Boolean Illogic

Why do Java programmers hate the boolean XOR operator?

Is it that they are just generally ignorant about the full-eval boolean operators in general? You know, the operators that look like &, | and ^. Perhaps its that most Java developers are under the impression that they only operate on bits, an are ignorant of the fact that they operate on booleans (and Booleans with that fucking horrible autoboxing/unboxing nonsense.)

I know that 99 time out of 100 we prefer the early-out operators && and || for their efficiency, but a simple ^ can save a hell of a lot of unreadable and less-understandable if-then-else logic. For example, I've just refactored (somebody else's code)

if( check ){
    if( !user.isAnonymousUser() ) doStuff();
}else{
    if( user.isAnonymousUser() ) doStuff();
}

which I find nasty as hell to be sure is doing what it's supposed to, into

if( check ^ user.isAnonymouseUser() ) doStuff();

Much easier to understand, no?

How Do Development Managers Screw Up?

Here's a question, much on my mind:

What is the single most important thing that Development Managers do, or fail to do, or pay insufficient attention to, that create a friction in the delivery of working software?

Answers in comments (or email if you don't want to publicly reveal details) please!

By "Development Manager" I don't just mean those people who have those words in their job title, but I mean any person who is responsible for tasking development teams - large or small - and ensuring the delivery of software systems by their developers. Sometimes they are called Project Managers, sometimes - in small entrepreneurial startups - they are the Boss Of The Whole Gig. The point is that they are the interface between the business stakeholders and the technical people who do the development and implementation work.

New Courses Scheduled

Courses newly scheduled:

• Patterns of OO Design, 17-19 Feb in Cape Town
  
• OO Technology Overview for Managers, 22 Feb, Cape Town.

Please contact me directly if you're interested. Places are limited, especially for the Design Patterns course.

More to come soon... if you're interested, I suggest that you keep track of my course schedule page feed (the feed-link is near the top-right), or course-schedule calendar in your feed-reader.