CodeCombat

CodeCombat: "Learn to Code JavaScript by Playing a Game"

Preferences/Settings should be minimized

Allowing a user to change how an application works by only going into preferences/settings should be avoided.

• Most users won't even look there so features will be underused which is a waste of development resources.
• Try to prompt the user to change their preference when they do a related action. i.e. if there is a preference for the number of items to show on a page and the user changes the dropdown to show a different number of items on the page then ask the user if they would like to update the preference to the new value.
• When prompting the user, avoid making the user click an extra time. Instead of doing a popup, just add text that prompts the user.

More interesting wait screen

I have seen many wait screens that do the job but are boring. I think it might work a lot better to make a wait screen that displays something interesting. Maybe draw a fractal or present a simple game. If there is something interesting, the user shouldn't mind the wait as much.

U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether software can be patented | Reuters

U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether software can be patented | Reuters: "The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide on a key software industry issue of which kinds of computer-related software are eligible for patent protection."

The type of work that I like to do

I like working on detailed, complex, and/or interesting problems on a product that I know well, has a large codebase, and has to support high load. I call those “guru-level” problems.

Change comments to logs?

It seems that almost all of the time, comments in a method work better as logging statements.
Reasons:

• The log statements still give clues to the developer about what is happening
• The log statements also give that information to someone looking at the logs
• Since log statements will be seen more, they are more likely to to kept current

Sitting Too Much Could Be Deadly, Experts Say | Fox News

Sitting Too Much Could Be Deadly, Experts Say | Fox News: "Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods — even if you also exercise regularly — could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place — at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV — just the overall number of hours it occurs."

" "After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down."

One idea that comes to my mind is to setup a standing height desk. The computer would be setup with remote desktop so that employees using it could connect back to their workstation and do work as if they were at their desk.  That cube could then be reserved like a conference room so that employees could use it for a few short periods during the day.  Optionally, the cube could have a tread mill right in front of the computer so that employees could also walk while working.

A Simple Rule to Eliminate Useless Meetings | LinkedIn

A Simple Rule to Eliminate Useless Meetings | LinkedIn: "materials that would typically have been presented during a meeting be sent out to participants at least 24 hours in advance so people can familiarize themselves with the content"

"begin each meeting by providing attendees roughly 5-10 minutes to read through the deck"

"Once folks have completed the reading, it's time to open it up for discussion.There is no presentation. It's important to stay vigilant on this point as most people who prepared the materials will reflexively begin presenting."

"If the material has been well thought out and simply and intuitively articulated, chances are the need for clarifying questions will be kept to a minimum."

XSLT example to iterator through a comma separated list

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<comma>1,2,3,4,5,6,7,88,99,100</comma>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
 
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:call-template name="splitcommas">
            <xsl:with-param name="comma" select="comma"/>
        </xsl:call-template>
    </xsl:template>
 
    <xsl:template name="splitcommas">
        <xsl:param name="comma"/>
        <xsl:choose>
            <xsl:when test=" not(contains($comma, ','))">
                <value><xsl:value-of select="$comma"/></value>
            </xsl:when>
            <xsl:otherwise>
                <value><xsl:value-of select="substring-before($comma, ',')"/></value>
                <xsl:call-template name="splitcommas">
                    <xsl:with-param name="comma" select="substring-after($comma, ',')"/>
                </xsl:call-template>
            </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
    </xsl:template>
 
</xsl:stylesheet>

Keeping sensitive data out of logs

When a product has logging there is a risk that sensitive data(i.e. passwords) will make it into the logs. How do we reduce that risk?

Logging an object or adding toString to a class might not obviously leak sensitive data so it is probably better to make sensitive data obvious. i.e. If sensitive data is stored in a Properties object, as soon as the properties object is obtained, it should move sensitive data to a separate location (i.e. a separate String variable in the class) and remove the sensitive data from properties so it is obvious that there is sensitive data.

Google security exec: 'Passwords are dead' | Security & Privacy - CNET News

Google security exec: 'Passwords are dead' | Security & Privacy - CNET News: "looking ahead, "our relationship with passwords are done," and that "passwords are done at Google.""

"any startup that still relies on standard passwords needs to ensure that it has an abuse team set up to deal "with customers getting compromised." "

"anyone starting a new technology company should be sure that one person is designated to focus on security and privacy, and that one of the first 25 employees should work full time on security and privacy."

OSGi

OSGi Tutorial: "What is the OSGi Service Platform? A Java framework for developing (remotely) deployed service applications, that require: Reliability Large scale distribution Wide range of devices Collaborative" It supports multiple jar versions so each library can use the version that it wants.

Semantic Web: Resource-Oriented Architecture Patterns for Webs of Data

Resource-Oriented Architecture Patterns for Webs of Data:

Start on page “1” (about 60%).

"Whatever domain we work in, we can imagine translating the data elements we care about into named resources:
http://example.com/account/user/jsmith,
http://example.com/employee/id/12345,
http://example.com/order/id/101-276-32, or
http://example.com/product/id/upc/800314900528.
These names represent good, long-lived, stable identifiers for these disparate domains."

"Avoiding data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) steps reduces the burden of having multiple copies of our information repositories. We can achieve the goals of a Master Data Management solution while simultaneously avoiding the unnecessary limitations of a prescribed format."

"When you point your browser at any random website, it does not “know” anything. It issues a standard, semantically constrained verb, called GET, to a named element and responds to what comes back. “Oh, an HTML document! I know how to parse that.” or “Oh, a plain text file, I know how to display that.” It is reactive. It does not know. Knowledge is a form of coupling."

"The client does not know what it is going to get, it reacts to what is returned. It knows how to parse standard types. And from there, it discovers what options to present to the user (if there is one)."

"The media type should be designed to support hypermedia links. This should identify the resource itself, as well as its related resources. Clients will be able to “follow their noses” through your hypermedia representations. In the following example, we can find our way back to the account resource itself (useful if we did not fetch it initially but were given the representation as part of an orchestration), its recent orders, as well as individual orders.
1 < a c c o u n t i d = " 12345 " >
2 < l i n k r e l = " s e l f " h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / a c c o u n t / i d / 1 2 3 4 5 " / >
3 b s l e t t e n < / name >
4 < s t a t u s > g o l d < / s t a t u s >
5 < r e c e n t O r d e r s h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / o r d e r / a c c o u n t / i d / 1 2 3 4 5 / r e c e n t " >
6 < o r d e r i d = " 141234541234 " h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / o r d e r / i d / 1 4 1 2 3 4 5 4 1 2 3 4 " >
7 < i t e m s > . . . < / i t e m s >
8 < / o r d e r >
9 < o r d e r i d = " 452354234534 " h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / o r d e r / i d / 4 5 2 3 5 4 2 3 4 5 3 4 " >
10 < i t e m s > . . . < / i t e m s >"

"A slightly more verbose representation [of a collection]:
1 < a c c o u n t s h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / a c c o u n t / s t a t u s / to p " >
2 < a c c o u n t i d = " 12345 " u s e r n am e = " j o j a l e h t o " s t a t u s = " a c t i v e "
3 h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / a c c o u n t / i d / 1 2 3 4 5 " / >
4 < a c c o u n t i d = " 34246 " u s e r n am e = " bkemp " s t a t u s = " a c t i v e "
5 h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / a c c o u n t / i d / 3 4 2 4 6 " / >
6 < a c c o u n t i d = " 77323 " u s e r n am e = " bl u u " s t a t u s = " d i s a b l e d "
7 h r e f = " h t t p : / / e x am pl e . com / a c c o u n t / i d / 7 7 3 2 3 " / >
8 < / a c c o u n t s >"

"The clients will not have to know how to paginate across arbitrary collections, they will simply discover links related to the collection with a rel type of next or previous. The server still drives URL layout, which is what we want in a hypermedia system."

This may not be as useful for external systems but seems more useful for internal systems where you can make your clients use the extra info.

The full book is available for $20.

Database Changes Done Right - The Daily WTF

Database Changes Done Right - The Daily WTF: "Unlike application code, you can’t exactly drop a bunch of files in a folder and proclaim that a new version has been successfully deployed. You also can’t just put back an older set of files to rollback your changes.

The only way to change a database is by running a SQL script against that database, and once you’ve done that, there’s no going back. You can run another SQL script to change the database again, but the only way to truly rollback changes is by restoring the entire database from back-up."

"Database versioning is as simple as maintaining a metadata table with two columns: Unique ID and Execution Date. Before executing a change script, simply check the table to see if the script has been executed already and, if not, run it and stored the script’s unique ID and date."

Integrating ALM: Lessons Learned Deploying Tasktop at Nokia | Dr Dobb's

Integrating ALM: Lessons Learned Deploying Tasktop at Nokia | Dr Dobb's: "This is one of those situations where an incremental approach with early user engagement -- where you have a chance to adapt installation or orientation materials -- pays off. If you pay close attention to the sorts of things that cause people grief during development, you can deal with them by creating either a development story (which changes the UI in some way) or a training story (for which you develop or enhance your training materials)."

"The moral here is to consider carefully every case of new user confusion, as it may be a warning of things to come."

"Software that supports complex tasks will probably require an investment in time for users to become adept. A well thought out UI and training material will allow users to perform basic tasks quickly and gain immediate benefit from their first steps onto the learning curve."

"Make any training screencasts short -- even if they're well structured, their perceived size can be off-putting (the user sees a 40-minute price tag on the screen and decides to set aside their learning for another day that never comes)."

Comments for people considering software engineering

I enjoy all the new problems & industry changes, that we can make a huge difference, and that it is usually quick to see the results of my work.
I didn’t expect my college degree to teach me so little of what I use each day – they are only able to teach the basics and we have to continuously learn new stuff.
I suggest going the extra mile if you only do the minimal coursework you won’t excel.  Do more and better than is required and/or side projects to push the boundaries of what you know and practice learning on your own.  Get involved in projects, research ideas, and try out new skills.

Increasing the max heap size can increase the chance of an OutOfMemoryError in Java

4.5 years ago I encountered a problem where I fixed an OutOfMemoryError by decreasing the max heap size.

Basically there is a C++ heap and if the Java heap takes up too much space then the C++ heap can get an OutOfMemoryError.  This generally happens when the java heap size is too near the maximum that that O/S allows – for Windows XP that max is in the 1.2 to 1.4 GB range so if your max heap size is 1 to 1.2 GB you may experience this problem.

The cost of patches

Developers are willing to put almost any issue into a patch, but we want to make sure that the customer knows what a patch costs them. A patch is an extra build that causes development hours of extra time to create, Q.A. hours of extra time to test, and extra time to install. We must always balance having some issues into production faster with having more issues get done in the long run.

What to do after "trying it again" works

News August 2013: "But if "try again" works, that doesn't mean you've solved the issue, it means you've just worked around it. Most operations are happy to leave it there, and most users are equally happy, after all it's working now and that's mainly what matters. But there's a glitch somewhere, and glitches tend to come back when you least want them, especially under load when it can make things even worse on your system"

Victory Lap for Ask Patents - Joel on Software

Victory Lap for Ask Patents - Joel on Software: "It took me about fifteen minutes to stop a crappy Microsoft patent from being approved."