Read all about it... 'opinion' related content

Why product design is critical to modern software delivery

User experience and design are crucial to helping products succeed. So why do we continue to undervalue or, at best,...

8 October 2024

Signs and portents for 2024

It's an end-of-year tradition here at Instil that the Head of Learning assumes a Janus-like pose and looks forward to...

4 January 2024

The People versus Tailwind - the case for and against Tailwind

TailwindCSS has been around for a while now (v0.1 was released back in 2017) and remains a contentious choice for...

8 November 2023

Signs and portents for 2022

In this post, Head of Learning Garth Gilmour, will make predictions for the tech industry in 2022

14 December 2021

The Edutainment Problem

In this post Garth Gilmour ponders the problem of 'Edutainment' and whether or not trainers need to be entertainers.

24 September 2021

OODA Considered Harmful

Thoughts on why the OODA loop as applied to agile delivery is flawed or should even be considered harmful.

5 February 2021

The Truth of the 10X Developer

If you thought the 10X Developer concept was just a myth, think again. In this article Garth Gilmour convinces you...

13 January 2021

The Perils of Advocacy

Developer advocacy is an extremely rewarding job but is it all sunshine and meadows or is there a darker flip...

4 January 2021

Should Developers be Ignorant?

Garth discusses his belief that junior developers should be given a safe space of blissful ignorance to play in, and...

7 December 2020

Signs and portents for 2021

Each December, our Head of Learning reflects on emerging trends, and makes some foolish predictions for the year to come....

1 December 2020

Is YAML Developer my next job title?

A brief exploration of CloudFormation from a developer's perspective.

23 June 2020

10 reasons why WebStorm is better than VS Code

Ok, ok, I know the title is contentious but don't start with me. I've been locked up for over 9...

18 May 2020

The Delusions Of Developers

Lessons from the Dot-com Bust we need to relearn

10 May 2020

Is The Classroom Dead?

With the pandemic in full-swing and ways of working changing, will any of us ever set foot in a classroom...

1 May 2020

Static Types vs Dynamic Types. Stop fighting and make my life easier already

A look at how both statically and dynamically typed languages have pros and cons and how we should identify the...

17 October 2019

Why Strong Static Typing Is Your Friend

Last week my dear colleague Ryan wrote a blog post in praise of dynamic types. I would ask you not...

9 October 2019

Is 'Effective Kotlin' Effective?

‘Effective Kotlin' follows in the long line of renowned Effective programming books. But is it a worthy addition to the...

8 October 2019

Static types won't save us from bad code

Modern programming languages can be categorised in many ways, but the most common approach is to slice them by how...

3 October 2019

One Principle To Rule Them All?

The SOLID principles of software design provide guidelines on how we can make our code more readable, maintainable and extensible....

12 September 2019

A Taste of Things to Come

As another busy year of training draws to a close it's traditional that I stick my head above the parapet...

7 December 2018

Leaders don't give orders

How leading agile software teams is not about one person giving orders

1 July 2016

Reading the Tea Leaves

Reading the tea leaves - predicting what's in store for 2016 and beyond

27 November 2015

Why do an IT Degree?

Opinion piece on whether an IT degree is important or essential in today's market