84% of all integration projects failed. This is what I did to integrate unknown systems and avoided common problems.

IT projects often cost more, take a longer time, and have fewer benefits than planned. According to some studies (Forbes 2016; BCG 2020), as many as 70-84% of all digital transformation efforts ended in partial or total failure. Research has shown that large projects having a large amount of information that requires integration have a failure r... Read more 30 Aug 2022 by Alan Tai

9 tips for estimating software project proposals

QuickDraw is the 2D graphics library written entirely by Bill Atkinson in the 1980s. Andy Hertzfeld considers it the single most significant component of the original Macintosh technology. It consists of a total of 17,101 lines of code in assembly language. During a magazine interview, Bill remembered that he worked on it on and off for four yea... Read more 05 Aug 2022 by Alan Tai

What it takes to become a Software Architect

I had many conversations with software engineers in various domains and disciplines during the past 20 years of my career as a software engineer and software architect. Some of them were senior engineers having 8 or 10 years of experience. Many of them were early in their career having 3 to 5 years of experience. Some of them were my colleagues.... Read more 19 Jul 2022 by Alan Tai

What makes quantum computing that different

The Why, the How, and the What

As Richard Feynman said, no one really understands quantum mechanics. I have done a lot of research work for writing this article, and I hope it could give you a head start to explore the amazing quantum world. But if you find it hard to understand, well, that is normal. I also found quantum theory weird and hard to believe. What makes quantum ... Read more 08 Jan 2020 by Alan Tai

16 deadly code smells - Part 2

Code smells that are considered fatal during coding interviews

Every programming language has one or more coding style guidelines. All developers know that but some of them don’t care. They practice bad programming habits for years without realizing the importance of the issues they caused. As one of the hiring managers at Zuhlke Hong Kong, I’ve seen a lot of code smells during coding interviews. Here are ... Read more 04 Aug 2019 by Alan Tai