Fernando Zamora

The task of delivering software is a challenging job. It is full of hurdles, unknowns and can cause the smartest people to run for their lives.  I am part of a team that will be delivering a major release for sizable product and don't know that I will be able to deliver on time.  I'm scared that this will be the software that is not delivered on time, or even worst, gets delivered but fails to work as intended.  This particular delivery is full of unknowns.  We have some challenges to solve on some things that we have never done before.  We are at a point where we don't know what we don't know and the time started ticking a few months ago.  Will this be the delivery that I am discovered to not be a smart as my bosses think I am? Delivering software is like that, always running behind or so it seems. You are always solving new problems. The lessons of the last project provide some value but only get you partially there on your new delivery.  The ta...

You made it. You went to school or got the training by other means. You interviewed, and maybe got turned down a few times. If you were lucky, you got some rejection letters along the way. But now you finally made it, you finally got the job. That's great and all, but you really need to boost your career and the faster the better. As you know by now, there is a big difference in pay from junior developer to senior developer.  Entry level positions can start from as low as $35k/year compared to senior developers making $100k+/year .  If you want to get there from here, there are some things you will have to do in order to get there.  Time is your friend in this process, but time alone will not guarantee that you get there.  You must take the time to invest  in acquiring the knowledge and skills that will get you there. Here are a few things you can do help you get to the senior position first. Learning Starts Here Software development is a profession...

Mexicans have a long standing tradition of playing a game that involves pi ñatas during celebrations.  Many of you are familiar with  pi ñatas. For those of you that are not, let me explain. A  pi ñata is an object traditionally made of cardboard or and made to resemble some cartoon character or a real life object.  They range in size from a regular soccer ball all the way to the size of young child. They are decorated with paper mache on the outside and have an empty pocket on the inside that can be filled with candy.  The  pi ñata is then hung by a rope and usually controlled by a human while blind folded kids take turns, one at a time, taking swings at it with a stick. It is fun for the kids and funny for those watching because most swings hit nothing but air. Eventually a kid will hit it and bust it open. Then all the kids swarm to get the candy that has poured out of the piñata . At this point you may wonder what on earth this has...

I went to college to become a programmer and graduated in 2001 with a BS in Computer Science.   I knew then that there was a bright future in information technology (IT).  I've been in this career for 15 years now and it has opened many doors for me and provided me with a good source of income.  I am thankful that I am a veteran and I had the GI Bill available for me which means that I didn't pay any money out of pocket for my degree.  I went to a local university and I'd be lying if I said the amount that it actually cost to get my degree. The truth is that I don't even remember but if I had to guess it was likely around $5000/year. If you have been keeping up with college costs you know that college is quite expensive.  According to the college board, one year of tuition runs around $9,000 per year for 2014-2015 (in-state public University).  When you add that and the fact that college tuition goes up every year you are looking at around $40,000 doll...

I am what most would consider a non-traditional programmer.  What I mean by that, is that I wasn't a computer wiz, math wiz or anything like that when I was in high school. In fact I graduated at the bottom of my class. I was something like 273 out of around 300 students in my graduating class.  The few things that I was really good at school were things like shop, drafting and specially art.  I got quite a bit of recognition for those things but not for any academics.  I wasn't really into things like English and Economics. In fact I failed a class called current events. Many say that was the easiest class. All you had to do was watch the news during class everyday and then take a test every so often. The truth is that most of the academic classes bored me. When graduation time came around and many friends were applying for college, I decided to enlist in the Army instead, with the hopes that it would make it easier for me to attend college one day.  I n...

There are two little words that most of 80's/90's children are too familiar with; "Finish Him!".  Boys (or men now) are more familiar with these words because they were part of the popular game fighting game Mortal Kombat. In the game you could play against the computer or against another person using characters from the game.  All characters shared common moves such as punching, kicking and jumping but each character had special power moves that gave them advantages over their opponents. The game consisted of fighting for three rounds.  The player that beat their opponent for two of the three rounds won.  On the final round, once the losing opponent was defeated, the game provided an opportunity for a finishing move.  At this point the player would lose with or without a finishing move or even without a hit at all.  This was just an opportunity for the player to show off his skills with his special finishing move. Any hit would finish the opponent but...

At some point in your career you are going to need to do something that is not part of the language's framework. Most language frameworks can do many things right out of the box such as writing and reading files, network communications, etc. However there are many things that fall outside the scope of the framework. For example you may need to produce Microsoft Office documents or PDFs or communicate with an external source for information such as getting Stock Exchange information from Yahoo. The possibilities of what you will need are endless. The point is that you will need to do so eventually. In most cases an API will exist and all you have to do is use that API to implement that functionality. What's an API? Let's backup for a moment What is an API? API stands for Application Programming Interface. The name says it all. It really just means that it is a set of components that allows you to access something programmatically. Let's say for example that you w...