thoughts.on.code

Someone is playing around with my site using Rails and artificially raising my stats… I usually have a few hundred hits a day, that has doubled, with referrals pointing back to “http://localhost:3000/…” wonder what that is?

Anyway, I don’t mind, but I would love to chat with whoever is doing it… I been playing around with a Rails based feed reader myself and maybe we could share ideas.

So for those of you who have had the pleasure of working with me (I’m already wincing at what comments might come from that remark) know, I have been unhealthily obsessed with finding clear dry-erase boards for a long time now. And today I finally installed some:

And another image:

As you can see, I still have some painting left to do. I hate painting.

All I did for the boards was use 3 peices of 24″x36″x1/4″ Lucite panels, holes in the corners, screws and washers to hold them against the wall. I came to Lucite after a little testing with standard Expo and Expo2 (Low Odor) markers on a 10″x12″ test piece. The “original formula” Expo markers did not erase well at all, and left a residue. But the Expo2 markers worked beautifully.

Here is a web page dedicated to whiteboards: http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/

To be honest, I wasn’t actually expecting it. I volunteered to review the book, mainly because I am a huge fan of Venkat, as well as the pragmatic programmers, so to me that was enough of a treat. But it was mentioned in Andy’s initial post for volunteers that the selected reviewers would get a free copy of the book. And behold, here it is! Now, I will be definitely be adding P.A.D. on my reading (or re-reading in this case) list.

As it is, I’ve already pushed my current book (My Job Went To India) back onto the stack on my reading list to review another Pragmatic Press book…. ok so maybe I AM a fanboy…

In my current job I get to interview and screen a fair amount of developers, and I am seeing a pattern. I will call this pattern the “YASD”.

“YASD” == Yet Another Struts Developer.
Pronounced “Yeahs-D”.

The YASD can be detected fairly easily:

• 2-n years experience with Struts / J2EE
• They rate themselves an 8 or higher on Struts
• “Extensive experience” in design/development of J2EE applications
• They usually know a few patterns (invariably the singleton and MVC patterns, sometimes Business Delegate) and have some sense of how to use them. Whenever you bring up issues with a pattern (such as threading w/ Singletons), it is quickly apparent that their knowledge is not very deep.
• They know the high level Struts flow very well. When asked how Struts does things under the covers, they do not know. They know about the config.xml file, but not the class loading and reflection that goes into using them. Not answers I would associate with an 8 level Struts developer.
• They have some knowledge of XML. The struts config.xml is mentioned in the answer.
• When asked to describe their model for developing applications, it is invariably Waterfall or RUP: The Waterfall Version.
• When asked which language they have most recently learned, the answer is either “Java” or “XML”.
• They rarely read blogs.
• They do not read technology books.

The people that fit this pattern are probably very solid developers, as long as you lead them well. Now, I’m not saying this is all a bad thing, though I would really like to have someone say “Yeah, I just taught myself Lisp (or Python or Ruby or C# or or) and this is what I think of it.” to the language question. It just seems that these people only do what they need to do for their jobs. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but there are plenty of reasons why a software developer in this country should be thinking hard about what they know, and what they are going to need to know to survive in our economy.

I am going to have a busy summer. I have a number of speaking engagements over the next few months:

Omaha Dynamic Languages User Group
Date: June 6th
Presentation: Ruby on Rails

I will be giving an overview of Ruby on Rails to the Dynamic Language group. I hope to have time to learn RJS so that I can really focus on that technology.

Omaha Java User Group
Date: June 20th
Presentation: Java Performance Tools, Tips, and Tricks

Unless somebody else steps up and volunteers to present, I will be giving a preview of my No Fluff presentation in July.

Central Iowa Software Symposium
Presentation: Java Performance Tools, Tips, and Tricks

This is an extended presentation of what comes below. In addition to performance monitoring, I will be talking more about the hows and whys of performance.

OSCON 2006
Presentation: Open Source Performance Monitoring Tools and Tricks for Java

This is a survey of Open Source Performance Monitoring Tools for Java. It is only a 45 minute session, so it will go very fast. If you cannot make it to Portland (hey, I understand ), then take a look at my presentation for Bass & Associates… they will be similar.

Central Iowa JUG
Presentation: Integrating AJAX into the Enterprise using REST and ActiveMQ JMS

Right now they have me down for Performance Monitoring, but currently the plan is to talk about AJAX working in conjunction with ActiveMQ JMS and the REST protocol. I have a lot to do on this one still!

Wow. Every time I look at that list, I start freaking out about the amount of work ahead of me. But, I am really looking forward to the challenge. This should be a very exciting summer!