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Roy Fielding has weighed in on the recent "buzzwordiness" (hey, if Colbert can make up "truthiness", then I can make up "buzzwordiness") of calling everything a "REST API", a tactic that has become more en vogue of late as vendors discover that the general programming population is finding the WSDL-based XML services stack too complex to navigate successfully for all but the simplest of projects. Contrary to what many RESTafarians may be hoping, Roy doesn't gather all these wayward children to his *** and praise their anti-vendor/anti-corporate/anti-proprietary efforts, but instead, blasts them pretty seriously for mangling his term: I am getting frustrated by the number of people calling any HTTP-based interface a REST API. Today’s example is the SocialSite REST API . That is RPC. It screams RPC. There is so much coupling on display that it should be given an X rating. Ouch. "So much coupling on display that it should be given an X rating." I have to remember that phrase--that's a keeper. And I'm shocked that Roy even knows what an X rating is; he's such a mellow guy with such an innocent-looking face, I would've bet money he'd never run into one before. (Yes, people, that's a joke.) What needs to be done to make the REST architectural style clear on the notion that hypertext is a constraint? In other words, if the engine of application state (and hence the API) is not being driven by hypertext, then it cannot be RESTful and cannot be a REST API. Period. Is there some broken manual somewhere that needs to be fixed? Go Roy! For those of you who've not read Roy's thesis, and are thinking that this is some kind of betrayal or trick, let's first of all point out that at no point is Roy saying that your nifty HTTP-based API is not useful or simple . He's simply saying that it isn't RESTful . That's a key differentiation. REST has a specific set of goals and constraints it was trying to meet, and as such prescribes a particular kind of architectural style to fit within those constraints. (Yes, REST is essentially an architectural pattern: a solution to a problem within a certain context that yields certain consequences.) Assuming you haven't tuned me out completely already, allow me to elucidate. In Chapter 5 of Roy's thesis , Roy begins to build up the style that will ultimately be considered REST. I'm not going to quote each and every step here--that's what the hyperlink above is for--but simply call out certain parts. For example, in section 5.1.3, "Stateless", Read More...
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Having created a Window7 VMWare image (which I then later cloned and installed the Windows7 SDK into, successfully, wahoo!), I turned to the Visual Studio 2010 bits they provided on the hard drive. Not surprisingly, though a bit frustratingly, they didn't give us an install image that I could put into a VMWare image of my own creation, but instead gave us a VPC with everything pre-installed in it. I know that Microsoft prefers to promote its own products, and that it's probably a bit much to ask them to provide both a VMWare image and a VirtualPC image for these kind of pre-alpha things, but it's a bit of a pain considering that Virtual PC doesn't run anymore on the Mac, that I'm aware of. Please, Microsoft, a lot of .NET devs are carrying around MacBookPro machines these days, and if you're really focused on trying to get bits in the hands of developers, it would be quite the bold move to provide a VMWare image right next to the VPC image. Particularly since over half the drive was unused. So... I don't want to have to carry around a PC (though I do at the moment) just to run VirtualPC just to be able to explore VS 2010, but fortunately VMWare provides a Converter application that can take a VPC image and flip it over to a VMWare image. Sounds like a plan. I fire up the Converter, point it at the VPC, and after the world's... slowest... wizard... takes... my... settings... and... begins... I discover that it will take upwards of 3 hours to convert. Dear God. I decided to go to bed at that point. :-) When I woke up, the image had been converted successfully, but I wasn't quite finished yet. First of all, fire it up to make sure it runs, which it does without a problem, but at 640x480 in black-and-white mode (no, seriously, it's not much more than that). Install the VMWare Tools, reboot, and... ... the mouse cursor disappears. WTF?!? Turns out this has been a nagging problem with several versions of VMWare over the years, and I vaguely remember running into the problem the last time I tried to create a Windows Server 2003/2008 image, too. Ugh. Hunting around the Web doesn't reveal an easy solution, but a couple of things do show up a few times: disconnect the CD-ROM, change the mouse pointer acceleration, delete the VMWare Mouse driver and let Windows rediscover the standard PS/2 mouse driver, or change the display hardware acceleration. Not being really interested in debugging the problem (I know, my chance at making everybody's life better is now forever lost), Read More...
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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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This comment deserves response: First of all, if you're quoting my post, blocking out my name, and attacking me behind my back by calling me "our intrepid troll", you could have shown the decency of linking back to my original post. Here it is, for those interested in the real discussion: http://www.agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/jurgenappelo/professionalism-knowledge-first Well, frankly, I didn't get your post from your blog, I got it from an email 'zine (as indicated by the comment "This crossed my Inbox..."), and I didn't really think that anybody would have any difficulty tracking down where it came from, at least in terms of the email blast that put it into my Inbox. Coupled with the fact that, quite honestly, I don't generally make a practice of using peoples' names without their permission (and my email to the author asking if I could quote the post with his name attached generated no response), so I blocked out the name. Having said that, I'm pleased to offer full credit as to its source. Now, let's review some of your remarks: "COBOL is (at least) twenty years old, so therefore any use of COBOL must clearly be as idiotic." I never talked about COBOL, or any other programming language. I was talking about old practices that are nowadays considered harmful and seriously damaging. (Like practising waterfall project management, instead of agile project management.) I don't see how programming in COBOL could seriously damage a business. Why do you compare COBOL with lobotomies? I don't understand. I couldn't care less about programming languages. I care about management practices. Frankly, the distinction isn't very clear in your post, and even more frankly, to draw a distinction here is a bit specious. "I didn't mean we should throw away the good stuff that's twenty years old, only the bad stuff!" doesn't seem much like a defense to me. There are cases where waterfall style development is exactly the right thing to do a more agile approach is exactly the wrong thing to do--the difference, as I'm fond of saying, lies entirely in the context of the problem. Analogously, there are cases where keeping an existing COBOL system up and running is the wrong thing to do, and replacing it with a new system is the right thing to do. It all depends on context, and for that reason, any dogmatic suggestion otherwise is flawed. "How can a developer honestly claim to know "what it can be good for", without some kind of experience to back it?" I'm talking about gaining Read More...
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Recently this little gem crossed my Inbox.... Professionalism = Knowledge First, Experience Last By J----- A----- Do you trust a doctor with diagnosing your mental problems if the doctor tells you he's got 20 years of experience? Do you still trust that doctor when he picks up his tools, and asks you to prepare for a lobotomy? Would you still be impressed if the doctor had 20 years of experience in carrying out lobotomies? I am always skeptic when people tell me they have X years of experience in a certain field or discipline, like "5 years of experience as a .NET developer", "8 years of experience as a project manager" or "12 years of experience as a development manager". It is as if people's professional levels need to be measured in years of practice. This, of course, is nonsense. Professionalism is measured by what you are going to do now ... Are you going to use some discredited technique from half a century ago? • Are you, as a .NET developer, going to use Response.Write, because you've got 5 years of experience doing exactly that? • Are you, as a project manager, going to create Gantt charts, because that's what you've been doing for 8 years? • Are you, as a development manager, going to micro-manage your team members, as you did in the 12 years before now? If so, allow me to illustrate the value of your experience... (Photo of "Zero" signs) Here's an example of what it means to be a professional: There's a concept called Kanban making headlines these days in some parts of the agile community. I honestly and proudly admit that I have no experience at all in applying Kanban. But that's just a minor inconvenience. Because I have attained the knowledge of what it is and what it can be good for. And now there are some planning issues in our organization for which this Kanban-stuff might be the perfect solution. I'm sure we're going to give it a shot, in a controlled setting, with time allocated for a pilot and proper evaluations afterwards. That's the way a professional tries to solve a problem. Professionals don't match problems with their experiences. They match them with their knowledge. Sure, experience is useful. But only when you already have the knowledge in place. Experience has no value when there's no knowledge to verify that you are applying the right experience. Knowledge Comes First, Experience Comes Last This is my message to anyone who wants to be a professional software developer, a professional project manager, or a professional development 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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As Amanda notes , I'm riding with 46 other folks (and lots of beer) on a bus from Michigan to devLink in Tennessee, as part of sponsoring the show. (I think she got my language preferences just a teensy bit mixed up, though.) Which brings up a related point, actually: Amanda (of "the great F# T-shirt" fame from TechEd this year) and I are teaming up to do F# In A Nutshell for O'Reilly. The goal is to have a Rough Cut ready (just the language parts) by the time F# goes CTP this summer or fall, so we're on an accelerated schedule. If you don't see much from me via the blog for a while, now you know why. :-) Once that's done, I'm going dark on a Scala book to follow--details to follow when that contract is nailed down. Meanwhile.... As she suggests, the bus will likely be filled with lots of lively debate. The nice thing about having a technical debate with drunk geeks on a bus traveling down the highway at speed is that it's actually pretty easy to win the debate, if you really want to: "You are such an idiot! Object-relashunal mappers are just... *burp* so cool! Why can't you see that?" "Idiot, am I? I demand satisfaction! Step outside, sir!" "Fine, you--" WHOOSH ... THUMP-THUMP.... "Next?" I'm looking forward to this. :-) Editor's note: (Contact Amanda if you're interested in participating.) 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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Steve Yegge posted the transcript from a talk on dynamic languages that he gave at Stanford. Cedric Beust posted a response to Steve's talk, espousing statically-typed languages. Numerous comments and flamewars erupted, not to mention a Star Wars analogy (which always makes things more fun). This is my feeble attempt to play galactic peacemaker. Or at least galactic color commentary and play-by-play. I have no doubts about its efficacy, and that it will only fan the flames, for that's how these things work. Still, I feel a certain perverse pleasure in pretending, so.... Enjoy the carnage that results. First of all, let me be very honest: I like Steve's talk. I think he does a pretty good job of representing the negatives and positives of dynamic languages, though there are obviously places where I'm going to disagree: "Because we all know that C++ has some very serious problems, that organizations, you know, put hundreds of staff years into fixing. Portability across compiler upgrades, across platforms, I mean the list goes on and on and on. C++ is like an evolutionary sort of dead-end. But, you know, it's fast, right?" Funny, I doubt Bjarne Stroustrup or Herb Sutter would agree with the "evolutionary dead-end" statement, but they're biased, so let's put that aside for a moment. Have organizations put hundreds of staff years into fixing the problems of C++? Possibly--it would be good to know what Steve considers the "very serious problems" of C++, because that list he does give (compiler/platform/language upgrades and portability across platforms) seems problematic regardless of the langauge or platform you choose--Lord knows we saw that with Java, and Lord knows we see it with ECMAScript in the browser, too. The larger question should be, can, and does, the language evolve? Clearly, based on the work in the Boost libraries and the C++0X standards work, the answer is yes, every bit as much as Java or C#/.NET is, and arguably much more so than what we're seeing in some of the dynamic languages. C++ is getting a standardized memory model, which will make a portable threading package possible, as well as lambda expressions, which is a far cry from the language that I grew up with. That seems evolutionary to me. What's more, Bjarne has said, point-blank, that he prefers taking a slow approach to adopting new features or ideas, so that it can be "done right", and I think that's every bit a fair position to take, regardless of whether I agree with it or not. (I'd 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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From Wikipedia (itself a source of conceptual folk etymology, but that's another rant): A commonly held misunderstanding of the origin of a particular word, a false etymology "The popular perversion of the form of words in order to render it apparently significant"; "the process by which a word or phrase, usually one of seemingly opaque formation, is arbitrarily reshaped so as to yield a form which is considered to be more transparent" What do I mean by "technical folk etymology"? If you're a Java developer, consider the term EJB . No, I mean, seriously think about it for a moment. What images are conjured before your eyes when you do so? Horrendous APIs, hideous deployment requirements, complete untestability, and something that takes forty-five minutes to start? If you're a Ruby developer, consider the phrase static typing . Same sort of reaction? If you're a .NET developer, try on COM or COM+ or even ATL . Mystifying collections of code repeated by rote, cut-and-pasted from that very first project you built by hand from Inside OLE 2 , and once you got it to work, served as your basic template for every other COM/MTS/COM+ entity you ever built? Or, if you're any of these, how about Visual Basic ? Or maybe Web services , specifically all those WS-* specifications? As the MVP Summit Product Team dinners wound down here in Redmond tonight, I found myself at a table with (not surprisingly) Neal Ford and Venkat Subramaniam, two of my close friends from the NFJS tour, and who should join us but first Amanda Silver (lately of the Office team, but with her heart still firmly rooted in her Visual Basic dev days), then Don Box (lately of the Oslo team) and Chris Sells (also lately of the Oslo team), and a rousing discussion around the concept of DSLs--domain specific languages--arose, largely because Don wanted to sound out Venkat and Neal on the subject. Listening to the conversation (Don was mostly interested in Neal and Venkat's opinions, so I just relaxed and listened for the most part), I realized that the discussion was entirely rooted in this concept of context , that ephemeral structure surrounding a concept that gives it shape and color and taste and the other aesthetic qualities that lead us to "like" or "dislike" or "accept" or "reject" certain concepts. Don held the position--either for arguments' sake or because he believes it, I'm not sure which--that domain-specific languages lose context too easily once stored on the file system, in ways that data does Read More...
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