Category Archives: Efficacy

Efficacy

The Effective Workplace

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Hayim Makabee

In a recent article at the Harvard Business Review, entitled “The Twelve Attributes of a Truly Great Place to Work”, Tony Schwartz provides a list of characteristics of an effective workplace that makes the employees more “engaged”, and thus more … Continue reading →

Posted in Efficacy | Tagged | 1 Comment

Programming Without an Internet Connection

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Hayim Makabee

Are you able to program without an internet connection? In my case the answer is definitely “No.” In most of my programming tasks I need to get some help from the internet, generally in the form of documentation and examples. … Continue reading →

Posted in Efficacy, Software Reuse | Tagged , | 7 Comments

How Decision Fatigue Affects the Efficacy of Programmers

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Hayim Makabee

In the past, programming was an activity based on assembling low-level instructions using a small numbers of structures: there were loops, conditional statements and function calls. Systems were built through the application of relatively few patterns at different scales. Even … Continue reading →

Posted in Efficacy, Psychology of Programming | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Who is an Expert? – On Rules and Exceptions

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Hayim Makabee

It is relatively easy to find very young people who are brilliant programmers, who seem to know every detail about a particular language, platform or technology. Some of them will be able to implement a nice Android app in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Efficacy, OOD, OOP | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Nothing is more effective than enthusiasm

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Hayim Makabee

We all know that some programmers are much more effective than others. In one study, it was shown that the best programmers are ten times more efficient than the worse programmers. This degree of difference has not been observed in … Continue reading →

Posted in Efficacy, Hiring, Psychology of Programming | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Effective Remote Work

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Hayim Makabee

After reading the book “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss, I was eager to test his concept of Mini-retirements: “To distribute recovery periods and adventures throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal. Doing … Continue reading →

Posted in Efficacy, Yahoo! | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Hayim Makabee

This is a blog about Effective Software Design, so it is important to first make clear what do we mean by “effective”. Peter Drucker defined the difference between being efficient and being effective: • Efficiency is the capacity to do … Continue reading →

Posted in Efficacy | Tagged | 6 Comments