Table or Booth?

Opting for Opt-in

"News and updates" pollute our mailboxes every day.  They're not always the infamous kind of spam we all know and hate; now they're 'newsvertisements,' sent to you because of that little, afterthought-checkbox at the bottom of on-line account sign-up forms.  They're usually checked by default.  At the rate new web apps are created, this is an increasingly common occurrence.

Keeping it Fresh

"Selling web-based software through ISPs is like selling sushi through vending machines"

- Paul Graham, in Hackers and Painters, Big Ideas From the Computer Age.

He makes a good case for owning the hardware as well as the software.  From a startup perspective, I can see how it would be tempting to do otherwise and consider outsourcing this.

28 Steps to Yak Farming

In the effort to automate some internal development processes, I wrote to Tom, a friend of mine who I know experiences some of the process pain:

Open-Source Forces Commoditization?

OReilly recently reports that JBuilder is open-sourcing their IDE.  Is this more proof of IDE commoditization?

It makes me wonder; does open-sourcing force commodization?  You might argue this as a tactic used by second or third place competitors to grab market share, forcing the commoditization process.  It's hard to argue that this can't at least be partially successful.

The M/VC Antipattern

Introduction
M/VC may be more familiar as "MVC," or Model-View-Controller the design pattern used in the Smalltalk environment [KP88] and cemented as the "Observer" pattern in Design Patterns [GHJV95] by the Gang Of Four.  In real life, subconsciously plowing along with M, then V, then C often leads to MV with little or no decoupled C.  Call this M/VC.  With controller code woven deeply into your view, it becomes nearly impossible to later switch the view out.

On Career Choices...

"One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass.  Meaning that unpleasant work pays."

- Paul Graham, Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas

A few other useful programming career-oriented links:

• How to Keep Your Job
• Discussion with Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt
• Advice from Monster.com
• Paul Graham: Hackers and Painters
• Keep Offshoring From Taking You

Semantic Web Introduction

Occasionally, I get asked for pointers on the Semantic Web.  Since I've made embarrassingly brief appearances as a representative to a W3C Semantic Web Working Group and have followed the Semantic Web evolution for several years now, I  suppose I can rightly point and say "Go there."

In doing this, a technical question that keeps popping up is... "What is it?"  The, slightly-less-technical follow-up question is "Where can I go for more info?"    Consider this blog entry answers to these innocent questions. 

Standing Firm in Software

Dr. Tony Evans once said, "When it comes to taking a stand, too many of us have our feet planted firmly in mid-air."

He meant it in the context of knowing your faith and standing by it when, maybe  even especially when, it's not popular.  So true.  It reminds me of my beloved U.S. Marine Corps motto: "Semper Fidelis," which means always faithful.  But that was another time and place...

It's worth considering that standing firm applies to many things, not excluding software.  So how are we supposed to do this, exactly?   

How do you say "SuSE"?

Maybe soon we'll all be saying No-VELL since Novell now owns and brands it.  But for many it will remain SuSE, now matter how it's pronounced.  How do you say it?