Once upon a time I wrote a computer program that did not require data.  It was called helloworld.exe and it was awesome.  It was also a wee bit useless.  The essence of useful software is taking input, doing something with it, and spitting something out. There is lots of data out there.  My first professional gig [...]

Remember the game Telephone?  You whisper something in your neighbour’s ear, he whispers to his neighbour, she whispers to her neighbour, and so on all the way down the line.  The last person announces the message she heard and everyone laughs when they discover how mangled the final message is from the original. An eerily [...]

Let’s suspend reality for a moment and pretend you’re heading out into the woods this weekend. Set aside the fact that you are a software developer and have no business tromping around out in the wilderness.  You’re going to want to take along a few basics:  maybe some matches, a tent or shelter of [...]

As part of my planning for 2010, I decided to write new vision statements for some of my web sites and put myself back on a content creation schedule. This site (ardentdev.com) will now be updated every Wednesday, so stay tuned via the RSS feed or subscribe by email. New Design I decided to simplify the design, opting [...]