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Getting started with Git

Posted on October 17, 2011 by James Posted in Personal | Leave a comment

Git: Decentralising version control I’ve been a user of Subversion for a number of years, I was a little apprehensive about moving to a completely different versioning system but now I’m seriously glad I made the move. To recap, Subversion is a centralised version control system. What this means is that you have a centralised code repository, developers use clients to checkout code which they can work on until they’re ready to commit their work back to the main repository. … →

Angry Monkeys

Posted on August 5, 2011 by James Posted in Java, Programming | Leave a comment

From my experience having programming standards and standard environments can be extremely beneficial to a development team. Not only can it improve the chances that you can find problems quickly but it also ensures problems are reproduceable. Having coding standards also means that code is easy to read and clean. However, as is the same with anything, sometimes too many rules and too much bureaucracy can lead to a stifling of creativity. In chess for example, juniors are taught a … →

Review: Pragmatic Thinking & Learning

Posted on May 7, 2011 by James Posted in Books, Personal | 2 Comments

At Autotrader we have a book library for all developers to borrow from. First book I decided to read was Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt which is from the Pragmatic Programmers series. I have to say I was very impressed. Many believe and have believed that we have a natural limit to our intelligence and can be no more than that. The author tries to expel this belief. We all have a brain and it’s a well known … →

Beating the Orangutan

Posted on January 30, 2011 by James Posted in Chess, Openings | 2 Comments

No we’re not talking about the hairy variety! So you Animal activists are looking at the wrong blog unfortunately… For those of you chess enthusiasts who’ve been caught unawares out of the opening only to be taught a lesson in just how “not” to play it – then read on. I’m going to hope to show you one of my own horrors where I make precisely all the mistakes that you should hope to avoid. Sometimes a move made on … →

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Top 10 Chessplayers of all time

Posted on April 4, 2010 by James Posted in Chess, Masters | 3 Comments

For my first chess post since the blog relaunch I decided it’d be interesting to spark a debate on who you believe are the greatest chessplayers of all time and why. I’ve controversially included some faces from new and old. I’ve aimed to pick some of the greatest players from a number of different generations to give a bit of variety. Unfortunately not everyone could make the cut. I felt compelled to include Vasily Smyslov following his death late last … →

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