Chad Dickerson

If recent empirical and anecdotal evidence is any indication, computer science is about as trendy with college students today as phone-booth stuffing and pet rocks. But is the IT talent sky falling? I don't think so, because I feel the importance of a computer-science degree is overstated.

Proactive IT managers need to make sure their retention weapons are loaded

Lack of focus on soft skills is the chief career inhibitor not just for CTO or CIO aspirants who want to straddle business and IT but also for technologists who want to stay firmly in IT.

Lots of attention has been paid to blogging and its relation to traditional media. But I've been more interested in blogging as a quick-and-dirty enterprise knowledge management tool for internal use for internal use.

While the two concepts might seem like opposite ends of a continuum, I'm finding the "open source or outsource" question at the centre of my IT decision-making process these days.

A project I

Should your developers use an IDE to develop software? If you think that discussion ended years ago, think again. The voluminous response to my Aug. 30 column proves that the debate rages on.

A project I'm working on here at InfoWorld (U.S.) reminds me of the packaging of a brand of bagged ice back in my native North Carolina. The name of that ice company escapes me, but my memory of the packaging is crystal clear: "Never touched by human hands!" Back then, I immediately pictured the competition's ice factories, filled with workers loading filthy ice into bags, water dripping on the floor, their thoughtless handling of the ice exceeded only by the general squalor of their surroundings.