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Content Tagged with trends + Opinion

Amazing video about Web 3.0

If there’s one thing we know for sure about the Internet, it is that by its very nature it is a transient medium. What was 10 years ago, is generally nothing like what is today, which will be nothing like what will be 10 years from now. Blogger Robert Scoble posted today that the recently released Search 2001 archived search engine from Google (our coverage) highlights well the web’s transient nature. Many of the sites that existed in the search results on Google in 2001, not only don’t appear in the results for those searches today, but don’t exist on the web at all.

It does seem unlikely that the bubble will burst in quite the same way as it did last time. After all, the hot money that went into dotcoms in the late 90s went into the housing market rather than technology this time around.

Discussion about writing Ruby code from scratch vs. using Rails Plugins. Talks about the pros and cons of each and why both can make you a better developer.

Is SaaS and Clould computing all hype and no substance? While there is certainly a lot of hype around these, there are good and bad reasons to adopt these technologies on a case-by-case basis, as long as you remember that there is no silver bullet!

If you’re a mobile application developer, where should you be playing your chips — on Apple’s side of the table or Google’s?

I believe that the AJAX/DHTML model is broken...at least for widespread adoption. Here I explain why lack of standards and huge fragmentation is killing widespread adoption of browser based rich UIs.

I’ve decided to take a 2 part stab at answering Jurgen’s question about what motivates me in the work place. To start with, I decided to meditate on a few things that tend to grab my motivation by the metaphorical gonads and squeeze.

Development is hard, and getting harder all the time. For every new framework that comes out to simplifying the complexity of the code we write, another two technologies hit the market. For every practice and principle we get to grips with, two other will evolve. The better we make software, the more users expect.

At my current client I’ve got to do mainly maintenance on existing applications. This gives me the chance to look into codebases that have been created by other people and that don’t really reflect how I would write things. That is all good though it gives me a chance to learn new ways of doing things and when I think their way is better I’ll surely adopt.

We have this rather large project at work, one that’s been in development for a few years now. This project has had many releases already, and from a business perspective, is quite successful. From a technical point of view, there were definitely some things that could’ve been better. The largest problem is that this project uses a very extensive code-generation process. This code generation process basically retrieves all of the database metadata and generates an entire Data Access Layer (based on basic ADO.NET), a shitload of automated tests to cover that entire DAL, a whole lot of extra classes which form a data-driven business layer (real business logic can still be added though), and again, a shitload of automated tests that cover the data-driven business layer.

I blogged about the illusive social facade of web 2.0 before, things seem to be getting worse still. In a long awaited sign of life update, Roger Johansson (456bereastreet.com) proclaims he will be closing the comment sections on his articles, referring to the following article on blog comments. Not a good thing. At all.

Having spent many years on different online communities and forums, not least JavaLobby, I've noticed some trends about how developers act from behind their monitor. To get a broad range of opinions, I've also asked some of the other Zone Leaders from DZone for their opinions on this. I don't mean to say all developers are the same - I've been one long enough myself - but I want to find why people hunt in their packs in communities and forums.

So far I haven't been disappointed my career move to freelancing except for one thing : I can't seem to find much freelancing Java opportunities. Now, I'm just starting out as a freelancer and it is way to soon to draw any conclusion but I'm beginning to doubt. Is java freelancing possible?

This is not SEO bullshit, it's just my TOP 5 of Weirdest Google Searches to End Up in This (Development) Blog (gathered from google analytics)

There’s a strange sort of social disease going around in technology circles today, and it all centers around this word “innovation.” Everybody wants to “innovate.” The news talks about “who’s being the most innovative.” Marketing for companies insists that they are “innovating.” Except actually, it’s not innovation that leads to success. It’s execution.

Everyone has memories of certain formative experiences that seemed to mark the end of naive adolescence and the beginning of cynical adulthood. When I think back over my career as a software developer, I realize that I’ve had several experiences that taught me some hard and valuable lessons about the art and science of software development that seem like rites of passage in hindsight.