A few years ago I got really frustrated trying to maintain a schedule for my current development assignment. I personally think that having a schedule, or work plan, is a very good thing. But it was too painful to maintain one, so I started writing a tool that would help. The result, now in its third major revision, is the esmithy.net Work Plan Editor. Read the rest of this entry »

Having worked for Folio and NextPage, companies that have specialized in full-text indexing using custom search engines, I have an admitted knowledge liability with regard to relational databases. It never really made sense to have a relational database and our own search database coexisting in an application. But it never occurred to me that such a knowledge liability could be considered a benefit in terms of thinking about how applications should be designed. Read the rest of this entry »