I've picked up this new saying. I've memed myself with it:

"An estimate is an estimate, not a promise" I'm saying it a little too often for comfort at present. Someone asks how long something will take and if I tell them the assumption will be made that it will take exactly that long.

Thing is: I don't know how long anything will take. If I'm truly honest the answer is always "I don't know." I'm an experienced developer and manager of developers, and I suspect that my guess is better than most and I'll have a pretty good idea of how accurate my guess is, but that's all it ever is - a guess.

I used to manage a team producing micro-sites. Simple little applications that were always the same. My estimates were good to the hour on them.

I've seen this diorama played out lots of times.

It starts with a non-IT communication skills orientated person (usually from sales) wishing to communicate with those in IT. This normally takes a form similar to what they would do with their own team: a rousing speech full of positive rhetoric; a reassuring slap on the back or something similar.

Thing is: while these work great with the sales team, they fall flat in an IT environment.

I've written a lot of SQL. Mostly Microsoft's T-SQL variant. I was a DBA in a high pressure environment looking after over 80 business critical server instances.

It's a language that I'm very confident in, and one that I think is very well suited to the job. However there's one major flaw with how it works that annoys me every time I use it:

SQL has two methods for getting data into a table, depending on whether you're adding or changing data.

Impressive demo of the technology, but far and away the creepiest implementation of xeyes I've ever seen. There is a real problem still rendering people's faces - the eyes always look dead. It's odd that something obviously cartoony can look cute, while almost but not convincingly human is creepy.
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