The Pragmatic Craftsman :: Simplicity from complexity : by Stanley Kubasek ::

Do you know the differences? If not, read this short post by Johanna Rothman. You will have a clear picture after you read it.

Peer review: An author asks a peer to read, comment, and critique a work artifact.

Walkthrough: An author presents the work artifact to others.

Inspection: An author requests the services of a moderator, scribe, reader/reviewers in a formal meeting.

A creative person does things that have never been done before. Intelligence is the ability to learn and the ability to think. Personality traits is what distinguishes creative from non-creative people. Personality traits associated with creativity: diligent, stubborn, eccentric, reclusive, not religious, enjoys work.

These are just a few points taken from Creativity in Science and Engineering paper by Ronald B. Standler. If you want to find out more about creativity, you should read it. It’s definitely worth your time.

Struts, Spring, WebWork, Tapestry, JSF. Are you not lost yet? Do you know what they are and which one is used for what? I wasn’t so sure. Until now, that is. This easily digestible pdf document is very good. Matt Raible, author of Spring Live and a contributor to Pro JSP, does a good job explaining all of the frameworks. Plus, if you want to find out which framework has a good showing on a job board, he does a good job explaining that as well. Dive in.

I’m beginning to be a big fan of Spring: it’s lightweight, easy to use, easy to test. I see a lot of potential in Spring. Spring is what I’d like to master in the near future. I also like Struts, JSF and JSTL, but not as much as Spring. Why not learn them all?

tales from theserverside

Donald Bell, Philippe Kruchten, Gary Evans? Ring a bell? If not, they are all influential IT minds. And they all write articles that are published in The Rational Edge.

I have to say that The Rational Edge e-zine is probably the best newsletter that I subscribe to. The quality of the articles is great. Even though it mostly concentrates on the Rational Unified Process, it touches several others, like UML, book reviews, and other valuable information for a software engineer. (I do think however, that the Rational Unified Process (RUP) is the best software-engineering process.)

The archive section on the site is substantial, too. It offers articles that were written in the previous versions of The Rational Edge. I check back here often.

All in all, IBM is doing a good job in enticing software engineers. I highly recommend subscribing to the e-zine and looking through the archive, and/or searching for an article (using the search tool).

Yes, you cannot have both. It’s just not possible. That’s the stand of Johanna Rothman. She has some very interesting points.

“If you choose innovation, you can’t outsource,” she says. “You can’t define all the requirements and hand them off to anyone in a highly innovative product — requirements definition and product development have to be a joint exploration — and you can’t do that when the definers and the developers (and testers) don’t sit near each other. You can’t wait for a product to be done — you need to see the product unfold and adjust the product (or the project) to accommodate the things you forgot.”

It’s a different angle on outsourcing, but I think a valid one. You don’t get innovation from outsourcing. You get what you ask for. And that’s not always the case.

Read this short, but informative blog entry.

A professional is a person who can do his best ata time when he doesn’t particularly feel like it.

Retiring CIO Paul Ingevaldson offers 10 tips for surviving — and prospering — in the IT jungle. I think this is a pretty good list from a management point of view, but it is also somewhat related and applicable to programmers, especially for aspiring managers.

10. Don’t be afraid to leave IT.

9. Don’t keep IT in the closet.

8. Never think you know it all, because you don’t.

7. Understand the corporate strategy and mobilize IT to support it.

6. Develop a “cheap” image.

5. Don’t overmanage IT personnel.

4. Expect your people to make dates and budgets on projects.

3. Don’t charge out IT. Operate it as an expense center.

2. Learn to delegate.

1. Force IT onto the plate of all senior executives.

See the this list explained fully on Computerworld.com

OK, you might have noticed that I have been changing, rearranging stuff on this blog: first it was called tech.pal, then Stas on IT, and now Stas on Software-Eng. Hey, Stas, can’t you settle on something and stop changing it. The problem with that is until now, I hope, I couldn’t. This is similar to designing software: your first attempt will almost never be correct. Only after you refine it, rethink it, and rework it, you will have the optimal solution. I think I got it after couple of trials. I’m going to call it Stas on Software-Eng. Why? There are couple of reasons.

First, and this is what inspired me to change it, is that I wanted a variation of the very successful Joel on Software blog. I wanted to call it Stas on Software but I wanted to be a little more original, so I compromised and I chose Stas on Software-Eng. So far so good, I’m happy ))

Second, and this is the bottom line, Software Engineering is my specialization, my passion, and my future (I sure hope so) — I have a B.S in Computer Science and an M.S. in Computer Science with a specialization in Software Engineering. So Software Engineering is of great interest to me. And it will be for as long as I can make a living out of it. And for as long as I’m going to enjoy writing software. Hopefully for as long as I live.

So you know why I chose the name, now I’ll tell you what I want to talk about in it. I’m still a fairly inexperienced software developer: I’m 26 — turned 26 last week — with around 4 years of software-development experience. My goal is to become a true software craftsman, sort of an all-star developer. I know this is going to be a long journey and it is not going to be easy. But I am going to become one because I’m commited to it, and I’ve always achieved my goals (and that’s my goal). I want to share my experiences in the journey: what I’m doing; what I want to do; what works; what doesn’t work; what I like and don’t like; my views on software engineering; and more. Basically, I want to talk about any software-engineering issue, with the main theme of becoming a master craftsman.

Courtesy of TheCounter.com, which logs about half a million unique visitors per hour, the below are the latest compiled stats on JavaScript penetration, browser popularity and more.

JavaScript 1.2+ is active in 94% of all browsers. Only 4% have no JavaScript capability.

Java is enabled in 93%+ of browsers.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.1+ has a 74% market share.

Microsoft Internet Explorer follows with 17%.

Mozilla has a 1% penetration rate. (This is up from .4% a year ago. I think Mozilla share will rise in the upcoming years.)

Netscape 5.x and Opera both also have a 1% share.

Thursday and Friday are the most popular surfing days. (Hmm, interesting.)

A screen resolution of 1024×768 is used on 49% of all computer systems.

The 800×600 resolution is used on 37% of all systems.

A resolution of 1280×1024 is used on 6% of all computer systems.

A resolution of 1152×864 is used by 3% of users.

The 640×480 screen resolution is at 1%.