Plenty of good stuff to be found in the essay. I have a feeling that making even one of the list into a habit would result in a more solid job.
Great article / tutorial on XML.com about using ROME to parse and create RSS and Atom feeds. It does a nice job of taking the complexity of feeds out of the developer's hands, instead keeping it in the library. A developer will only have to use Bean interface returned.
If I needed parser for syndication right now, I'd look at either ROME or Kevin Burton's Jakarta Feek Parser fork.
Today was kind of a wacky day. It was the first full day after the launch of the project I've been working for a long time. I've called it the Project of Death but thankfully I'm still alive. The last couple of weeks have been really busy culminating in two all-nighters this week. I don't say that as a show of my toughness instead I just wanted to explain my seemingly silence here on the blog.
Well, my manager asked me what I wanted to work on next. I still have a few loose ends to tie up in the current project but thankfully that will be finished soon and I'll be free to move on. I got a list of projects, picked out a couple and basically sat down in either another developer's office or the architect's and quizzed them about the project. It's not that I have a narrow of view of things I want to do, instead I want to work on something which will have the greatest impact on our users and myself. I think this is what Lasse is talking about when he asks Who's your pimp?.
The pimp has to be you. Generally you aren't going to be asked what you want to work on next. Instead, circumstances will warrant that you need to work on X because it will generate revenue as opposed to working on Y which would allow you to dig into new technologies. So when given the chance to get on a project, find one which helps you for your future and hopefully also helps the company.
Looks like Leonard can start planning for his retirement now that his upcoming Ruby Cookbook is available for pre-order on Amazon.
Well, hopefully my few cents will help a bit.
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rubycookbook, leonardr
My friends Kendall and Bijan have started a Semantic Web consultancy. I have no doubts they will be successful but I just wish I understood half the things they talk about.
Paul Kedrosky wants instant message accounts which can be short-lived. This could be very useful when working on a project since once the project is done, you can eliminate that account. If you were already talking with those people, they will more than likely have your real account so getting rid of the project IM won't matter. On the flip side, the folks you didn't talk to before the project, won't need to IM you afterwards.
Of all the IM providers, I could see GTalk be able to handle it or actually anyone using Jabber. You could have your own server which proxies the communication between the temporary account and you.
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instantmessaging
Bill gives some great advice on the best ways to handle branches in Subversion. Because it is easier to create tags and branches in Subversion than CVS, there is also a chance of doing things incorrectly.
Since we aren't using Subversion yet, this part was the most important for me:
Update before email. Updating against the repository should be the first thing you do in the morning, even before reading your email. This tip isn't specific to branching, but it's so central to having a good working practice with any form of source control, I'll mention it here. Some of the biggest development issues with source control can be traced directly to not updating frequently. Do it until it becomes muscle memory. Email is a terrible way to start the day anyway.
I think I'll send that around the office.
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subversion
One of the cooler apps/frameworks on the Mac is Growl which allows other applications to send messages and alert the users in different ways. Kevin Clark is putting Growl to good use by sending out messages whenever their Subversion repository is updated. He's also posted the code for it.
I would love to have something like that because it was just last night that I was doing a build, installed it on the dev box and had to figure out why things were blowing up when they hadn't in my local copy. Of course, one of the other developers had updated a config file and I didn't know.
I found another use for Growl last year when I would have a script check the score of the Cubs and alert me whenever it changed. That allowed me to not obsessively recheck the online action and instead just check when something happened. I might have to clean the script up for this year and release. It could be pretty useful to folks.
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subversion, growl
So, I'm sitting here watching the Opening Ceremonies and I hear Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough playing which of course is my most favorite song ever. I guess the reason I'm posting this is because I never would have thought I'd hear it. Ok, carry on...
Oh, and don't forget the name, Jenn Sterger, because you definitely won't forget the rest of her...
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winterolympics, depechemode
Stephen O'Grady responds to a post by Tim Bray wrote about the future of Java and the relationship the JVM should have with dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby.
One point that I think is important that Stephen made was the difference between a corporate development and the hacker at home, just looking to put something together. The difference is that most people not at work will not be using Java, whether because of the lack of interest or the lack of available tools.
But I'm just as interested in what happens outside the firewall - the individual developers building blogs and wikis and forums and feed readers and a host of other 'non-enterprise' apps on borrowed or hosted infrastructure. And that, IMO, is an area where Java's anything but ubiquitous.
The folks over at tourbus give a great overview of how Switchtower can help with all sorts of deployment issues whether you are using Rails or not.
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switchtower
Very cool mashup idea for spring training.
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springtraining, mashup
Paul Montgomery has posted an amazing look at the possible rewards Yahoo might give loyal users of its search engine. Of course, he does so by comparing the rewards to their Dungeons and Dragons equivalent.
Here are a couple:
Unlimited Yahoo Mail storage, versus the one gigabyte now provided for free. Bag of HoldingNetflix discount. Users could receive one month free Netflix DVD rentals and pay $10.99 thereafter, rather than $17.99 a month.
Deck of Illusions.
Earlier this year, Paul wrote about using the basics of reputation in a MMOG for his startup, Tinfinger. I meant to post about it then and I still might. But it's definitely an interesting idea.
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search, tinfinger, yahoo
The last time Werner Vogels, CTO at Amazon, posted a job opportunity I put a dent into my book budget with some texts on distributed computing. I'm sorry to say I haven't given them the focus they need. One of these days...
And now, he's posted another job and I know what I'll be searching for on Amazon (yes, the irony) in the near future.
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distributed, modeling
James Governor is at the Carson Web 2.0 day-long conference and has posted some great quotes from Josh Schachter, creator of del.icio.us.
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tags, delicious
While I don't quite agree that football season is a national nightmare, I do agree with LTR that baseball season is coming and I couldn't be more excited.
One of the more difficult parts of putting together a modern application is what to do about tags. Alex Barnett breaks down the problem in his post about being in Tag-Hell. That is, what tag do I use to describe the data I want to find at a later time. Is it OS X or OSX or maybe even Macintosh. All will give you something different from a search engine like Technorati but in reality there are almost the same thing.
One of his possible solutions is to display a tag count which gives some social feedback to the user as to which tag to choose. It might be tag instead of tags on Technorati but maybe the other way around on del.icio.us. The feedback can only help the user feel more comfortable with their choice.
Technorati Tags: tags, taghell
I wonder if Duncan even considered that Ant could be used as an Inversion of Control container. I'm guessing he didn't but it is a very cool display of Ant's power.
Would it be useful? Tough to say but as an additional way of separating configuration from implementation, it could be just what you needed.
Technorati Tags: ant, inversionofcontrol
I spent the first part of last week in Rails training and the end of the week working long hours to hit a deadline. Crazy days indeed.