The Codebelay Blog

Alan Kasindorf just introduced me to a great blog by Eric Day, Oddments.

If you are into learning about alternatives to MySQL like Drizzle, or how to scale writes to a database using Gearman, then I wholeheartedly recommend his blog.

I really like the samples of code he puts up that acts as a very useful, and direct tutorial to new technologies.

This week a web project that I’m working on started to fall behind. On the key things that made this happen was adding a set of feature requests last minute.

I understand it’s important to deliver value, but when new sets of features are added to a project, it causes the project to slip.

What should you do?

Learn to say, “No.”

It’s hard to do, but take the design of the iPhone for example. Instead of saying yes to more features, Steve Jobs took the approach of saying “No,” in order to create something light-weight, elegant and a work of genius.

Less is more.

Ever see characters any of these characters:

1) ^M

2) <feff>

3) A black diamond with a white question mark in it.

4) What<92>s going on?

???

Does your version control system tell everything has changed when it doesn’t?

Does your web app break because one of the above characters?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone!

If you’ve dealt with this and figured out it please definitely shared your findings in the comments below.

I believe it is *the* number one issue in working in a hybrid environment, e.g. with Windows, Linux, and OS X.

In the next blog posts, I’ll talk about how I’ve struggled with these issues with other developers.

Being on the bleeding edge of technology just isn’t as profitable as making money. A good example right now is the beer industry. BUD is making tons off of our down economic times. But I bet you if you look at BUD, you might find a non-networked FoxPro application, or something from 10 years ago. You might find that there are copying processes that you would’ve replaced with rsync ages ago, or user rights managements issues still solved with point and click.

I can’t say for sure, because I’m not there. If the clothing that most people wear in Fortune 500 companies is any indication, their tech is 10 years behind the times.

How do you communicate to them?

Kathy Sierra style and use a deck. Create a power slide presentation for free at Google Docs.

If you’re at a big company, a coder that turns his passion and goals into something others share uses a deck. By my count, you should spend an hour of your day making a deck to get a point across.

ScribeFire is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to post to your blog. In fact, I didn’t have to go through the WordPress interface to publish this, and used ScribeFire’s interface instead. It’s a must have plug-in if you’re a blogger.

Technorati Tags: scribefire, wordpress, plugins