Most developers have heard the saying: Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two. It has survived for decades because it’s true. Every software project has constraints. Budgets. Deadlines. Resources. Technology. Business priorities. No project has unlimited time or unlimited money, and no development team has unlimited capacity. Every project is a balancing act between what is […]

One of the most important skills a software developer can develop isn’t writing code. It’s analysis. Before writing a single line of code, we should be asking questions. Software is constantly evolving. Today’s “final requirement” often becomes tomorrow’s change request. Planning Without Over-Engineering Years ago, I was working on a project when a product manager […]

In my previous article, Highland Principle #6: Code Is Read Far More Often Than It’s Written, I discussed an important truth of software development: you’re not writing code for the compiler, you’re writing it for the next developer. That “next developer” might be a teammate. It might be someone who joins the company years from […]