Category: Application Failure

We’ve made it a point on our blog to highlight the fact that software glitches in important IT systems -- like NatWest and Google Drive -- can no longer be “the cost of doing business” in this day and age. Interestingly, we’re starting to see another concerning trend: more and more crashes blamed on faulty hardware or network problems, while the software itself is ignored. It’s funny that the difference in incidents can be more than 10 times between applications with similar functional characteristics. Is it possible that the robustness of the software inside the applications has something to do with apparent hardware failures? I think I see a frustrated data center operator reading this and nodding violently.

My six-year-old can tie her own shoes. I honestly did not realize how big of a deal that was until her teacher told me a few months ago that she had, for a short time, become the designated shoe tier in her classroom. Apparently, thanks to the advent of Velcro closures for kids’ shoes, nobody else in her kindergarten class knew how to tie their shoes.

I’m not one who believes in fortune tellers or those who claim to be able to predict the future. Heck, I don’t even read my horoscope and cringe whenever someone attempts to force it upon me. Only when my wife has attempted to read me my horoscope have I offered even as much as a polite “hmm.” Nevertheless there are many out there who swear by those who claim to be able to predict the future, especially in the financial industry.

Are you load testing? Great. Are you counting on load testing to protect your organization from a catastrophic system failure? Well, that’s not so great.

Over the past 10 years or so, it has been interesting to watch the metaphor of Technical Debt grow and evolve.  Like most topics or issues in software development, there aren’t many concepts or practices that are fully embraced by the industry without some debate or controversy.  Regardless of your personal thoughts on the topic, you must admit that the concept of Technical Debt seems to resonate strongly outside of development teams and has fueled the imagination of others to expound on the concept and include additional areas such as design debt or other metaphors.  There are now a spate of resources dedicated to the topic including the industry aggregation site:

Almost everyone has heard about the Titanic and the sinking of the unsinkable.  I guess if you assume your ship is unsinkable, having only 20 lifeboats for a few thousands people seems reasonable.  Maybe it gets overlooked when there are so many important “features” to get right on the maiden voyage.   I’m sure the pressure to ensure the comfort of hundreds of VIP’s must have been immense.  Sometimes it takes a real disaster for change to take place.

My tastes in entertainment are pretty broad. While I really enjoy attending sporting events and when Bruce Springsteen is in town I lay aside nearly everything else to attend his concert (as I did in Boston on March 26), I’m also one who enjoys catching a Broadway or Off Broadway Show now and then. In fact, I over the next six weeks I will attend two Red Sox games and two shows at the New World Stages theatre in Midtown.

I’ve never been much of a horror movie fan. I think my deep-seated love and background of history and my fascination for things that are real diminishes my ability to kick back and allow my wits to be uprooted by monsters and other ghoulish figures like Jason from Friday the 13^th or Freddie Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street.