Bob Montgomery was a coworker, friend, and cherished family member to so many of us. But for me, he was also a mentor. He and Janie were responsible for the success of my internship at AMD in the Summer and Fall of 1998 and, as a result, much of my career in software that followed. I don't [...]
Author: Brad Ledford
Go Forth and Deploy
For many of us in software of a certain age, making changes to and releasing software has traditionally been a perilous activity. Customers had to be hand-held, release sequences carefully orchestrated, and contingencies planned in case of failure. And so, the best releases were done by the best release engineers (remember that title?)--typically release engineers [...]
Working Alone
When was the last time you worked by yourself for any serious length of time? As one of the perks at my current employer, engineering and product teams are encouraged to work from home on Tuesdays. For me it's the best way to re-energize after the "collaboration fatigue" of a typical week. Yet, alone, there [...]
Breaking Down Git Activity of the Swift Programming Language
A Review of Activity on the Swift Github Repo The following is a review of the Swift Programming Language recently open sourced by Apple using the gitstats utility and the freely available Github Activity charts. The Vitals Generated: 2015–12–14 21:34:08 (in 225 seconds)Report Period: 2010–07–17 16:50:59 to 2015–12–14 21:12:49Age: 1,978 days, 1,438 active days (72.70%)Total [...]
Evolution of the Zappos Product Page
We’ve come a long way in how we present products to our customers since the early days of the Internet. Let’s dust off WayBackMachine.org and see what’s changed… Then Zappos Product Page — Circa 2003We’ll focus on Zappos.com circa March 2003 (or thereabouts). One of the things that stands out to me is how, arguably, e-commerce product page [...]
The Power of Periscope and a Startup Lesson by Dan Martell
This morning, I did not plan to attend a presentation by @DanMartell, but he just taught me (and 40 or so other Periscope followers) a micro-lesson in scaling a startup. This is the power of Periscope… …the ability to engage an audience, immediately, when a thought or feeling strikes you as it did today for [...]
The Willy Wonka Factor
Running Your Product Strategy like a Madman in a Chocolate Factory As I type, my kids are watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—not the proper original film starring Gene Wilder, mind you, but the rather goofy one with Jack Sparrow. While suppressing my misgivings for Tim Burton’s adaptation of one of my childhood favorites, [...]
