masses failed to deliver an usable software, while the grunts will complain about the suits having no clue about the domain related problems that the software was supposed to solve.
In order to overcome this problem some too smart for their own good people have come up with a new way of defining the software requirements.</description></item><item><title>It&#39;s just a button</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/its-just-a-button/</link><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/its-just-a-button/</guid><description>In the beginning there was a date field.
Changing the date would display the tasks that were recorded on that specific day. The code worked and life was good.
The project manager comes in one day and says: &amp;ldquo;Sloth, our customers would like to display recorded tasks for a certain time frame and not for one day only. Our competition is breathing down our neck, we need this feature badly.</description></item><item><title>White walled garden</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/white-walled-garden/</link><pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/white-walled-garden/</guid><description>While I was developing the SlothTracker - a time tracking software for Windows, Mac and Linux, at some point during the development I had to test it on all platforms. To make testing easier, I&amp;rsquo;ve decided to install all of them on the same computer via a virtual machine. Things went smoothly until I came to MacOs.
According to the Apple&amp;rsquo;s policy you are not allowed to install a MacOs on a non Apple&amp;rsquo;s hardware.</description></item><item><title>Sad state of cross platform GUI frameworks</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/sad-state-of-cross-platform-gui-frameworks/</link><pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/sad-state-of-cross-platform-gui-frameworks/</guid><description>Before you read: Due to rather random set of events, this article started an internet food fight as it reached the first spot on common programming link aggregators.
Some agreed, some complained, some ranted how it doesn&amp;rsquo;t go into details and I have no idea what I am writing about. Well, you are not wrong on the last part and it wasn&amp;rsquo;t really meant to be a deep dive into everything under the sun.</description></item><item><title>Why was SlothTracker developed</title><link>https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/why-was-sloth-tracker-developed/</link><pubDate>Wed, 18 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>/posts/why-was-sloth-tracker-developed/</guid><description>If you are working for a company that deals with multiple projects with multiple clients at the same time, they probably require you to track your time in some way. For tracking time they are usually using some kind of old school tool that seems to be part of the company since the very early day. It usually comes with all the baggage: it is slow, with a search that does not work and very user unfriendly.</description></item></channel></rss>