Martin Heller
Contributing Writer

Yet another Programmer’s Blog

analysis
May 21, 20071 min

Jason Jones, formerly of Why Smalltalk, and now of SlickEdit, wrote the other day to tell me about a new programmer's blog, "Hello, World." My first reaction was ennui, on the assumption that it would be company fluff, but then I took the trouble to read the nine entries that have already been posted. Sure enough, the oldest entries were basically sales pitches for SlickEdit, but then they warmed up a bit.

Jason Jones, formerly of Why Smalltalk, and now of SlickEdit, wrote the other day to tell me about a new programmer’s blog, “Hello, World.” My first reaction was ennui, on the assumption that it would be company fluff, but then I took the trouble to read the nine entries that have already been posted.

Sure enough, the oldest entries were basically sales pitches for SlickEdit, but then they warmed up a bit. Starting at about the end of April, the developer bloggers at SlickEdit posted some interesting essays: What is a Power Programmer?, How to Write an Effective Design Document, and do { … } while (false);, among others.

But wait, there’s more!

Construx Conversations
Two days later, Earl Beede wrote to let me know that he, Steve McConnell , and Matt Peloquin are now blogging and leading discussions at Construx Conversations . Basically, Construx is Steve McConnell’s company; Steve is the author of some of the most influential books about software development; Steve founded the company “to provide industry-leading support for software development best practices;” and the Construx Conversations site is “dedicated to discussing and advancing software development best practices.” It’s just getting off the ground, but it looks interesting.
Martin Heller

Martin Heller is a contributing writer at InfoWorld. Formerly a web and Windows programming consultant, he developed databases, software, and websites from his office in Andover, Massachusetts, from 1986 to 2010. From 2010 to August of 2012, Martin was vice president of technology and education at Alpha Software. From March 2013 to January 2014, he was chairman of Tubifi, maker of a cloud-based video editor, having previously served as CEO.

Martin is the author or co-author of nearly a dozen PC software packages and half a dozen Web applications. He is also the author of several books on Windows programming. As a consultant, Martin has worked with companies of all sizes to design, develop, improve, and/or debug Windows, web, and database applications, and has performed strategic business consulting for high-tech corporations ranging from tiny to Fortune 100 and from local to multinational.

Martin’s specialties include programming languages C++, Python, C#, JavaScript, and SQL, and databases PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, Google Cloud Spanner, CockroachDB, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Couchbase. He writes about software development, data management, analytics, AI, and machine learning, contributing technology analyses, explainers, how-to articles, and hands-on reviews of software development tools, data platforms, AI models, machine learning libraries, and much more.

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