ESTHER SCHINDLER

Esther Schindler has been writing about software development tools and trends since the mid-90s, and about the effect of technology on our lives for far longer. She has optimized compilers, written end-user applications, designed QA processes, taught corporate training classes about operating system internals, and owned a computer retail and consulting business on an island off the coast of Maine. At CIO, she's responsible for software development topics (duh), open source, operating systems, software-related infrastructure, and anything else that tickles her fancy. (She does have a very ticklish fancy.) Esther is also the BlogMom for the Advice & Opinion section of CIO.com, and scribbles in both the Developer Wisdom blog and her You're the Boss blog.

Esther lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a husband (who's even geekier than she is), two cats, and a well-known tropism for anything chocolate. You can reach her at eschindler@cio.com, especially if you mention chocolate.

IBM's Rational Quality Management Portfolio Promises to Reduce IT Risk and Developer Frustration

IT managers under the gun to trim their budgets may be attracted to IBM's promise that its new software quality tools can cut costs for both development time and labor. But software developers and SQA professionals are more likely to respond to the straight-up question, "How frustrated do you get when people are on different wavelengths?"

Microsoft Releases Developer Tools for Parallel Computing, Concurrency and Coordination

The multicore PCs you buy can do powerful, asynchronous computing, and the software you need to build might benefit from decentralized hardware resources, but your developers' ability to exploit those capabilities& not so much. Microsoft's new set of libraries promises to help developers exploit multicore processing without requiring anyone to become a threading and distributed computing guru.

Exploring Oslo's Modeling Language Promises

Microsoft is sharing bits of Oslo at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week. Learn what's new in M, the company's language for creating domain-specific languages, and why Microsoft thinks it's such a big deal.

Developers Rank Best Application Servers: WebSphere, Apache Geronimo, Windows Server Top List

What's the best all-around application server? According to an Evans Data survey, developers rank IBM WebSphere, Apache Geronimo and Windows Server at the top of the list. Why yes, an open-source app server DID make the cut.

6 Scripting Languages Your Developers Wish You'd Let Them Use

Several up-and-coming scripting languages--some open-source--are gaining popularity among software developers. These dynamic programming languages, including Groovy, Scala, Lua, F#, Clojure and Boo, deserve more attention for your enterprise software development, even if your shop is dedicated to Java or .NET. Here's why.

Service-Oriented Architecture Pays Off for Synovus Financial

The winning solution in the case study contest sponsored by the SOA Consortium and CIO magazine provided integrated business solutions using existing applications and legacy systems. It reduced the data and logic redundancy. The architecture provided unlimited scalability to meet current and future needs with only a small incremental cost. And it required a huge number of business partners collaborating to pull the whole thing off. Whew! Learn how they did it.

Microsoft Announces Visual Studio 2010. Developers Respond.

Microsoft's development environment offers new tools for Agile development, software testing enhancements and improved support for cloud computing. Microsoft showed us a sneak peek, and we invited developers to chime in with their feedback.

How to Get Executive Buy-In for Your Application Development Projects (and Why It Matters)

You might have a great IT strategy for solving a business problem. But unless the development staff or IT manager can sell the idea to senior management, everyone will be disappointed. Three CIOs who have been-there-done-that explain what works.

Cool Programmer Challenge: Football Algorithm = $50,000

TopCoder is running a developer contest for ESPN to write an algorithm that predicts the outcomes of college football games for the sports network. The winner gets $50,000. Score.

Would You Fire This Person?

It's easy to fire an incompetent employee; you know they failed. But what do you do with a high-maintenance problem employee? Read this case study about a real employee, decide if you'd fire him, and then compare your answers to other managers' opinions.

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CIO Viewpoints on Exchange 2007 Risks and Mitigation Strategies

Knowing where your peers have found limits and workarounds in areas including high availability, archiving, recovery, compliance, e-Discovery and storage growth can be essential in planning your successful Exchange 2007 migration. Read More »

Find out what Forrester says about mobile endpoint security and its management.

Mobility raises productivity. But IT departments are hard-pressed to protect mobile data and to manage security software, wireless clients and regulatory compliance for mobile workers... Read More »

Get Forrester's take on simplifying mobility with the universal wireless client.

Mobile workers want to use all types of wireless networks: WiFi, 3G cellular networks, corporate WLANs and home wireless networks. But how can IT support... Read More »

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