No, this is not about "White Hats" - security hackers who try to break into systems in order to strengthen them, as opposed to "Black Hats" - but really about what we can learn from white rats. In the last few weeks, I have helped solve a number of vexing problems on behalf of customers, both in technology and process. Each time I am asked how I do it, and each time the answer is the same.

When do you buy? When do you build? This question of "buy vs. build" is at the heart of many a debate in companies, not only inside engineering teams, but between engineering, product management and executives. Fact #1: Engineering is Hard Engineering is very hard. Despite the enormous advances over the years, and the number of system tools and development frameworks and languages, every one of which is touted as a "

This morning, Adrian Colyer posted his morning paper on a "functional programming." Most readers of this blog are not deep into different programming paradigms, so I will give a very short layman's overview here. For those who are comfortable, jump ahead a few paragraphs. (For the real experts, please do not nitpick on the details; the point is only to give an overview, not to debate the fine points.)