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Egoless Programming

Every team will be comprised of different people, with different backgrounds, experiences and ideas. The key to working in a team is understanding that a person and their code are completely separate. A little while ago we stumbled across an article on www.builderau.com.au that we quickly passed to our entire team. Obviously if everyone works together a team will be stronger and succeed but the challenge is how you can accomplish this.

A summary of the ten commandments of egoless programming:

1. Understand and accept that you will make mistakes.
2. You are not your code.
3. No matter how much “karate” you know, someone else will always know more.
4. Don’t rewrite code without consultation.
5. Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience.
6. The only constant in the world is change.
7. The only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position.
8. Fight for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat.
9. Don’t be “the guy in the room.”
10. Critique code instead of people

For an explanation of each commandment please see the original article at: builder.com


3 Core Principles of Good Design

Recently we were invited by Techalliance to facilitate a public workshop on (re)designing corporate websites. Our approach was to provide business owners with practical advice on managing the process. A common theme throughout the presentation was the idea that clients can prepare themselves with a set of criteria for evaluating vendors, and the designs they provide, to ensure that they are selecting the best solution for their website.

For many clients one of the toughest parts of the web design process is evaluating and choosing the visual design, and discussing their response with their vendor in a clear and concise manner.

Luckily, the essence of good visual design can be understood using only three core concepts:
unity, consistency and hierarchy.

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