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Do not, ever, try to assume your software is smarter than the user when it comes to personal choice and preferences. When you give users the option of customising settings, jolly well respect and honour that decision. Do not go off pretending the software noted the preference, and then come tip-toeing back like a sneaky giggly child and setting ...

When told to create a new user account, heads straight to Windows Explorer and looks at arbitrary folders and files. ''So where is it?'' End of story. ............................................________ ....................................,.-‘”...................``~., .............................,.-”...................................“-., ...

To me, how a colleague - one who professes to be a software developer - utilises Windows Explorer is probably the easiest early sign. Anybody who operates WE with its default view mode immediately goes into my suspect list. Forgive me if I appear to be having an obsessive compulsive disorder for revealing every single detail there is to ...

Inspects the keyboard thoroughly, and uses [just] two [index] fingers to type carefully and slowly. Enough said.

Q: Why are thieves and robbers better than end users?       A: Because they know what they want.

A revisit today, by an interviewee who tries too hard to read too much into the question. Answer:If you are talking about front end -> IE then end taskbackend then restart IISservices can be end with services window and end it

Nothing beats an acronym within an acronym - Web Services DHTML Language - Web Services Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language Language. mmmm.....

We all know the drill. Politicians, executives, management and such have a tendency to employ a rather slippery technique to answer difficult questions posed to them. In any unconscious or conscious effort to sound cool, evade, confuse, distract the recipients of their messages, statements heavy on vague meaning, ambiguous references, ...

I really believe technology is a great thing, bringing huge benefit to the world. But the pace of improvement and change is so rapid that, at least at the consumer market, manufacturers hardly consider designing their products for reliability and durability. Just take a look at this forum. What now? Like a sudden lightning strike that ...

It always tickles me whenever I use a paper shredder and see the iconic symbols to precaution having the following items anywhere close to the exposed shredding blades: long hair, or beards. fingers that are thin enough to fit through the slot. ties (especially branded ones). really long necklaces that I am sure most corporate offices ...

And so continues the saga of hopeful interviewees trying to impress me with their knowledge. Today's question goes Which template must you provide, in order to display data in a Repeater control? Answer: DataList So a primitive class can achieve some base functionality by containing its richer cousin. Or perhaps he was way too advanced in ...

Granted, I have not been a developer of decent web services myself, given my involvement in projects throughout my career path. But at least I had long established just what WSDL stands for. In fact you will even see the World Wide Web Consortium confused over this acronym, so Web Services Definition Language or Web Services Description Language ...

In the regular activity of marking the answers interviewees give to technical questions we challenge them with, I continue to be taught blindingly new revelations of truth that escaped my eyes for all these years: Question: Where on the Internet would you look for Web Services? Answer: ''\bin'' directory

I guess sometimes even a fresh OS reinstallation cannot undo the work of an anti-miracle. Or, cranky old hardware simply refuse to work properly no matter what. This laptop still exhibits bouts of CPU hijacking by svchost.exe once in awhile, although no where as bad as what it used to be with the old OS. I thought that is still within tolerable ...

I recently had the pleasure of marking some answer sheets of software development questions my company hands out to interview candidates. I am not too sure if I am allowed to LOL in such a disruptive manner anymore.... Question: How do you stop a long-running process from blocking the UI? Answer: CTRL-ALT-DEL

Heck a whole lot more, so it seems. I think I am going insane pretty soon, for I am required to press the power button to switch on the PC so my mother can use it. Yes! Casing designers and manufacturers have gotta make it unmistakably obvious with blindling floodlights and blasting sirens to indicate an operating PC, for my mother is ...

Not having done any algorithmic programming (yeap, since school days) for over 12 years can really deal a heavy dose of corrosion to one's system. I just had an interview where I was asked to write a (classic) Binary Search function. Now that is something all my experience with IIS or ASP.NET or n-layer architecture or even the understanding ...

I have a theory. Two actually. That the food distributed around the inhabitants of my island are really low-grade fuel. Or, the Singaporean gene has some serious deficiency when it comes to efficient energy absorption ratio from the digestive system. How else can I explain then, that the daily people you encounter in your walk through life, ...

We held our birthday barbeque party for SgDotNet last night without much fanfare other than the entire group incredibly voicing out a birthday song in public targetted at no one. This has to be a first for me. Anyway, in the course of cooking and eating and roaming round the circular pit, a bunch of us got into a conversation about Xbox gaming ...

Don't you simply love them? Showing off gets you no where.