The thoughts of a technical entrepreneur on his quest for start-up success...
Counting number of lines in a solution
One question that I find myself asking frequently throughout the year is "how many lines of code have been written", or "how many lines of code is project/product X". Although line count really isn't a great indication of project complexity, size or development velocity, it is still sometimes useful to know and acts as a rough code for estimation models such as COCOMO.
Google creates great advertising videos
You know, a picture speaks a tousand words, so this 1m32s video at 24fps speaks 2,208,000. I am already looking forward to my first marketing video!
Do Nike make the best trainers?
There are many things that fascinate me in life - why do people still post fake videos of UFO’s on YouTube?; how have Arsenal not won any silverware for so many seasons?; and why does my heating make that strange thumping sound at 2am in the morning. But, something that supersedes all of those (and there really is no explanation to my heating system problem), is how does an idea become a worldwide brand.
The allure of a beefy server
Ever since the Dell Outlet was first introduced I have had a fascination with owning a high specification server. Being the geek that I am, the thought of loading up a database with hundreds of millions of data items, whether thats Microsoft SQL Server or one of the many NoSQL solutions available is something that one day I will experience.
How to start a start-up?
I have many observations about successful start-ups, but generally there is one common aspect – the start-up must be passionate about solving a problem or building/redefining on existing solutions on that problem. With that in mind, I find myself in a little bit of a conundrum as my instinct tells me that the decision to create my start-up is driven by the thrill of progress, improvement, accountability and ultimate ownership and not by my primary observation outlined above.
The birth of a new start-up
This is the first in what will hopefully be an engaging blog. My name is Stuart Holywell, and I would describe myself as a technical entrepreneur. Since I was around fourteen years old I have been developing software in C++, Java and most recently the Microsoft .NET stack. Professionally I act as an architect, software consultant, business analyst and development manager - priding myself in the growth of team members and process improvements from both a business and development perspective. I also enjoy presenting, and have presented at Microsoft, Reading, U.K. twice and in North America.
HNY to all our followers and clients at Denotare 