# bcs (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 1 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover bcs. Page: Feed: --- ## [The Illusion of a One-Time Set-Up](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-illusion-of-one-time-set-up.html) _2026-02-13 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ One of the most laborious things about starting work at a new client / employer, can be getting your machine and user account configured so that you are able to work on their codebase. For me, the acid test of whether I’m in a good place is being able to build the code and run the necessary test suites locally that I’ll be relying on for the early feedback loop. But that’s the bare minimum. There… ## [The Case of the Disappearing App](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-case-of-disappearing-app.html) _2026-01-26 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ \[ Despite being almost 30 years ago, and the finer details being lost in the mists of time, the punchline has always stayed with me – it’s scar tissue I guess :o). \] I was contracting in a team which had taken over a codebase from another company, to try and improve the performance, as it was far below what was needed for even the smaller use cases they had in mind. The front-end was a… ## [Codurance AI Hackathon](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2025/05/codurance-ai-hackathon.html) _2025-05-02 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ This is quite a long post (15 mins) and if you’re only interested in my final musings, and not the day itself, just skip to the last two sections. Last Saturday I got to attend an event at Codurance’s offices in London around the use of AI based tooling to aid software delivery. I did not have much experience with these kinds of tools, in part because my current client uses their own in-house… ## [A Decade of Lightning Talks with Programming One-Liners](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-decade-of-lightning-talks-with.html) _2025-04-04 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ Note: This blog post follows the modern recipe style – a load of unimportant background history before presenting the real content. So, just hit page-down a few times if that’s what you came here for, I won’t be offended. Just over 10 years ago, fellow ACCU member Jez Higgins replied to another one of my programming one-liners on Twitter with a flippant remark that I probably had enough material… ## [How Do I Test This?](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2025/02/how-do-i-test-this.html) _2025-02-20 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ I’ve no idea where I first came across the following premise for when starting a new code change: “First ask yourself, how do I test this?” I had assumed it was Steve Maguire’s Writing Solid Code or Debugging the Development Process as these are two of the earliest books I read as a professional developer. He has some excellent advice in “step through your code in the debugger” and “how could I… ## [Unravelling Conflict](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2024/12/unravelling-conflict.html) _2024-12-04 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ An interesting question came up at a meet-up I recently attended, where they were discussing approaches to coaching and mentoring. The question was not overly interesting by itself, but the roller-coaster of a journey as we got to the essence of the real problem, was. The initial framing of the question by one of the attendees was this: “How do I tell someone to optimise their code?” The wording… ## [Using CoPilot-Like Tools is Not Pairing](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2024/11/using-copilot-like-tools-is-not-pairing.html) _2024-11-28 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ Ever since the rise of LLM based tools like ChatGPT and CoPilot there have been quips made about how great it makes as a pairing partner. The joke is because these tools are passive and won’t trash your code, or disagree with your approach, or smell of garlic. I get the joke. The problem for me is that these jokes are suggesting that using tools like CoPilot are akin to pairing, but they’re not.… ## [Crafters Meetup: Architecture Kata](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2024/10/crafters-meetup-architecture-kata.html) _2024-10-05 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ Last time I wrote about the monthly Cambridge Software Crafters Meetup which I started attending almost a year ago. In that post I briefly mentioned the Architecture Kata session which I found particularly interesting as I’ve never done anything like that before. I’ve been aware of katas for a long time, but they’ve tended to focus on solving simple problems in code, usually with a test-first… ## [Cambridge Software Crafters Meetup](https://chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2024/09/cambridge-software-crafters-meetup.html) _2024-09-03 · Chris Oldwood · The OldWood Thing_ Despite living pretty close to Cambridge I’ve never actually worked there. For the past 25 years I’ve commuted to London because it was easier and faster than getting to Cambridge \[1\]. The daily rates for contract programmers in the finance industry might also have had an influence too :o). Anyway, one consequence of working in London meant that I had access to all the London meetups in the…