Megabyte Maniac - Thinking Out Loud

Book Review: My Job Went to India

2008-03-06T17:17:00.001+02:00

Just finished reading the book 'My Job Went to India'. I began to read it not sure if it would be any value for me in it (I am neither an 'indian' nor a 'US' developer). But the book is not for US people, it's for any software developer that want to make a 'career' ( and I mean 'non executive' career, to be clear). It's about how to stay on top of the things when the industry changes everyday, when the jobs migrate from one country to another, when younger, brighter developers get hired and talk about things you never heard of, making you feel like an old age dinosaur.

The core idea is that you should become a little bit of marketer, to build and to sell your own single product: yourself. Depending on how well you will do that the success will come or not.

First you should invest in your product: chose carefully what technologies to learn, become proficient in them, be aware when they start to fade and the next big thing begins to emerge. What is hot today might be obsolete tomorrow.

Understand the business process, cause they pay your check. Make the business persons comfortable by speaking their language instead of the geeky jargon we all find so dear.

Make the others aware of your brand (inside your company and outside, via forums, discussions, open source) (e.g. how does it sound 'I worked with Struts' vs 'I am a Struts committer' ) . Be a mentor for the others, share your knowledge, strive to make a little step forward every single day, learn to listen and to interpret the hints.

Some advices even sound counter intuitive like : strive to be 'disposable' (your code is so elegant everyone can work in it easily) or 'sometimes is better to work in maintenance instead of creating brand new functionality' (there are not the same process constraints in maintenance versus new code)

But let's stop rephrasing the whole book. Just grab it, read it and live by it: find your own spot and provide value in every way you can.

Modern data visualization ways

2007-08-31T13:09:00.000+03:00

Amazing new data visualization ways: innovative, elegant and very, very descriptive.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches

Sometimes I am amazed about how far the things have gone.

I Believe In Anarchy let's see you pogo!

2007-07-19T12:53:00.000+03:00

"I'm not afraid of having a Fight
and i'm not ashamed about getting drunk
and i don't care what you say cause
I believe in Anarchy"

Ok, ok, not quite the same thoughts but intresting any way:
Hog Blog » How to Be an Anarchist

CVS is evil, Subversion is pointles

2007-06-28T10:32:00.000+03:00

....."and you are stupid and ugly just because you continue using them".

OK, I have to admit, I did not test gip yet, and also did not read the user manual yet, but if it does only half of what is Linus saying then it's exactly what I was hoping to find in CVS when I started using it, and got disappointed that is not there, and then get used with the fact that is not there and then forgot i even wanted it., and then became stupid and ugly ....

Enjoy and spread the word:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

Generic Programing...where to?

2007-06-25T14:39:00.000+03:00

What is generic programing, why is useful and how it should/will be done ... at least in C++.
Lose one hour watching this and you will be warn about how programing will be done in the future, and maybe you will be prepare for it when will come.

You Java mortals, listen to the gods!...... maybe you learn something
:-P

Doug Gregor: Concepts Extending C++ Templates For Generic Programming

Simple architecture story

2007-06-14T10:33:00.000+03:00

That is a fascinating story. It is simple and powerful. I will try remember it everytime somebody will try to 'sell' me a powerpoint full of diagrams and acronimes.

http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2006/12/architecture-of-mailinator.html

Creativity

2007-05-11T14:38:00.000+03:00

I was deeply impressed by this speech delivered at TEDTalks. It is about creativity and its importance in our world, and how our current education system does not nourish creativity....and how crucial for our future is to be able to think out of the box.

Enjoy it!
http://www.niciest.com/index.asp?id=193

Shift happens....

2007-05-08T11:09:00.000+03:00

Nice and intriguing slideshow about the future of our world (try watching it with Firefox; IE 6.0 didn't work for me):

Shift Happens
http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/shift-happens-33834

Web 1.0.....Web 2.0.......and next?

2007-02-09T10:29:00.000+02:00

Ever wondered how we got to Web ...to Web 2.0....and what's next?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

What tool to pick for bug tracking?(fogbugz vs trac vs jira vs bugzilla)

2007-02-07T16:42:00.000+02:00

Hi,

Recently i analyzed some of the bug trackers available on the market and had to make a short report for our management with the features of the applications most suitable for our company.Following is the report i presented, and since i did not got anything like this on the web i thought to post it. Maybe will be useful for someone will need to do the same job.The applications are ordered based on our company internal votes.Please note that i did not intended to list all the features an application has, but only the most important for our company.So if you consider that i skipped one important feature or even an important application be free to update the list.
We have fogbugz vs trac vs jira vs bugzilla
All trackers:

have possibility of creating projects and assign users to the projects and setting visibility&modifying rights
allow adding of a bug trough an web interface and assign a user to it
allow setting milestones/releases
allow linking one bug to another if they are related or duplicated
have integration with subversion and CVS - have RSS and email notification

1)fogbugz has:

discussion forum
two way email: A message arrives in a mailbox on your mail server. Periodically, FogBugz uses the POP3 protocol to check your mail server for new messages. If any messages are found, FogBugz downloads them from the mail server and creates a case out of each one. If you're using the AutoSort feature, FogBugz discards spam and sorts the rest of the messages into areas according to topic. If desired, FogBugz sends an immediate reply to the customer, providing them with a URL they can use to check on the status of their request. Once the message is in FogBugz, you can treat it like any other case: you can prioritize it, assign it, track it, slice it, dice it, deep fry it, etc. At any time you can reply to the message from within FogBugz. FogBugz will insert the case number into the subject line of the outgoing message. If the customer responds to your reply, as long as they don't remove the FogBugz case number from the subject, their response will be appended to the current case rather than opening a new case. FogBugz will keep a complete transcript of everything that happens with the case, including all relevant incoming and outgoing email and even private internal conversations about the case which the customer does not see.
screenshot tool (captures a screenshot with one mouse click and submits it to FogBugz with another. You can even highlight a part of the screenshot to indicate what you think is wrong. )
very simplistic and without constrains web interface (There are no required fields in a case) a way to add crash reporting and user feedback dialogs to your own application
drawback: - if you want to see all emails sent by a customer you have to do a global search with user domain something like: @clientDomain.com

feeling: The UI looks very good

2)Trac has:

built-in wiki engine, used for text and documentation throughout the system. WikiFormatting is used in wiki pages, tickets and check-in log messages. This allows for formatted text and hyperlinks in and between all Trac modules.
Trac timeline - provides a historic view of the project in a single report.It lists all Trac events that have occurred in chronological order, a brief description of each event and if applicable, the person responsible for the change The timeline lists these kinds of events: Wiki page events, Creation and changes Ticket events like creation and resolution/closing (and optionally other changes), Source code changes, Repository check-ins, Milestone completed
TracBrowser - Browsing source code with Trac., Viewing changes to source code.,Viewing change history .
it's open sources

feeling: The UI looks very good

3)jira has:

Control the issue creation process you can have absolute control over: what users can do and which users can do it issue types (e.g. bug, task, requirement), issue fields - as many as you like how issue workflow maps to your business processes ...all of which can be configured on a global or project-specific level.
Create/update issues via email but you have to answer from your personal email account to the client and fw the answer to the jira for logging it in the bug case.
Generic Reporting (a table-based view, and several graphical views)
Customizable dashboard: Your 'dashboard' is your JIRA homepage. Completely configurable, it presents your chosen information immediately upon login. A user's dashboard is made up of any combination of configurable portlets, such as: a list of issues assigned to you a list of your saved filters project statistics filter statistics project list line graphs pie charts HTML text messages
And if you also buy the Confluence product you get a wiki which can be structured in spaces for each project. In Confluence each space publishes its own news. This allows you to share time-based content, such as news items for a project, announcements for your team, or a personal journal. It supports threading so you can turn any page into a team discussion forum Each page from here can be linked to a case in jira and the other way around.

feeling: UI heavy populated with info but in time you get used with it or you customize it.Other then that the UI looks very good.

4)bugzilla has:

Generic Reporting (a table-based view, and several graphical views)
Request System (allows you to flag certain bugs or bug attachments for review. Once flagged, the requested reviewer may approve or reject the flagged bug.)
allows users vote for bugs indicating that they'd like them fixed
allows Dependency Tree (you can see the dependency relationship from the bug as a tree structure)
it's open sources

feeling: Ugly UI