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  Shower moments. We’ve all had them. Even Archimedes had one. Suddenly, all the dots connect and an idea forms. (Yes. I know. Archimedes actually had a “bathtub moment” when he discovered how to measure the volume of a solid, but the principle is the same.) These soapy moments of creativity feel as though they come from nowhere, but do they really? Does any form of creativity emerge in isolation? Let’s consider the dots; that is, those bits of datum that hang suspended in mental space until the steam from the shower brings them together. To be sure, they are all your mental notions. However, unless you existed in complete isolation prior to said shower, they came from your previous interactions with the real world. They represent your encounters with nature’s creations, other people’s creations, or your own previous creations. Even the most isolated moments of creativity depend on a single principle: Ex nihilo nihil fit, Latin for “Nothing comes from nothing.” Every creation incor...

Software development has been getting easier and easier as computing technology has evolved. Here's what developers need to know and do to stay relevant. Software development has become easier than ever--so easy, in fact, that new development tools and trends are making programmers less valuable relative to other types of IT professionals. That’s a bold statement, I know. Let me explain my reasoning, and how I think developers should respond. The Decreasingly Important Software Developer In a sense, software development has been getting easier and easier as computing technology has evolved. When modern computers appeared in the mid-twentieth century, the only tools developers had to work with were assembly language and machine code. Writing software this way was tedious and required an immense level of skill. The first high-level languages, such as Fortran, entered into use in the mid-1950s. They made programming considerably easier than it had been using assembly language, but mo...