The ‘morning-after syndrome’ as described by Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin):

Have you ever worked all day, gotten some stuff working, and then gone home, only to arrive the next morning to find that your stuff no longer works? Why doesn’t it work? Because somebody stayed later than you and changed something you depended on! I call this ‘the morning-after syndrome’. - Robert C. Martin, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#

Bob makes the point that by writing tests we make our code more stable and brittle to change, which prevents our coworkers from making casual breaking changes. Sure-sure, brittle tests are frustrating when refactoring, but at the same time these brittle tests accentuate the importance that the code under test should not be modified. Core components that your system depends on should be stable and brittle.

Bob continues:

Many factors make a software component difficult to change: its size, complexity, clarity, and so on. But we are going to ignore all those factors and focus on something different. One sure way to make a software component difficult to change is to make lots of other software components [like tests] depend on it. A component with lots of incoming dependencies is very stable, because it requires a great deal of work to reconcile any changes with all the dependent components. - Robert C. Martin, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#

Experiencing a bottleneck with your Object Relational Mappers, Services, Middleware, Database, or whatever? Then Memcached it!

Memcached was intially developed for LiveJournal by Danga Interactive in 2003, and is used by many large sites (YouTube, Amazon, Twitter, to name a few). Today, you can find a Memcached library for all your favourite languages (here's the list).

Now; cache testing is tough period, and testing Memcached (which is accessed through a telnet client) is even more difficult - it's fair to mention that there are a large number of wrappers for Memcached outside the .NET world, but I couldn't find one for that met my needs.

So... I wrote my own. :)

Introducing Memcached on Powershell

Sample usage and output

Loading the script (source can be found here)

Checking Memcached stats on an empty instance

Checking Memcached stats after items have been added to the cache

Clearing all Memcached items

Checking Memcached stats on a cleared instance

If your test obsessed then you might be interested in the Memcached tests.

As always feel free to contribute, view, or download the source here.

Experts continue to warn of a looming shortage of North American scientists, engineers, developers, and IT workers in general. Efforts like the K-12 CS Model Curriculum attempt to introduce computer science concepts to children as they progress through grade / high school in hopes that they'll fill this void, but there's another issue in play. Developers don't let their children grow up to be programmers.

My hunch is that, most engineers, developer, or related IT professional would rather see their children succeed them - becoming doctors and lawyers and such, not an IT professional.

Malcom Gladwell (in Outliers) presents an interesting account of career progressions within family trees:

In 1982, a sociology graduate student named Louise Farkas went to visit a number of nursing homes and residential hotels [she was looking for] the children of people [who had immigrated] at the turn of the last century. And for each of the people she interviewed, she constructed a family tree showing what a line of parents and children and grandchildren and, in some cases, great-grandchildren did for a living.

Here is her account of "subject #18":

A Russian tailor artisan comes to America, takes to the needle trade, works in a sweat shop for a small salary. Later takes garments to finish at home with the help of his wife and older children. In order to increase his salary he works through the night. Later he makes a garment and sells it on New York streets. He accumulates some capital and goes into a business venture with his sons. They open a shop to create men's garments. The Russian tailor and his sons become men's suit manufacturers supplying several men's stores The sons and the father become prosperous. The sons' children become educated professionals.

Farkas's ... family trees go on for pages, each virtually identical to the one before

From my observations, many developers / IT workers are first generation middle class, first generation post secondary educated, immigrants, or all of the above (myself included). Being a developer or IT professional is a small step up the ladder in helping our successors succeed.

The Project Badge displays your GitHub and Google Code projects in a badge that can be displayed on your site. This widget was built on the data being returned from my Open Source Service.

View this post outside your RSS reader to see it in action or view it here.

The source for the Project Badge can be found here and the source for the accompanying service can be found here. A list of all my publicly available web services can be found here.

Using The Project Badge On Your Website or Blog

1. Add The Asset References

Add the following asset references, and a reference to jQuery (if you don't have one already).

2. Configure Your Accounts

Set your project accounts (it's OK if you only use one host) then optionally set the appropriate filters - in my case my Google Code projects were prefixed with adamdotcom and I had duplicate projects on both GitHub and Google Code. By specifying remove:adamdotcom,remove:duplicate-items in my filters I filter out the duplicates and removed adamdotcom from the project name.

3. Add The Widget Hook
Add an element to your site or blog with the id of project-badge.

That's it!
If you have any issues, use the the working example as a reference, or send me a message.

How it works

If you have a project on GitHub or Google Code, you can retrieve your project details.

Single project host retrieval URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/open-source/projects/{project-host}.{xml|json}?user={username}

Multiple project host retrieval URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/open-source/projects.{xml|json}?project-host:username={project-host1:username1,project-host2:username2}

Example, requesting projects from Google Code in XML format:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/open-source/projects/googlecode.xml?user=adam.kahtava.com

Response:

Example, requesting projects from GitHub in JSON format:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/open-source/projects/github.json?user=adamdotcom

Response:

Example, requesting projects from both GitHub and Google Code in a single request in XML form:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/open-source/projects.xml?project-host:username=github:adamdotcom,googlecode:adam.kahtava.com

Response:

And Now What?

View my sidebar widget that uses this service to display the latest updates from my source code repositories here.

Contribute, view, or download this openly available source code here.

If these talkers and grumblers were on the internet they'd most certainly be on Twitter or have a blog.

Algorithm Analysis (Asymptotic Complexity / Big O Notation) courses are the bane of computer science students everywhere. These courses were mandatory, dry, and lacked real world pragmatism for students who just wanted to get stuff done. Well, that's what we told ourselves; that's the theory we presented to our friends - we were convinced that framework vendors or the hoogie-boogie man would figure out the most efficient way to performance tune / compile our code. We looked to Sun, Microsoft, or IBM to figure out the details. In truth we were lazy-naive students and Algorithm Analysis was tougher than we'd like to admit - much harder than programming in 4th generation programming languages, more difficult than computer theory, or operating system theory.

As I brush up Algorithm Analysis I found these perspectives interesting:

to be a good programmer, you just program ever day for two years ... to be a world-class programmer, you can program every day for ten years, or you can program every day for two years and take an algorithms class - Introduction - Analysis of Algorithms, Insertion Sort, Mergesort

Having a solid base of algorithmic knowledge and technique is one characteristic that separates the truly skilled programmers from the novices. With modern computing technology, you can accomplish some tasks without knowing much about algorithms, but with a good background in algorithms, you can do much, much more - Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition

It's unfortunate that our professors never mentioned that Algorithm Analysis would be an integral part of academic type interviews and a prerequisite for getting a job at Google, but then again who would have listened?

Contribute, view, or download the script here: Mailer.ps1

The most popular conception of creativity is that it's something to do with the arts.

Nonsense. - Paul Arden, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Wan't To Be.

This year marks a new decade for me (I'm saying goodbye to the late 20's). According to Arden's Creative Circle this blog was written during my era of Maturity and for the next 10 years I'll be Hell Bent On Success. Thanks for putting up with my growing pains and griping.

Today I do find my work fun, but I couldn't have got here without the experience I gained while plowing through boring jobs (like working the assembly line, tree planting, or digging outhouse pits). In order to find the job you love you need to start gaining experience now.

How to hack an Anti CRSF Token from PowerShell

To run this script:

1. Download the script
2. Run PowerShell
3. Load the script: .\Automated-AntiCSRF-Authentication-Script.ps1
4. Start sending spam-spam-spam: PS > spam-adamdotcom

Here's the output as seen on my machine:

This example uses a derivation of the .NET Framework's Web Client class but with Cookies enabled, so it depends on the AdamDotCom.Common.Service.dll assembly (browse the source here). This dependency can be automatically resolved by issuing the download-client function that's also found within the PowerShell script.

Contribute, view, or download the openly available script here: Automated-AntiCSRF-Authentication-Script.ps1

REST stands for Representational state transfer. REST is not an architecture, instead it's a set of design criteria. RESTfulness and RESTful web service try to make use of the full gambit of HTTP Methods (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS, and HEAD), and try to expose every resource or operation in a meaningful URI / URL. RESTful web services are intuitive, and work similar to the way the human web works (meaningful semantic data is returned to the client, resources link to other resources, microformats are employed, and so on).

Qualities associated with RESTfulness:

• RESTful is the the way the human web works - where the data returned by services can be easily understood by humans (or robots) and usually contain links to other resources
• RESTful web services use varying response formats. Common formats include: XHTML pages, XHTML microformats, JSON, XML, ad-hoc HTML, JavaScript, or build your own
• RESTful web services depend on meaningful URIs. These URIs can contain scoping information, but shouldn't contain query requests. For example: when searching for 'kumquat' on Google you're redirected to http://www.google.com/search?q=kumquat where your search query is present in the URI. Whereas a URI like http://www.google.com/search/kumquat/ specifies the search parameters within the URI - this is not recommended as it implies some predictability, search results are unpredictable
• RESTful web services also use query variables as inputs to algorithms
• RESTful web services expose a URI for every piece of data the client may want to operate on
• RESTful web services make use of HTTP methods (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS, and HEAD)
• RESTful web services don't keep the state on the server (that's the client's job), they don't like cookies, and don't like sessions
• RESTful web services make use of HTTP Headers

Examples of RESTful web services:

• Amazon S3
• Most of Yahoo!'s web services
• The Atom protocol

Qualities that are not RESTful:

• Most SOAP or other RPC-Style Architectures where XML messages are placed in the HTTP Body
• Frameworks that depend heavily on overloaded POSTs and XML (See Safety, Idempotence, and the Resource-Oriented Architecture for more information)
• Most big corporate web service frameworks are not RESTful. Some frameworks like WCF try to provide REST like functionality on top of a SOAP based API, but these add-ons can be obtuse and unRESTful.

Examples of unRESTful web services:

• The XML-RPC Flickr API
• The SOAP Flickr API
• The REST Flickr API - although the name implis REST, this API is designed more like an XML-RPC
• The delicious API

The growing popularity of web based MVC frameworks is providing a welcomed push towards RESTfulness and the simplicity that it brings, because working with the grain of the web (REST) makes life simpler and more semantically meaningful too. If you want to learn more about RESTful web services then check out Restful Web Services by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby.

Like a straight 'A' student you'll find me upfront and center, pencil in hand, when someone describes the traits of my demographic group. I fall somewhere in the Generation X / Y / Millennial demographic group (the boundary varies widely depending on what source you cite). I mean let's face it, who doesn't like to read about how our droogs are perceived? Wait a ... this could be another manifestation of Generation X / Y / Millennial narcissism others have been writing about. Crap!

When hearing about the traits of our demographic group, I question how unique the traits associated with our group are. It seems that these traits could be common knowledge to smart people everywhere (regardless of demographic segmentation), but then again, this could be my squeaky Generation X / Y / Millennial voice discounting the other demographics (yet again).

I thought Andy Hunt had an accurate description for our demographic:

[Generation Xers are] free agents, with an inherent distrust of institutions ... Fiercely individualistic, and perhaps a bit on the dark side, they'll just quit and move on if there's a problem at work. They resist being labeled at all costs ... They are quite pragmatic, working for a positive outcome regardless of any particular ideology or approach. - Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

I'd agree, an inherent distrust of institutions is a common trait in our demographic. It could be that we're immature and this tendency could wane as we grow older, or it could be a permanent scar stemming from our observations - many of us watched our elders (some with perceived jobs-for-life) jaded and unemployed in the 80's, then living through the uncertainly that prevailed in the following years.

Others have mentioned that we:

would prefer to work for companies that give them opportunities to contribute their talents to nonprofit organizations. - Volunteering as a Benefit

But then again, who wouldn't like to work for company that encouraged contributions to nonprofits and pet projects?

Yet others have noted that we:

demand to be communicated to in a direct, honest and transparent way ... are "'immediate driven" and quite keen to live their lives right now, rather than adhering to the old Protestant work ethic that suggests you can only reap the rewards of life after you have worked hard and basically sold your soul to your employer. - How to turn on Generation Y

Yup, that sounds fair. We expect transparency in the age of information. Continuing with that thought, it's also been said that:

[we] view time as a currency ... not to be wasted ... They want to get the job done, then put it behind them and enjoy life. - Retaining youth

Again, seems a bit obvious. We're not lazy, but we've seen our elders do a lot of weird stuff as they go through their midlife crisis - maybe if they didn't put off living in the name of work they would have maintained more sanity.

It's also been said that we:

prefer to dress as casual as possible and work with mobile gadgets or laptops in comfortable, creative spaces. - CareerNews: Tuesday, May 22, 2007

What demographic group doesn't like to be comfortable while working? Our attire should be an extension of workplace ergonomics - we're told to lift heavy object with your legs (not your back), and use ergonomically correct equipment. Wearing comfortable clothes and using gadgets should be a natural extension. :)

In general, I think our generation strives to work smarter (not necessarily longer hours), we try to atain a healthy work-life balance, and a number of us value experiences over owning stuff. I think smart people from other demographics have been doing the same things for years, but what do I know, I'm just another Generation X / Y / Millennial.

Why use an Anti CRSF Token?

An overly simple example: If I didn't use an Anti Forgery Token on my contact page (see the source code: View or Controller), a Spammer could POST data directly against my contact form and potentially drown me with spam.

Here's a hypothetical form created by an evil Spammer. This form is hosted on http://spammer.com (not my site):

<form action="http://adam.kahtava.com/contact/send" method="POST">
  <input name="fromName" type="text" value="Johnathon Fink" />
  <input name="fromAddress" type="text" value="prancesw@rmcres.com" />
  <input name="subject" type="text" value="Call for your diploma now" />
  <textarea name="body">Is your lack of a degree...</textarea>
  ...
</form>

Again, note that the form action contains a reference to my site (even though it is hosted on another site).

Now, imagine this was a form prompting a user for their username and password. These credentials could be maliciously stored while the user successfully authenticates and is then redirected to the site they thought they were visiting - the way phishing usually works.

After adding an Anti CRSF Token to my contact form, a Spammer can't access my form remotely (at least not without the token). My contact form with it's Anti CRSF Token:

<form action="/contact/send" method="post" name="contact">
  <input name="__RequestVerificationToken" type="hidden" value="0sAqY1ZKb+Qia4..." />
  <input name="fromName" ...

Note the presence of the RequestVerificationToken.

Said Spammer, can't abuse my form without including the unique token. Technically speaking the Spammer can still abuse my form, but he now needs to:

• Request (GET) my contact form
• Parse out the Anti CRSF Token
• POST their spam into my contact form along with the token

This is pretty easy to do if you have an implementation of a HTTP Client library that supports cookies.

How to hack an Anti CRSF Token protected form

Using an extended instance of .NETs Web Client here's how our Spammer could circumvent my Anti CRSF Token.

The Spamming script by that wascaly Spammer:

// create a new HTTP Web Client that supports cookies
var webClient = new WebClientWithCookies();

//download my contact page containing the Anti CRSF Token
webClient = webClient.DownloadData("http://adam.kahtava.com/contact");

//parse out the Anti CRSF Token
var antiCrsfToken = RegexUtilities.GetTokenString(
                      new Regex("__RequestVerificationToken=(?<CRSF_Token>[^;]+)")
                      .Match(webClient.ResponseHeaders["Set-Cookie"]), "CRSF_Token");

//now the Spammer can drown me in spam-spam-spam
// by scraping my Anti CRSF Token and posting it into my form
webClient.Headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
byte[] response = webClient.UploadData("http://adam.kahtava.com/contact/send", "POST",
                            Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(
                              "__RequestVerificationToken=" + antiCrsfToken +
                              "&fromName=\"Johnathon Fink\"" +
                              "&fromAddress=\"prancesw@rmcres.com\"" +
                              "&subject=\"Call for your diploma now\"" +
                              "&body=\"Is your lack of a degree...\""));

The Spammer is back at their old tricks sending me more Spam. ARGH!

What's the use of an Anti CRSF Token?

Anti CRSF Tokens help prevent phishing attacks. They aren't meant to prevent spammers or Dr Robotnik and his robots (or web scrapers) from running automated scripts against your web application. Keep in mind, that if your site suffers from other XSS vulnerabilities (where the privacy of your cookies or sessions are compromised) then Anti CRSF Tokens don't work at all.

Read more about how Anti CRSF Tokens work here: Prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) using ASP.NET MVC’s AntiForgeryToken() helper or learn more about Cross-Site Request Forgery at: The Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF/XSRF) FAQ.

The "Validation of viewstate MAC failed" error only occurred when a page contained an HTML form element that made use of MVC's AntiForgeryToken. The quick fix was to delete my __RequestVerificationToken cookie, but the error would rear its ugly head the minute I touched my assemblies. The long term solution was to add a machineKey element to my Web.config file - asking visitors to delete a specific cookies when visiting my site was not a viable option.

How I fixed the "Validation of viewstate MAC failed" error on Shared Hosting:

1. I used the <machineKey> Generator Tool to generate a machine key
2. I added the machineKey element to my Web.config file

My Web.config now looks similar to this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <machineKey validationKey="..." decryptionKey="..." validation="SHA1" />

Anyhow, I hope this post helps anyone else that's encountering this error.

Oh wait, here's the error in its entirety for The Google Machine's crawlers:

Server Error in '/' Application.

Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster.

If you're reading this from an RSS feed, then the changes looks like this:

These new sections make use of the services I created earlier - my resume content is pulled directly from LinkedIn via my Resume service, the Reading Lists and Reviews are being pulled from Amazon via my Amazon service, and I'm still working on a personalized greeting module which will make use of my Whois service.

Now, when I update my resume on LinkedIn, add a new item to my Amazon wishlist, or write a new Review on Amazon the content is updated within this site and indexed by the Google.

It took longer than expected to get these new pages up and running - mostly due to a couple false starts. You see, I'm running this site on Windows shared hosting which unfortunately doesn't give me many options - sure, sure, I could purchase another hosting account, but developers are like freak'n MAcGyver we like working within ridiculous constraints. It's all about the challenge! Anyways, I first tried using Ruby on Rails on shared hosting (fail), then tried using PHP on Trax (fail), and finally reverted to ASP.NET MVC. While ASP.NET MVC is heads and tails more fun than Web Forms / Classic ASP.NET, the impedance mismatch between strongly typed objects and web languages (JavaScript, CSS, XHTML) is still annoying. Thankfully the MVC Contrib project solves some of these pains, however it can't solve them all.

My next steps with this site are to: finish the greeting module, update the layout (drop the WordPress theme), and finish a Github / Google Code repo widget (kind of like this one) for the sidebar.

Contribute, view, or download the openly available source code here.

Andy offers many interesting tips, stories, and draws in external research. For example, did you know, that research suggests that: "if you constantly interrupt your task to check email [Twitter, Facebook] or respond to an IM text message, your effective IQ drops by ten points" or "the leading predictor of a tendency for road rage was the amount of personalization on a vehicle"?

However, I felt that many of the concepts discussed have become common knowledge (part of popular developer culture) and were somewhat obvious. To borrow from the Dreyfus Model; this book is probably best suited for Novices or Advanced Beginner. It's also fair to mention that I thought Andy's other book The Pragmatic Programmer suffered this same problem, but also keep in mind that "the obvious ... is never seen until someone expresses it simply" (Kahlil Gibran). In the end, I do recommend this book. It's a fun read, excellent for those who are new to the software industry. It would make a great addition to College / University programs.

I found the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition neat. It's a central theme throughout Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt.

Here's how Wikipedia describes the Dreyfus Model:

The Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition postulates that when individuals acquire a skill through external instruction, they normally pass through five stages. ... the five stages of skill acquisition are: Novice, Advanced beginner, Competent, Proficient and Expert - Dreyfus model of skill acquisition

We have different skills and are at different stages simultaneously in each skill - for example, someone might be an Expert at underwater basket weaving and a Novice at cooking. As we cultivate our experience we progress through these stages.

The categories (again, from Wikipedia) are as follows:

1. Novice
   • rigid adherence to rules
   • no discretional judgment
2. Advanced beginner
   • situational perception still limited
   • all aspects of work are treated separately and given equal importance
3. Competent
   • coping with crowdedness (multiple activity, information)
   • now partially sees action as part of longer term goals
   • conscious , deliberate planning
4. Proficient
   • holistic view of situation, rather than in terms of aspects
   • sees what is most important in a situation
   • uses maxims for guidance, meaning of maxims may vary according to situation
5. Expert
   • no longer reliant on rules, guidelines, maxims
   • intuitive grasp of situation, based on tacit knowledge
   • vision of what is possible

Presented with these categories we can draw some parallels with the software realm. Like say, create a list of events that you'd most likely find these different categories of software developers hanging out.

Developer Event Attendance and Developer Skill Categories:

1. Vendor or Technology Specific: User Groups / Code Camps / Corporate Training / Evangelistic Events
   • Many Novices
   • Many Advanced beginners
   • A small number of Competents that are transitioning to Proficients
   • Proficients and Experts might be leading the group or may have been mandated to go by their organization
2. Open Book Clubs / Non Specific Technology Meetings / Non Specific Bar Camp Type Events
   • Mostly Competents, Proficients, and Experts

Of course, this is just my opinion. I've noticed that my attendance to the events listed above continually shift. Initially I thought I was becoming a curmudgeon, but instead I shifted a couple Dreyfus categories.

I found Andy Hunt's description of Sheep Dip Training funny:

A sheep dip is a large tank in which you dunk the unsuspecting sheep to clean them up and rid them of parasites. The sheep line up; you grab one and dunk it in the tank ... It wears off, of course, so you have to dip them again.

Sheep dip training follows the same model. You lineup unsuspecting employees, dunk them in an intensive, three-to-five day event ... and proclaim them to be Java developers, .NET developers, or what have you. It wears off, of course, so next year you need to have a "refresher" course - another dip.

Companies love standardized "sheep dip" training ... There's only one drawback. This naive approach doesn't work ... - Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life ... I think Perfectionism is based on an obsessive belief that if you run careful enough ... you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people [are going to] have a lot more fun [than you] ... -  Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

The Enhanced Whois web service lets me know where my visitor are geographically located, provides filtering capabilities, and can act on referrals. This will allow me (or you) to personalize site greetings, hide my email address (or content) based on the visitor, and provide a unique personal experience. Alternately I can use this service as a classic Whois service.

How it works.

We're not anonymous on the internet and IP addresses are what uniquely defines your internet existence. Whois services let us determine the registrant of internet resources.

Using my Whois service you can:

View your enhanced whois record.

By the visitor's IP address (your IP) URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois/enhanced.{xml|json}

Example:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois/enhanced.xml

Response (using my IP):

<WhoisEnhancedRecord xmlns="http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <City>Calgary</City>
  <Country>Canada</Country>
  <FilterMatches i:nil="true"/>
  <FriendlyMatches i:nil="true"/>
  <IsFilterMatch>false</IsFilterMatch>
  <IsFriendly>false</IsFriendly>
  <Organization>Shaw Communications Inc.</Organization>
  <StateProvince>AB</StateProvince>
</WhoisEnhancedRecord>

By the visitor's IP address specifying a referrer, and a filter URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois/enhanced.{xml|json}?filters={filters,filters,...}&referrer={referrer}

Example:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois/enhanced/xml?filters=CA&referrer=Twitter

Response (from an IP owned by Google, with a filter for California, and a referrer of Twitter specified):

<WhoisEnhancedRecord xmlns="http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <City>Mountain View</City>
  <Country>United states</Country>
  <FilterMatches>
    <string>StateProvince</string>
  </FilterMatches>
  <FriendlyMatches>
    <string>google</string>
    <string>twitter</string>
  </FriendlyMatches>
  <IsFilterMatch>true</IsFilterMatch>
  <IsFriendly>true</IsFriendly>
  <Organization>Google Inc.</Organization>
  <StateProvince>CA</StateProvince>
</WhoisEnhancedRecord>

View your classic Whois record.

By the visitor's IP address (your IP) URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois.{xml|json}

Example:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois.xml

<WhoisRecord xmlns="http://adam.kahtava.com/services/whois" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <DomainName>68.146.10.100</DomainName>
  <RegistryData>
  <AbuseContact> ... </AbuseContact>
  <AdministrativeContact i:nil="true"/>
  <BillingContact i:nil="true"/>
  <CreatedDate>2002-06-03</CreatedDate>
  <RawText> ... </RawText>
  <Registrant>
    <Address>Suite 800630 - 3rd Ave. SW</Address>
    <City>Calgary</City>
    <Country>CA</Country>
    <Name>Shaw Communications Inc.</Name>
    <PostalCode>T2P-4L4</PostalCode>
    <StateProv>AB</StateProv>
  </Registrant>
  ...
</WhoisRecord>

So... why is this useful?

This is the first step for this site's personalization - if I know where the user came from, where the user is geographically located, and have the capabilities to filter their Whois responses, then I can tailor my content to the user. For example: if someone from Google landed on my site I could mention that I'd love to work there and provide my email address and phone number, similarly if someone from Calgary landed on my site I could provide my public calendar of local events. The possibilities are endless.

This service will be wrapped by a JavaScript widget that will take care of the asynchronous service polling, but that sounds like another post.

Contribute, view, or download the openly available source code here.

How it works.

If you have a resume on LinkedIn and you've added services@adamdotcom.com as a contact then you can:

View your resume - retrieve your Resume by first and last name.

By first and last name URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/resume/linkedin/{firstName-lastName}.{xml|json}

Example:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/resume/linkedin/adam-kahtava.xml

Response:

<Resume xmlns="http://adam.kahtava.com/services/resume" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <Educations>
    <Education>
      <Certificate>Computer Programming and Analysis</Certificate>
      <Institute>Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology</Institute>
    </Education>
    <Education>
      <Certificate>Bachelor of Science (Honours), Computer Science</Certificate>
      <Institute>Trent University</Institute>
    </Education>
  </Educations>
  <Positions>
    <Position>
      <Company>Corbis ...

Wow that was exciting, so now what?

Well.. Head on over to my resume page. My resume is being pulled from LinkedIn through this very service.

Contribute, view, or download the openly available source code here.

My online portfolio is increasingly scattered through the internet (reviews and wishlist are on Amazon, source code on github / Google Projects, resume on LinkedIn, and so on). I've been working on a couple services that will eventually pull my portfolio together while keeping a single point of reference, and... I'm sharing these services.

Introducing my Amazon Web Service.

How it works.

Basically if you have a Wishlist or a Review list on Amazon you can:

Discover your profile - retrieve your ListId (for WishLists) or CustomerId (for Reviews):

Discovery URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/discover/user/{user-name}.{xml|json}

Example:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/discover/user/adam-kahtava.xml

Response:

<Profile xmlns="http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <CustomerId>A2JM0EQJELFL69</CustomerId>
  <ListId>3JU6ASKNUS7B8</ListId>
</Profile>

View your Reviews - retrieve your Reviews by username or Amazon CustomerId.

By customerId URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/reviews/id/{customerId}.{xml|json}

By username URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/reviews/user/{user-name}.{xml|json}

Example:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/reviews/id/A2JM0EQJELFL69.xml

Response:

<Reviews xmlns="http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <Review>
    <ASIN>0321125215</ASIN>
    <Authors>Eric Evans</Authors>
    <AuthorsMLA>Evans Eric.</AuthorsMLA>
    <Content>Through this book Evan's ...

View your Wishlist - view your Wishlist by username or Amazon ListId.

By listId URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/wishlist/id/{listId}.{xml|json}

By username URI:

http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/wishlist/user/{user-name}.{xml|json}

Example:

Request: http://adam.kahtava.com/services/amazon/wishlist/user/adam-kahtava.json

Response:

[{"ASIN":"0471467413","Authors":"Mostafa Abd-El-Barr, Hesham El-Rewini", ...

So now what?

Head on over to my Reviews and Reading List pages. These pages make use of the data from this service. I should also mention that, this service was built on a previous iteration of my Amazon Web Service (How To Display Your Amazon Reviews and Wish List Using Amazon’s Web Services).

Contribute, view, or download the openly available source code here.

Where did the term 'bug' originate?

According to Phil Factor:

The word 'bug' actually is short for Bugbear, sometimes found as Bugaboo. The meaning is much closer to 'Gremlin', where the people who worked on engineering prototypes often grew to suspect that the problems were due to malicious spooks. I sometimes still hear it said that a particular piece of software is cursed with malicious spirits. The 'Bug' or 'Bogey' part of the word is traceable back to the fifteenth century in the meaning of 'Hobogoblin', devil or ghost. ... the word 'Bugbear', first recorded in the sixteenth century, is still used in referring to problems with machinery. - Confessions of an IT Manager, Phil Factor

How many bug types can you name off?

Wikipedia lists six types of bugs: Heisenbugs, Bohrbugs, Mandelbugs, Schroedinbugs, Phase of the Moon bugs, and Statistical bugs.

Which music should you listen to while squishing software bugs?

The Bug Song by Canada's Stompin' Tom Connors of course.

Bugs Bugs Bugs, If I had them all in jugs
I'd dig dig dig, till a big big hole was dug dug dug dug--
And that would be the end of the bug song...repeat

I once had a strong aversion to Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, pick the site of the week, ...) but today I embrace it. In the old days, I thought these sites were silly, a waste of time, and preferred to spend more of my time pursuing technical / academic activities. In retrospect, I think I was feeling insecure in my technical abilities (placing to much focus on technical pursuits), I probably thought I had a boring life (and thought everyone else was bragging about theirs), and I certainly misunderstood the fundamentals of Social Media (somehow I thought being part of the conversation meant I had to consume everything).

I eventually realized that Social Media is a lot like TV. TV is overwhelmed with commercials and mediocre shows, the content is hard to find. When I watch TV (if I watch TV) I mute the commercials, flip through the channels looking for something interesting, and multitask (magazine, laptop, ...). In the end TV is a leisure activity, I don't try watching every channel (I know I can't) and don't pay attention to the advertisements. I do the same thing on Social Media sites too. I don't pay attention to every post (I can't) and I don't pay attention to self promotion, promotions, or advertisements.

Today I embrace Social Media because it lets me participate in the conversation, share my opinion, connect with friends and family, and be an active part of our world. Oh yeah, and it's fun too!

"Don't be shy ... or nobody will know you're there" - Yusuf Islam / Cat Stevens

I joined the HP Pavilion tx1000 drop dead club last month. Apparently the tx1xxx models of the HP Pavilion laptops have an issue with the NVIDIA chip frying the CPU hamsters (melting the solder on the motherboard) - I'm not really sure about the technical details, but a broken laptop is bad news.

Whatever happened it first killed my wireless, then the machine wouldn't turn on (black screen, no BIOS, no boot). However; I'm writing this post from the same defective laptop. That's right folks! I did NOT have to find a penny older than 1982, I did NOT have to dismantle and cook the computer under a halogen lamp for 5 minutes. Instead I...

How to fix your tx1xxx laptop:

• Put your laptop on a firm grounding like the floor, counter, or sturdy table
• Placed your right elbow on the enter key and push down hard
• Pull on the opposite side of the laptop casting until you hear creaking (while pushing on the enter key with your right elbow)

I heard creaking and crunching as I physically bent the case (and the motherboard I'm sure). Now, aside from a crack in the case and a still defunct wireless card I'm temporarlily back in business - and in active search of a replacement laptop.

I'll give any company or product a chance, but quality and user experience is the deciding factor. I doubt that I'd purchase another HP machine, but I now have an excuse to get a Mac!

Free to a good home: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan.

It's rare for technical books to be held in such high esteem, but the numbers speak - this book has close to 200 five star ratings on Amazon, confirming that The Definitive Guide is still one of the seminal guides to the JavaScript language. Flanagan's book is a must read for developers and designers alike. Along with JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford of course. I reviewed this book a while back, you can read my review.

The Details:

• Comment on this post
• Leave a valid email in the email comment field
• The winner will be chosen at random and notified through email on Oct 1st
• I cross my fingers hoping that you don't live on the other side of the world (I pay for shipping)

Good Luck!

And the winner is Dan Carlson!

The title of Jeffrey Zeldman's book (Designing with Web Standards) says it all - this book promoted accessible, usable, search engine friendly web design and development through the use of XHTML and CSS while debunking the myths surrounding web standards. Zeldman is a well recognized name among web developers and designers - he's the the founder of A List Apart, and co-founder of The Web Standards Project (WaSP). His writing is entertaining, witty, easy to read, and insightful - it's very much like the content we're used to reading at A List Apart. It's also fair to mention that this book has been edited by industy experts and influencial writers like Eric Myer. Any developer that works with the web should read this book along with JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford.

Classitis is the measles of markup, obscuring meaning as it adds needless weight to every page. The affliction dates back to the early days of semi-CSS-capable browsers and the many designers' initially childish comprehension of how CSS works.
Alas, many have not yet outgrown that childish misunderstanding of CSS ... Classitis is as bad in its own way as the <font> tag ever was; rarely does good markup require it ... At other times classitis is exacerbated by a still more serious condition ... divitis ... Classitis and divitis are like the needless adjectives with wich bad writing is strewen. They are the weeds in the garden of meaning. - Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing with Web Standards

An example of markup wraught with divitis and classitis:

13 div elements and 11 classes for a single item. What a stench! :)  View this markup in action.

The equivalent markup disease free:

Cleaner, more meaningful, and with all the functionality of the former code. One div element and 3 classes for a single item.  ShamWow! View this markup in action.

Both of these markup snippets are visually and functionally equivalent. In the first example the divs, classes, and cryptic ids weigh down the page and pollute the meaning of the markup. In the later, a more semantic / structural approach is taken  Both these snippets were pulled from my attempts at the Google Web Developer Exercise.

Clean meaningful markup is the API that users and web crawlers consume - it's important and easy to keep things clean, it just takes a little experience. Thank goodness for patterns like MVC that let us control our API (the markup).

What Is Semantic / Structural Markup?

Markup is "semantic" when tags are chosen according to what they mean. For example, tagging a headline h1 because it is the most important headline on the page is a semantic authoring practice. Tagging a headline h1 "to make it look big" is not. ... I use the phrase "structural markup" to mean pretty much the same thing as "semantic markup." ("Structural markup" takes its name specifically from the idea that the web document has an outline-like structure.) - Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing with Web Standards

Zeldman goes on to make many great points on why semantic markup matters, here's my paraphrase.

Why Does Semantic / Structural Markup Matter?

• it helps make web sites more accessibile
• it provides a means to meet government mandatied web accessibility guidelines
• it's a critical component for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because the Google search engine is the biggest blind user on the web - Zeldman
• doing the right thing is the right way to do things - developers should have a sense of pride in being a craftsman :)
• did I mention Search Engine Optimization?

If you're interested in learning more about semantic markup then view A List Apart's source code, or read their many online resources: Topics: Code: HTML and XHTML.

MVC Public Service Announcement #6 : Modularity from EnvyAds on Vimeo.

Keep watching these videos here: http://www.railsenvy.com/tags/MVC

I did the exercise yet again (the third time) because my last attempt needed some improvements:

• it suffered from chronic classitis and divitis (too many classes, ids, and divs were making me itchy)
• it wasn't really using semantic / structural markup (all the extra divs etc... cluttered my markup, and some of my class names like container-borders are non-semantic altogether)
• it performed poorly and wasn't accessible (everything was being rendered in the DOM, there was no immediate rendered markup which kind of violated the idea of unobtrusive JavaScript, nor was it screen reader friendly)
• it wasn't making use of any JavaScript libraries to abstract browser inconsistencies out of the code
• it suffered from my software ethnocentrism (my variable and object naming like GoogleExercise was mirroring statically typed languages and not the native language they were being written in)

Here's my latest Google Exercise (addressing all the above concerns):
View this post outside your RSS reader to see it in action or view it here.

This attempt makes use of jQuery and uses 57 lines of JavaScript (almost 200 lines less from my last one).

You can view the code for this attempt here: google.contact.widget.js, index.html, google-contact-widget.css.

You can view the old code here: GoogleExercise.js, index.html, GoogleExercise.css.

If you think I can improve on my code then let me know. Oh yeah, and if you're a recruiter from Google then hire me! :)

As an entry level developer I thought professional meant:

• talking incessantly about technology (hiding my personal life behind shop talk)
• dressing up for my cubical (wearing polyester dress pants, cotton dress shirts to work, and occasionally ties)
• focusing on things that can be proven (giving little concern to interpersonal relationships or the general untestable messiness surrounding softskills)
• writing the FASTEST CODE EVER (I was sidtracked with premature optimizations)
• I tried to be a programming machine (working 29 hours a day)
• becoming an Microsoft Most Valueable Professional (MVP)

Those ideas were skewed and I was probably running the risk of becoming a bit of a douche.

Today I think professionalism means:

• being comfortable in your own skin
• being able to delegate tasks within a team
• being an effective member of a team (not participating in gossip, back talk, or other activities that erode a team)
• being transparent
• maintaining a work / life balance
• choosing the best tool for the task

It's funny how experience can change perspectives. I wonder what my definition of professionalism will be in five years?

Now, I've been finding Behaviour Driven Development fascinating in a geeky kind of way (kind of like functional programming languages, and programming paradigm debates), but BDD has left a gnawing uneasiness in the back of my mind - generally this mind chewing begins when I'm missing the bigger picture or when something just isn't right. I got a chuckle out of Spolsky's writing as he discusses specification frameworks:

the geeks ... focus on things they can see in the code, rather than waiting for the users to judge. They’re programmers, so they try to automate everything in their life, and of course they try to automate the QA process. This is how you get unit testing ... In order to mechanically prove that a program corresponds to some spec, the spec itself needs to be extremely detailed. In fact the spec has to define everything about the program, otherwise, nothing can be proven automatically and mechanically. Now, if the spec does define everything about how the program is going to behave, then, lo and behold, it contains all the information necessary to generate the program! And now certain geeks go off to a very dark place where they start thinking about automatically compiling specs into programs, and they start to think that they’ve just invented a way to program computers without programming.

Now, this is the software engineering equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It’s one of those things that crackpots keep trying to do, no matter how much you tell them it could never work. - Talk at Yale: Part 1 of 3, Joel Spolsky

Hehehe... Anyhow; I need to cut this post short. My DIY Nuclear Fusion Reactor and perpetual motion machine are calling my name. Errrr... I mean, I need to continue working through the RSpec book and playing around with other specification frameworks, because there's always value in learning something new.

When you encounter a large system that is poorly factored, where do you start? In the XP community, the answer tends to be either one of the these:

1. Just start anywhere, because it all has to be refactored.
2. Start wherever it is hurting. I'll refactor what I need to in order to get my specific task done.

I don't hold with either of these. The first is impracticable except in a few projects staffed entirely with top programmers. The second tends to pick around the edges, treating symptoms and ignoring the root causes, shying away from the worst tangles. - Domain Driven Design, Eric Evans

I can think of many times where developers (myself included) have really just been gold plating under the guise of refactoring, or other times when refactoring activities contributed superficial cosmetic changes while the real mess lies beneath - getting to the root of the problem requires significantly more time and work than we're often allocated and the cosmetic changes give us a sense of motion without moving. Then there are the occasions where seemingly superficial refactorings lead to an insightful break through.

Of course Evans isn't suggesting that we stop refactoring altogether, instead he suggests that we think about what we're refactoring, and that we focus on the parts of our software that provide the most value - in the context of Domain Driven Design this would be our Core Domain.

It's also fair to mention that this book has been charged as being just another patterns book, and while I can see this perspective, some of the concepts do come across as being overly abstract without clear implementations (code) to reference, but this books is much more than another patterns book. As a developer you don't want to overlook this book, it's an insightful snapshot into the mind of an experienced developer. From my experience the concepts and patterns surrounding Domain Driven Design frequently crop up in Service Orientation, MVC/MVP structured Web Applications, Object Orientation, Test Driven Development, Model Driven Development, and other modern staticly typed best practices. If you do find yourself grasping for more concrete implementations then you'll want to read Jimmy Nilsson's Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET book too - Nilsson's book provides many code examples while directly referencing Evan's text.

I highly recommend this book, it's a great reference to have alongside Steve McConnell's Code Complete, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass, and the Martin Fowler blessed books too.

A group of us reread this book as part of The Calgary Book Club. View my review on Amazon.

I ran my first half marathon this past weekend. Finding training resources online was difficult so I'm passing on the advice that I found useful.

How to train for a half marathon:

• Ensure you can maintain 30 minutes of moderate running at least a month before your running date (this is the most important step)
• One month before your race, run 18 kms (6 easy, 6 moderate, 6 hard, don't worry about how long it takes)
• 7 days later run 20 kms
• 7 days later run for 90 minutes hard
• 7 days later run for 60 minutes at a moderate pace
• 1 day before the race run for 20 minutes at an easy pace

The week before the race you should be feeling lazy, lethargic and ready for the race - you've tapered correctly. Tapering leads to improvements in running economy and muscle strength. Learn more here Tapering For a Marathon.

Other tips I picked up:

• If you're planing on taking gels or sports drinks during the race then make sure to take them while training
• Don't mix sports drinks and gels - take one or the other or you'll get end up getting sick (like me)
• Bring Advil or Tylenol with you
• Avoid fiber foods 2 days before the race (you don't want to visit the portables)
• Add more carbs and salt to your meals the week of the race
• Have your last big meal 10 hours before the race
• Have your breakfast 2-3 hours before the race

Running with 3000+ people for the first 16 kms was an amazing experience, after the 18 km mark I was questioning my sanity, and when it was over all the race participants were on top of the world. I highly recommend doing a half or full marathon. I raised some money for Team Diabetes and managed to finished under 2 hours.  Next year I'm doing the full. Look me up in the 2009 HSBC Calgary Half Marathon Results.

This begs for the question: how different are the developers that award themselves the title of Software Architect from George? How is it that someone can have a resume that reads developer, developer one week then next month reads architect, architect? Are we so insecure in our livelihood that we need to inflate out roles?  Anyone can claim to be an architect, and being one rarely means the same thing across organizations, doesn't require certification, and some architects appear to live in ivory towers (tend to live in fantasy worlds like George). Has the title of Software Architect become synonymous to being Full of Baloney? If George didn't switch careers and become a hand model he probably would have started pretending to be a Software Architect too. :)

I've joined the millions of a happy WordPress users. This site was running dasBlog - now dasBlog was pretty swell 4 years ago, but so was PHP-nuke, DotNetNuke, table-based-design, ASP.NET Themes & Skins, and ASP.NET AJAX. :) Web technology changes at an accelerated pace, and some software / technologies / frameworks need to run their inevitable natural evolutionary course (extinction). dasBlog did its job, but it's time to move on - not to mention I'll sleep easier knowing that Rhett won't be taunting me about how my blog reminds him of SharePoint. Adios dasBlog! :)

The new digs:

• WordPress running on IIS 7 hosted by GoDaddy's shared hosting plan ($203 for 4 years!!)
• Redirections by ManagedFusion Url Rewriter
• WordPress plug-ins installed:
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith - uses feedburner feeds in place of the WP vanilla feeds
  • Google Analytics for WP
  • Google XML Sitemaps
  • WP More Feeds - generates feeds for categories like musings (this feature was native to dasBlog, but not to WP)

Be sure to update this blog's RSS feed to: http://adam.kahtava.com/journal/feed/. Old feeds will continue to work, but you may experience some oddities.

The plan was to sell domain names, web hosting, and deliver websites to my clients - a one-stop-shop of sorts. I'd frequently obsess over the idea and smatter my coworkers, and friends (actually, anyone that would listen) with my fantastic ideas. I was obsessed. By obsessed, I mean, I obnoxiously sent out weekly (sometimes daily) emails containing mindmaps, and reams of links - all while maintaining a wiki bursting with my exceptionally mediocre ideas. :) I purchased reseller accounts, hosting plans - nothing was stopping me! Now that I think of it, obsessive tendencies probably run in my family - to this day my Mother vacuums her house three times a day, sure there were 11 people in our family and things got messy, but three times a day!! Try watching TV with the vacuum running three times a day It's enough to make you quit TV and take up programming. Anyhow, during the time of my obsession, a couple senior coworkers gently suggested that I need more experience. I remember thinking:

Man, I've already been through school, I have an freak'n edumacation. I'm building sweet programs. How much more experience do I need?

Of course they were right. Since then, every year / month / day has brought heaps of new knowledge and experience - experience is one of those things that can only be acquired with time. My idea of the one-stop-shop crumbled when I realized that I couldn't compete with discount hosting like GoDaddy / Dreamhost. I also realized that I enjoyed working in teams on large web applications rather than solo projects. Today I'll occasionally meet an obsessive CEO, I'll offer some advice, and smile. Good ideas tend to be self evident - they don't require wikis and link farms to convince people. If you can execute your idea (develop it yourself) then your personal passion and drive will contribute to it's success or at least provide you with irreplaceable experience - even if it is a hair brained idea.

If you're interested, I still have the reseller account which offers reasonable domain discounts. Thanks to all my friends who tolerated me through those growing pains. :)

Some of our pictures from Japan.

A video of our messy apartment:

My training up to this point has been terribly lax, I've been running 7km in about an hour. At this pace it'll take at least 3 hours to break 20kms - Ouch!

If you're interested in donating (or better yet, joining the run too), then follow these steps:

1. Visit The Canadian Diabetes Association
2. Search for Adam Kahtava
3. Donate

Anyhow; life isn't just about geeking out. I've got to run. :)

Content matters, design doesn't: Subscribers read your blog through RSS readers. Content is key, twitter widgets, plug-ins, and badges are self serving - they matter more to the blogger than their audience. If readers desire a more granular need-to-know-you level of information, then chances are that they already stalking you. If you're a graphic designer then aesthetics do matter.

Debriefings on local events without a unique personal voice are lame (actually, anything without a personal voice is lame): Most subscribers skim, they seek out information and move on. Well written articles with a unique personal voice continue to draw me in. Information about the number of people who showed up, what you ate, or the decor of the venue are minor details. Seriously, I'll email you if I'm interested.

Subjectivity is interesting: Reading / writing / learning is about considering alternative views and new opinions, there's always a degree of subjectivity - nothing is absolute.

Some authors are always right, which is always wrong: A blogger's blog is their domain, but it's distasteful when an author defends their posts in an attempt to save face (to appear right all the time). Sharing opinions publicly is about collaboration, and validation, not being right or wrong.

Gary Vaynerchuk offers this piece of advice:

The only way to succeed now is to be completely transparent, everything is exposed, everything you do - Gary Vaynerchuk

For most web / knowledge workers, transparency is key to cultivating an online presence - today, your online presence (your Google search results) is your resume, everything you do online is fair game - your search results (or lack of results) generally reflect whether you're an overall good-person, experienced, or a bit outdated.

A reassessment: last month the faltering economy finally hit home - I was out of work. While search for a new job, I was surprised that most potential employers (nearly all) were looking me up on Google. From Google they'd land on my blog, my Twitter account, flickr, and so on. In one of my interviews I was told of an unfortunate candidate that had questionable content and photos online - this was a deciding factor in his no-hire decision. This had me feeling a little uncomfortable and begged for a reassessment of my level of transparency.

Randy Pausch once said:

I'll [hire] an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term, earnest is long term - Randy Pausch

I echo Randy's sentiments. If you're an earnest, authentic, and good natured person, then transparency can be a huge asset. You should be exposing everything you do! Well... maybe not everything, there's little value in knowing what you ate for lunch, or when you're sleeping / awake - practicing some self moderation and making use of your inner monologue is recommended, because excessive transparency can bleed into white noise.

no matter what remember the web is NOT Las Vegas. What happens on the web does NOT stay on the web. I'll bet this guy wishes he'd have remembered that. - Arcanecode, Guard your credibility

With applications like Twitter and Facebook it's easier than ever to be transparent, but do we run the risk of being too transparent? How much is too much?

Over the past couple months I had the pleasure of working in a Java shop. Up to this point I've spent most of my time in the .NET realm. Working with Java was a great chance to experience the similarities and contrasts between environments, cultures, and web application implementations. Here are a couple of my observations.

Java developers are more knowledgeable than the typical .NET developer. Java developers tend to gravitate towards complexity, Linux, UNIX, open source, and continuous learning. They are less familiar with the wizards and drag-n-drop style development that often characterize .NET development. The Java developers I worked with didn't depend on a single unified IDE (like Visual Studio), instead each developer chose their text editor / environment (Emacs, Eclipse, TextMate, E-TextEditor, and jEdit were all being used on a single project). Each developer was responsible for being productive with their editor; and took responsibility for learning shortcuts, and other performance enhancing techniques. This broad use of editors placed an emphasis on the core command line tools which ensured that developers knew how the application was put together, and cultivated broad application troubleshooting skills within the team.

Unified IDEs (like Visual Studio or Eclipse) do not result in faster development, better developers do. Developers empowered with the ability to choose their development environment / text editors / operating system resulted in more passion and responsibility. Informal friendly rivalry between editor users drove development faster while providing diversity within the work place.  

Programming languages and technology stacks don't matter to experienced software developers. As a developer it's easy to become a fanboy of languages or technologies stacks, but... they don't matter - writing good software within the bounds of our project do. There's no reason to be tied to a specific language or technology stack. Sure, languages fall into a specific category (dynamic, static, classical inherited, prototypical inherited) but programming languages are very similar.

Steve McConnell has been saying this all along:

mastering more than one language is often a watershed in the career of a professional programmer. Once a programmer realizes that programming principles transcend the syntax of any specific language, the doors swing open to knowledge that truly makes a difference in quality and productivity. - Steve McConnell, Code Complete 2nd Edition

Don't write frameworks for dummies. [Frameworks designed by organizations] that assume some developers are not smart enough ... are likely to fail because they underestimate the difficulty of ... development. ... This attitude also poisons the relationship between [the developers and framework designer]. - Eric Evans, Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software

Evans goes on to make the point that there's a fine line between designing for dummies, and providing useful encapsulation / abstraction. I found this advice interesting because I had been wrestling with whether the ASP.NET AJAX Framework is for Dummies.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. - Mohandas Gandhi

I like the RubyGem system just as much as Ruby, it makes a developer's life easy.

For example, let's say I want to design a new class:

• Install Ruby
• Install the Test-Unit Gem (along with a couple automatically installed prerequisites):

C:\>gem install test-unit
 Successfully installed test-unit-2.0.2
 Successfully installed hoe-1.8.3
 Successfully installed rubyforge-1.0.2
 Successfully installed rake-0.8.3

• Create a new test.rb file along with a new class.rb file (alternately we could have used the Interactive Ruby Shell directly from the command line)
• Run the test (test.rb):

C:\>ruby test.rb
 Loaded suite test
 Started
 .
 Finished in 0.001 seconds.
 1 tests, 1 assertions, 1 failures, 0 errors

• ???
• Profit! :)

Contrasting this to the Java / C# world: I'd be installing a compiler (or slower yet an IDE), then installing / configuring a testing framework. I'd also probably be installing a build process tool (like ant / nAnt), then I'd need to create a build file.

Similarly if I wanted to install Rails at the command line I specify gem install rails or if I want to use  RSpec gem install rspec.

The Ruby tools, ecosystem, and community is fantastic.