Scott Logic / Altogether Smarter

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Dave Ogle

Hi, I'm Dave, a Lead Developer here at Scott Logic, based in Edinburgh. I have particular interests in cloud computing, frontend frameworks and agile development. Outside of software I enjoy Jazz, Star Trek and single malt whiskeys, not necessarily in that order.

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People
What I learnt about software development from the RAF
Twenty one years ago today I left home and joined the Royal Air Force. Today I'm a lead software developer at Scott Logic and my career is very different, but I often reflect on my time in the military and the parallels between it and software development. To mark the event I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the subject.
Dave Ogle · 12th  Nov · 9 min read
Cloud
Into The Multi-cloud
Cloud computing is a major part of modern day software development. Big cloud providers work hard to get your business and keep it but there is a school of thought which says we shouldn't put all our eggs in one cloud shaped basket. In this post I'll take a look at the concept of the multi-cloud and ask if it's something we should consider more often when designing software solutions.
Dave Ogle · 21st  Oct · 5 min read
Delivery
If agile is the answer, what is the question?
We often talk about how to be agile, about particular ceremonies and processes but what problem is it we are trying to solve? In this post I'll take a look at what we mean when we talk about agile, what it's come to represent and what the point is behind aiming for agility.
Dave Ogle · 31st  Jul · 5 min read
Delivery
Story points are pointless
Are story points just a waste of time? In this post, I take a critical look at the common practice of story pointing tickets, examining their origins and how they are most commonly used. I argue that story points often cause more harm than good and that maybe you don't need them at all.
Dave Ogle · 5th  Jul · 15 min read
People
Why we should care about process
In agile teams the development team often has some, if not total control over the process of developing software. In this article I'll look at why I believe that's important and why I think we should care, and care passionately about the processes we use to develop software.
Dave Ogle · 10th  Jun · 7 min read
People
Is Agile always the answer?
In software development we often make the assumption that Agile is the best way to manage process on a project but just what do we mean by that, is it true and, if so, why are there so many examples of it not working for teams? In this post I try to take a deeper look at some of these questions.
Dave Ogle · 17th  Apr · 8 min read
Tech
A Journey into Wasm
A brief look into building out a NextJS application which makes use WebAssembly to solve Advent Of Code puzzles in the browser.
Dave Ogle · 3rd  Jan · 5 min read
People
Working in a blameless culture
A blameless culture can have a huge positive impact on the way your team works, both internally and with others. In this post I'll explore what a blameless culture is, why it's important and how to promote it within your own team.
Dave Ogle · 6th  Nov 2023 · 4 min read
Tech
My Top Ten Tips for Peer Review
For many of us peer review is an everyday part of software development, but why do we bother and how can we do it well? In this post I share my top tips for peer reviewing code.
Dave Ogle · 26th  Jun 2023 · 5 min read
Tech
The Good, The Bad and the Easy?
In this post I'll try to lay out some requirements for 'good' code, talk about how we might define 'easy' code and how this correlates with a definition of 'good' code.
Dave Ogle · 26th  Nov 2020 · 15 min read
Tech
Create, Test, Integrate and Deploy a React App in under 10 minutes!
In this blog post I'll be demonstrating how quickly it's possible to setup, integrate and deploy a React application using the right tools.
Dave Ogle · 3rd  Sep 2020 · 9 min read
Tech
JavaScript Closure
In this blog post I'll be exploring Lexical Scope in JavaScript and answering the question "What is Closure?"
Dave Ogle · 23rd  Feb 2018 · 7 min read
Data Engineering
Looking At R
In this quick look at the R language and tools I'll look briefly at the syntax of the language and have a go at creating a few charts with a data set.
Dave Ogle · 31st  Jan 2018 · 13 min read
Tech
Apache Storm Taster
A quick look at Apache Storm with a short word count walk-through example using a Redis Database.
Dave Ogle · 29th  Jan 2018 · 18 min read
Data Engineering
Cassandra vs. MariaDB
We've been comparing Cassandra and MariaDB in single node setups, exploring the issues of each in terms of performance and ease of use from a development perspective. In this article we explore the issues at play in such a setup such as the differences in queries, speed of response and the features that seperate these two technologies.
Dave Ogle, Laurie Collingwood · 1st  Mar 2017 · 12 min read