Latest Publications on Industry and Research
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Example login designed to make users go away
Schufa is a German credit rating agency. By law it is required to provide information to consumers (while it makes all its money, for now, off corporate customers). As a consequence, its password and login screens have been designed, I suggest, to be as unusable as possible. Below please find a screen-shot of the PIN…
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Tabs vs. spaces and cause vs. effect
Stack Overflow of the “full stackoverflow programmer” fame just published a developer survey. Among the items was a question asking developers, what they prefer for indenting their code: Tabs or spaces? The majority of developers prefers tabs over spaces by a reasonable margin. What worries me, though, is the conclusion or the “trend” that the…
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Founders vs. success vs. home-runs
A student of mine pointed me to this article about who founds companies. It is a well-known fact (or at least lore as I have no reference at hand) that the highest success rate as a founder is with those around age 40 (38 according to the article). At that age, a founder has worked…
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![The five stages of open source volunteering [Book Chapter]](https://dirkriehle.com/wp-content/uploads/featured/10399-fuerth-appworks-bathroom-300x150.jpg)
The five stages of open source volunteering [Book Chapter]
Abstract: Today’s software systems build on open source software. Thus, we need to understand how to successfully create, nurture, and mature the software development communities of these open source projects. In this article, we review and discuss best practices of the open source volunteering and recruitment process that successful project leaders are using to lead…
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Communication in firm-internal global software development with China
Abstract Globally distributed software development projects are on the rise. However, 69% of cross-regional projects fail completely or partially, because of lack of cross-cultural understanding. This paper presents a qualitative study of the impact of communication on Global Software Development (GSD) within firms due to cultural differences. In particular, we provide a model of problems…
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Do what you are great at rather than follow your passion?
Interesting commencement speech by Ben Horowitz. When I attended Stanford, I’d regularly listen to the VFTT (View from the Top) speeches of well-known entrepreneurs and executives. I quickly got bored, first, and then upset, second, when these speeches all seemed to be one long slog of follow-your-passion (and everything will work out) talks. “Give me…