Craig Nicol (he/him) articles - 93 total
Are Gen Z less technical?
Scott Hanselmann had some thoughts on Gen Z and their knowledge of technology – is their knowledge...
Name your problems
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Names matter. Names are a container for all we know...
The conscious machine
This is a fantastic explainer of the threats and risks, and opportunities of AI. Thinking about the...
Why is CSS hard?
CSS is a real language, and you need deep technical knowledge to understand it. But plenty of...
If it hurts, stop doing it: the wrong process
If something is painful, should you do more of it? Not if it’s painful because you have the wrong...
If you truly want people to be creative and innovative, take them off the clock
That doesn’t mean no deadlines, but no timesheets – don’t justify every 15 minutes with a project,...
Mise en place architecture
I love working with smart people. I learn a lot and it gives me energy. I hate working with smart...
You need a manifesto
My software engineers’ manifesto: We write software to solve problems, not to create them. We write...
If it hurts, stop doing it : the wrong tool
There’s a theory under agile, lean and similar methodologies that if something is painful, you should...
Stop working when you’re ill
Want to stop people from working when they’re ill? Pay them. Warn them if you find they are...
The uncrackable back door : The intersection of mathematics, AI, politics and ethics
The following is a lightly edited conversation I had with a tech-savvy friend who is not in IT. It...
Thinking outside the box: the difference between constraints and perceptions
You need an app. The constraint is that it has to be accessible. The perception is that it has to be...
Processes upon processes: the JIRA trap
It is fashionable to hate on JIRA for software developers. Project Management made spaghetti. It has...
Journaling for technologists
I encountered a question online recently about building context quickly, and whilst I thought of the...
2022 reflections
2022 seems to have been a strange year for a lot of people. There’s a lot of bloggers I follow whose...
Dear technical lead
I don’t know how you got your promotion, but I hope you’re a little scared. If you’re not, there’s a...
I'm Craig and I pledge to help #BreakTheBias in 2022!
We need to challenge bias wherever we go, and in championing women, I am not interested in anything...
In the beginning… was the conversation
The history of computing has been an evolution of conversation between us and machines....
Don’t be a speed shaver
CW: description of blood. There’s a deadline looming, and your estimates show the project coming in...
No one thinks like you
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re the smartest person in the room. You might be the most...
Managing across distances
As the government is starting to ease lockdown and put together timescales for allowing a return to...
How to make mistakes
Nobody is perfect. If you tell me you’ve never made a mistake in your career, not only will I not...
Ideas for a second coding project
You’ve done the tutorial, what to build next? Maybe one of the following: To-do app Shopping cart...
“He never did that to me”
Men, If you’ve never listened to women on the internet, take the opportunity. Sleazeballs and...
How to debug
Congratulations on your first day on your first software job. Like many of your peers, you’re...
No politics at work
No politics at work. We’ve got these tabulating machines to send to Hitler. Talking politics...
return Task vs return await Task
The asychronous pattern in C# is great for simplifying the boilerplate of dealing with threads. It...
Be passionate about something that isn’t your job
There’s a recurring trope from the tech Ponzi schemers that you need to hustle in your youth. Work...
Non-technical communication
If, like me, you love talking about tech, you may find it hard to speak to clients and managers who...
Productivity sieve
There’s a lot of information out there. And more generated every day than you could process in your...