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The full list is here . It's a pretty prestigious group--and I'm totally floored that I'm there next to some pretty big names. In homage to Ms. Sally Fields, of so many years ago... "You like me, you really like me". Having somebody come up to me at a conference and tell me how much they like my blog is second on my list of "fun things to happen to me at a conference", right behind having somebody come up to me at a conference and tell me how much they like my blog, except for that one entry, where I said something totally ridiculous (and here's why) .... What I find most fascinating about the list was the means by which it was constructed--the various calculations behind page rank, technorati rating, and so on. Very cool stuff. Perhaps it's trite to say it, but it's still true: readers are what make writing blogs worthwhile. Thanks to all of you. Enterprise consulting, mentoring or instruction. Java, C++, .NET or XML services. 1-day or multi-day workshops available. Contact me for details . Read More...
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For those of you who were at the Cinncinnati NFJS show, please continue on to the next blog entry in your reader--you've already heard this. For those of you who weren't, then allow me to make the announcement: Hi. My name's Ted Neward, and I am now a ThoughtWorker . After four months of discussions, interviews, more discussions and more interviews, I can finally say that ThoughtWorks and I have come to a meeting of the minds, and starting 3 September I will be a Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. My role there will be to consult, write, mentor, architect and speak on Java, .NET, XML Services (and maybe even a little Ruby), not to mention help ThoughtWorks' clients achieve IT success in other general ways. Yep, I'm basically doing the same thing I've been doing for the last five years. Except now I'm doing it with a TW logo attached to my name. By the way, ThoughtWorkers get to choose their own titles, and I'm curious to know what readers think my title should be. Send me your suggestions, and if one really strikes home, I'll use it and update this entry to reflect the choice. I have a few ideas, but I'm finding that other people can be vastly more creative than I, and I'd love to have a title that rivals Neal's "Meme Wrangler" in coolness. Oh, and for those of you who were thinking this, "Seat Warmer" has already been taken, from what I understand. Honestly, this is a connection that's been hovering at the forefront of my mind for several years. I like ThoughtWorks' focus on success, their willingness to explore new ideas (both methodologies and technologies), their commitment to the community, their corporate values, and their overall attitude of "work hard, play hard". There have definitely been people who came away from ThoughtWorks with a negative impression of the company, but they're the minority. Any company that encourages T-shirts and jeans, XBoxes in the office, and wants to promote good corporate values is a winner in my book. In short, ThoughtWorks is, in many ways, the consulting company that I would want to build, if I were going to build a consulting firm. I'm not a wild fan of the travel commitments, mind you, but I am definitely no stranger to travel, we've got some ideas about how I can stay at home a bit more, and frankly I've been champing at the bit to get injected into more agile and team projects, so it feels like a good tradeoff. Plus, I get to think about languages and platforms in a more competitive and hostile way--not that TW Read More...
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Another DZone newsletter crosses my Inbox, and again I feel compelled to comment. Not so much in the uber-aggressive style of my previous attempt, since I find myself more on the fence on this one, but because I think it's a worthwhile debate and worth calling out. The article in question is "5 Reasons Why You Don't Want A Jack-of-all-Trades Developer", by Rebecca Murphey. In it, she talks about the all-too-common want-ad description that appears on job sites and mailing lists: I've spent the last couple of weeks trolling Craigslist and have been shocked at the number of ads I've found that seem to be looking for an entire engineering team rolled up into a single person. Descriptions like this aren't at all uncommon: Candidates must have 5 years experience defining and developing data driven web sites and have solid experience with ASP.NET, HTML, XML, JavaScript, CSS, Flash, SQL, and optimizing graphics for web use. The candidate must also have project management skills and be able to balance multiple, dynamic, and sometimes conflicting priorities. This position is an integral part of executing our web strategy and must have excellent interpersonal and communication skills. Her disdain for this practice is the focus of the rest of the article: Now I don't know about you, but if I were building a house, I wouldn't want an architect doing the work of a carpenter, or the foundation guy doing the work of an electrician. But ads like the one above are suggesting that a single person can actually do all of these things, and the simple fact is that these are fundamentally different skills. The foundation guy may build a solid base, but put him in charge of wiring the house and the whole thing could, well, burn down. When it comes to staffing a web project or product, the principle isn't all that different -- nor is the consequence. I'll admit, when I got to this point in the article, I was fully ready to start the argument right here and now--developers have to have a well-rounded collection of skills, since anecdotal evidence suggests that trying to go the route of programming specialization (along the lines of medical specialization) isn't going to work out, particularly given the shortage of programmers in the industry right now to begin with. But she goes on to make an interesting point: The thing is, the more you know, the more you find out you don't know. A year ago I'd have told you I could write PHP/MySQL applications, and do the front-end too; now that I've Read More...
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If you've peeked at my blog site in the last twenty minutes or so, you've probably noticed some churn in the template in the upper-left corner; by now, it's been finalized, and it reads "JOB REFERRALS". WTHeck? Has Ted finally sold out? Sort of, not really. At least, I don't think so. Here's the deal: the company behind those ads, Entice Labs, contacted me to see if I was interested in hosting some job ads on my blog, given that I seem to generate a moderate amount of traffic. I figured it was worthwhile to at least talk to them, and the more I did, the more I liked what I heard--the ads are focused specifically at developers of particular types (I chose a criteria string of "Software Developers", subcategorized by "Java, .NET, .NET (Visual Basic), .NET (C#), C++, Flex, Ruby on Rails, C, SQL, JavaScript, HTML" though I'm not sure whether "HTML" will bring in too many web-designer jobs), and visitors to my blog don't have to click through the ads to get to the content, which was important to me. And, besides, given the current economic climate, if I can help somebody find a new job, I'd like to. Now for the full disclaimer: I will be getting money back from these job ads, though how much, to be honest with you, I'm not sure. I'm really not doing this for the money, so I make this statement now: I will take 50% of whatever I make through this program and donate it to a charitable organization. The other 50% I will use to offset travel and expenses to user groups and/or CodeCamps and/or for-free conferences put on throughout the country. (Email me if you know of one that you're organizing or attending and would like to see me speak at, and I'll tell you if there's any room in the budget left for it. :-) ) Anyway, I figured if the ads got too obnoxious, I could always remove them; it's an experiment of sorts. Tell me what you think. Enterprise consulting, mentoring or instruction. Java, C++, .NET or XML services. 1-day or multi-day workshops available. Contact me for details . Read More...
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Not too long ago, Don wrote : The three most “personal” choices a developer makes are language, tool, and OS. No. That may be true for somebody who works for a large commercial or open source vendor, whose team is building something that fits into one of those three categories and wants to see that language/tool/OS succeed. That is not where most of us live. If you do, certainly, you are welcome to your opinion, but please accept with good grace that your agenda is not the same as my own. Most of us in the practitioner space are using languages, tools and OSes to solve customer problems, and making the decision to use a particular language, tool or OS a personal one generally gets us into trouble--how many developers do you know that identify themselves so closely with that decision that they include it in their personal metadata? "Hi, I'm Joe, and I'm a Java programmer." Or, "Oh, good God, you're running Windows? What are you, some kind of Micro$oft lover or something?" Or, "Linux? You really are a geek, aren't you? Recompiled your kernel lately (snicker, snicker)?" Sorry, but all of those make me want to hurl. Of these kinds of statements are technical zealotry and flame wars built. When programmers embed their choice so deeply into their psyche that it becomes the tagline by which they identify themselves, it becomes an "ego" thing instead of a "tool" thing. What's more, it involves customers and people outside the field in an argument that has nothing to do with them. Think about it for a second; the last time you hired a contractor to add a deck to your house, what's your reaction when they introduce themselves as, "Hi, I'm Kim, and I'm a Craftsman contractor." Or, overheard at the job site, "Oh, good God, you're using a Skil? What are you, some kind of nut or something?" Or, as you look at the tools on their belt, "Nokita? You really are a geek, aren't you? Rebuilt your tools from scratch lately (snicker, snicker)?" Do you, the customer, really care what kind of tools they use? Or do you care more for the quality of solution they build for you? It's hard to imagine how the discussion can even come up, it's so ludicrous. Try this one on, instead: "Hi, I'm Ted, and I'm a programmer." I use a variety of languages, tools, and OSes, and my choice of which to use are all geared around a single end goal: not to promote my own social or political agenda, but to make my customer happy . Sometimes that means using C# on Windows. Sometimes that means using Java Read More...
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Recently I received a press announcement from Waggener-Edstrom, Microsoft's PR company, about their latest move in the interoperability space; I reproduce it here in its entirety for your perusal: Hi Ted, Microsoft is announcing another action to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice across the IT industry of developers, partners, customers and competitors. Today Microsoft is posting additional documentation of the XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) formats for advanced user experiences, enabling third parties to access and implement the XAML formats in their own client, server and tool products. This documentation is publicly available, for no charge, at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=113699 . It will assist developers building non-Microsoft clients and servers to read and write XAML to process advanced user experiences – with lots of animation, rich 2D and 3D graphic and video. Specifically, non-Microsoft servers can more easily generate XAML files to be handled, for example, by applications running on Windows client machines. In addition, non-Microsoft clients can be written more easily to interpret XAML files. This action will assist ISVs in creating design tools and file format converters to read and write XAML to create advanced user experiences. Microsoft is making this documentation available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP), which will allow developers of all types anywhere in the world to access and implement the XAML formats in their own client, server or tool products without having to take a license or pay a fee to Microsoft. The following quote is attributable to Tom Robertson, general manager, Interoperability and Standards, Microsoft. “Microsoft’s posting of the expanded set of XAML format documentation to assist third parties to access and implement the XAML formats in their own client, server and tool products will help promote interoperability, opportunity and choice across the IT community. Use of the Open Specification Promise assures developers that they can use any Microsoft patents needed to implement all or part of the XAML formats for free, anywhere in the world, now and in the future.” Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can provide you with any additional information. Best, N-- This marks the most recent in a slew of efforts by the Borg of the Pacific Northwest to "promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice", and I know it's left a lot of people Read More...
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Apparently, I'm drawing enough of an audience through this blog that various folks have started to send me press releases and notifications and requests for... well, I dunno exactly, but I'm assuming some blogging love of some kind. I'm always a little leery about that particular subject, because it always has this dangerous potential to turn the blog into a less-credible marketing device, but people at conferences have suggested that they really are interested in what I think about various products and tools, so perhaps it's time to amend my stance on this. With that in mind, if you are a vendor and have a product that you'd like me to take a look at and (possibly) offer up a review here, here's the basic rules: No guarantees. Sending me something will in no way guarantee that I will review your product, for several reasons, two of which being (a) I get really busy sometimes, and (b) I may have no interest whatsoever in your product and I refuse to pretend to do so. (Readers can usually tell when the reviewer isn't all that excited about the subject, I've found.) If you're not going to send me a "real" version (meaning not the time-locked or feature-crippled demo), don't bother. I have no idea when I will get around to a review, and I have no desire to review something that isn't "the real deal". I will in turn promise that the licensed version you send me (if necessary) will not be used for any purpose other than my own research and exploration (signing contract if necessary to give you that "fresh-from-the-lawyer's-office" warm and fuzzy feeling). I say what I think, pro and con. I will not edit my review to suit your marketing purpose, and if you ask me to do so I will simply note in the review that you have asked me to do so. I retain full editorial control over what I say about your product. Having established #1, I will try to be as fair as I can about your product, and point out things that I liked and things that I didn't. (Of course, if I hated it from top to bottom, I may end up with the only positive thing being "It didn't set the atmosphere on fire when I started the app", but hey, that's something positive, right?) Also in the spirit of #1, if you send me mail answering questions or complaints in my review, I will of course amend the review with your comments. You are always welcome to post comments to the blog entry itself, too. Unless you insult my grandmother, then I will have to get all DELETE-key on you. The reason I'm posting this here is Read More...
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A couple of people have asked me over the last few weeks, so it's probably worth saying out loud: No, I don't work for a large company, so yes, I'm available for consulting and research projects. If you've got one of those burning questions like, "How would our company/project/department/whatever make use of JRuby-and-Rails, and what would the impact to the rest of the system be", or "Could using F# help us write applications faster", or "How would we best integrate Groovy into our application", or "How does the new Adobe Flex/AIR move help us build richer client apps", or "How do we improve the performance of our Java/.NET app", or other questions along those lines, drop me a line and let's talk. Not only will I cook up a prototype describing the answer, but I'll meet with your management and explain the consequences of the research, both pro and con, for them to evaluate. Shameless call for consulting complete, now back to the regularly-scheduled programming. Enterprise consulting, mentoring or instruction. Java, C++, .NET or XML services. 1-day or multi-day workshops available. Contact me for details . Read More...
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