John Robbins talks with Dave Rael about debugging, taking bold action, being a business man, and the rewards of helping people
John Robbins is a cofounder of Wintellect, where he heads up the consulting and debugging services side of the business. He also travels the world teaching his Mastering .NET Debugging and Mastering Windows Debugging courses so that developers everywhere can learn the techniques he uses to solve the nastiest software problems known to man. As one of the world's recognized authorities on debugging, John takes an evil delight in finding and fixing impossible bugs in other people's programs.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and John Robbins
- - The distinction of being a debugging specialist
- - Introduction to Wintellect
- - Training from Wintellect
- - John and the "6 its": learn it, design it, code it, test it, tune it, document it
- - The value of training courses
- - John's definition of value
- - The things that "light John up"
- - How John got started with software
- - John meets Windows
- - John goes to work at Nu-Mega
- - The beginning of Wintellect
- - John's stories of failure - requirements misunderstandings, reimplementing things already in place without a reason
- - John's story of success - business success, solving problems to save troubled businesses, the rewards of helping people
- - How John stays current with what he needs to know
- - Big companies and open source and "Microsoft getting a clue"
- - John's book recommendation
- - The things that have John most excited
- - Military history and dealing with government as a business
- - John's predictions for the future of software
- - John's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with John
Resources:
- Wintellect - John's Business
- Wintellect Now - Video Training
- John's Content on Wintellect DevCenter Blogs
- Wintellect DevCenter Blogs
- WinDbg
- Clubber Lang in Rocky 3 - Pain
- Writing Solid Code - Steve Maguire
- Dilbert on the Quality of Inherited Code
- Why Software Is Eating the World - Marc Andreesen
- Nu-Mega Technologies
- SoftICE
- Scott Guthrie
- Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction - Steve McConnell
- Microsoft's Resistance to Government Access
- Andrew Bragdon - Code Bubbles
John's book recommendation:
John's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Think about the person coming after you
- Do think about performance and anticipate needs for the future
- Don't be afraid to write a blog, do a presentation, or something to share what you have to offer with the community