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Mike Barksdale

Avid technologist. Affinity for embracing ambiguity. Can take a joke better than telling one.

Managing the Complexity Spiral

Organizational Dynamics

Managing the Complexity Spiral

Simple decisions can increase the complexity of an application exponentially.

The Power of Commitment

General Commentary

The Power of Commitment

At the turn of a new year, many people like to take time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. That arbitrary delineation of time gets people thinking about starting fresh; starting off the new year in a way as to make it better than the last.

Legacy Systems Are People, Too

Organizational Dynamics

Legacy Systems Are People, Too

The original Doom came out in the early 90s and it had a multiplayer component. My friend and I both had the game and we both had modems (he had a blazing fast 56k modem, I only had a 14.4k modem). I bet we can play together. That was

So I Took a Sabbatical: What I Learned/Should You Do It?

General Commentary

So I Took a Sabbatical: What I Learned/Should You Do It?

This is part 4 in a series of my sabbatical experience. This post is meant to serve as the TL;DR for my sabbatical experience (links to the other posts are listed below) so that you can decide if taking a sabbatical is something you may want to do in

So I Took a Sabbatical: What Did I Do with the Time Off?

General Commentary

So I Took a Sabbatical: What Did I Do with the Time Off?

This is part 3 in a series of my sabbatical experience. The very first thing I did? Literally? Participate in my first mud run. To be fair, that was a challenge I had accepted long before I even thought about taking a sabbatical, so it was a mere coincidence that

So I Took a Sabbatical: Reflecting on the Past

General Commentary

So I Took a Sabbatical: Reflecting on the Past

This is part 2 in a series of my sabbatical experience. The first step was straightforward: I put in my two three and half weeks, transitioned my activities, and left. It was that easy. The hard part, however, was finding and defining the "work" that I had in

So, I Took a Sabbatical: Why I Took One

General Commentary

So, I Took a Sabbatical: Why I Took One

This is part 1 in a series of my sabbatical experience. I quit my job. I walked into my boss's office, thanked him, and let him know I'd be leaving the company. Roughly 3 weeks later there was a Monday without a commute, fluorescent lights, or

So I Took a Sabbatical (Series)

General Commentary

So I Took a Sabbatical (Series)

In college, I remember having to change one of my courses because the professor had chosen to take a sabbatical. At the time, I just wanted to register for the class so that I could graduate, start my career, and begin to meaningfully contribute to society by paying taxes and

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 4

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 4

In part 3 of this series we moved our code to GitLab and set up a workflow where we push changes from our local machine up to GitLab, which fired a webhook to deploy the app automatically to Azure. We're getting to a better place, but there are

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 3

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 3

In parts 1 and 2 we built an Angular + node.js app and deployed it to Azure using our local git repository. We noted at the end of part 2 that we can definitely improve on our solution. It works, but it doesn't really alleviate us from the

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 2

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 2

In the previous part, we created an Angular 4 app with a node.js backend. It builds and works on our machine. While that's all well and good, it would be better if we can get it running on something else. Let's do just that. We&

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 1

Angular 4, Node, and Azure: Part 1

So I was having an impromptu conversation with a buddy of mine when we got on the subject of Angular and how to deploy the app to the cloud. They mentioned that there were tutorials out there, but he didn't know where to get started. Here's

We're Not Launching (and Landing) Rockets

We're Not Launching (and Landing) Rockets

This is an "off color" post, which will be more unconventional than previous posts. I've been approached with technical problems in the past that have had straightforward, two minute resolutions as well as several months of discussion, whiteboarding, and head-scratching until the light bulb finally lit

Getting Started with the Microsoft Bot Framework (Part 2)

Part 1 [https://mikebarksdale.com/2017/02/06/getting-started-with-the-microsoft-bot-framework-part-1/] of this series is here. In the previous post, we looked at a couple of use cases where bots may come in handy in addition to taking the initial steps of getting up and running with the emulator. In this post,

Getting Started with the Microsoft Bot Framework (Part 1)

Getting Started with the Microsoft Bot Framework (Part 1)

It's been a while since Microsoft's Build 2016 conference when they announced their open source framework [https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder] for developing bots. At the time of this writing, it's evolved [https://docs.botframework.com/en-us/node/builder/whats-new/#v33] to include new

Attacking Technical Debt

Attacking Technical Debt

This isn't the boogeyman. This is real. And it's everywhere. You can try to hide it in the closet so that your visitors never know; but, just like in the Tell-Tale Heart [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tell-Tale_Heart], you'll know that it&

Incorporating User Centered Design

Incorporating User Centered Design

User centered design (UCD) has been a common buzzword over the past few years. Properly embraced, UCD can be extremely beneficial to software teams looking to deliver useful products for their end users. At its core, the concept is straightforward: every aspect of the end user is taken into account

General Commentary

We've Got a Workaround for That

Whenever I hear the term workaround, the cynic inside of me raises an eyebrow and sternly asks Come again? (And when I say workaround, I mean a one or more steps that are used to achieve a result because the original intended usage of a system or application is either

Organizational Dynamics

The Impact of Trust

Ok, let's break up into groups and work on this project in separate teams. You're placed into a random group composed of strangers, one or two of which you may have had a How's the weather? conversation. Someone, maybe even you, take the awkward

Organizational Dynamics

The Power of "No": A Shift in IT Thinking

Children are funny. Their outlook on life is usually filled with a wonderment that many adults -- especially me, at times -- often forget. We encourage their creativity and to (safely) experiment with the wide and varied experiences life has to offer. It's their naivete that makes them

General Commentary

Here's to Something

In that odd, misplaced moment in time between digesting an obscene amount of food at a family cookout on Memorial Day weekend and hearing the same story about that time your brother threw a handful of rocks that sent your other, skateboarding brother hurtling through the air -- always faster,