What to Read
If you’re choosing software, I wrote a somewhat irreverent guide on how to do that. Even software engineers will find it useful.
If you’re a developer, I wrote a career course. If you’re early in your career, it’ll add a million dollars to your lifetime earnings by giving you a clear, upward path. Supposedly knowing a little about negotiation adds a million bucks (compound interest, etc.), and this goes way beyond that. Many (most?) senior devs don’t know this stuff.
If you are considering going to college, or have a kid, I wrote how you’re probably going to waste $200K on your education. But also, how not to waste that money.
If you’re curious about how America will radically change over the next 5-10 years, I wrote about the rise of the robot chauffeurs. Or as most call them, autonomous vehicles. I spent weeks researching it, and can’t tell you how many times my mind was blown.
I also give talks on careers and programmer productivity, if you need a speaker for your conference. Reviews have all been positive.
While I’m changing how you see the world, here are three documentaries that have done that for me:
Latest Articles
Revert A File with WinCVS
For some reason, searching for "wincvs revert" in Google doesn't immediately show http://cvsgui.sourceforge.net/newfaq.htm#reversion, which it absolutely should. It explains what you have to do, but to make it extra clear here is a screen grab: You can replace HEAD...
Why You Should Keep Your Launch Dates Secret
It occurred to me that by keeping launch dates secret, Apple never appears to suck at software estimation. Microsoft gives a date, sails right past it, and everyone is up in arms about it. A better question is why doesn't MS keep things secret? Or all software...
Deleting (undeletable) Tasks In Eclipse
I recently had some more frustration with Eclipse, with no solution on the web, so I'm posting mine. The problem: I had an auto-generated task (TODO) from creating a class that implemented an interface. At some point, I noticed the task comment was gone, but the task...
Survey Hurdles And Incentives
I just quit another survey before completing it, this one from Rhapsody. I like Rhapsody, and I don't mind giving them my opinions to improve their service (or even to keep it the same). However, my time is valuable, and I can't waste it on sites that don't institute...
A Tivo Wishlist For Those Without Tivo
I had this idea and considered creating it as a service, but I've got my own web startup going and don't need the distraction. Several sites, such as Zap2it, TV Guide, and TitanTV (beta) already have the infrastructure (as well as the TV listings I'd have to license)...
Should Apple Buy Sun?
That question was posed on the LAJUG mailing list in a response to a rumor about IBM buying Sun. I think it's clear that Apple doesn't really want to get into enterprise computing. Their entry, the OS X Server, at that price point, shows they are not serious about it....
I Want a Java Example Project Directory
I'm starting a new project with some new (to me) technologies and finding the start up process - setting up my IDE and build script to play nice together - to be somewhat frustrating. I kept thinking to myself, "Somebody already solved this; wouldn't it be great if I...
Syncing Thunderbird Contacts and Calendar with Blackberry
Sometime late last year I switched from Outlook 2003 to Thunderbird. ((This was after switching from SquirrelMail to Outlook.)) I liked Outlook, I was used to it from work, so I didn't want to switch. But it didn't take long before it's abysmal IMAP support drove me...
When Do You Stop Adding Unit Tests?
Joel Spolsky recently posted a transcript of a conversation he and Jeff Atwood had on the Stack Overflow podcast. It's a nice reminder to think about the situations where unit tests add value and where they add maintenance hassle. The takeaway was that there are a...
Eclipse “cannot be resolved to a type” error
So I'm coding along and all of a sudden, Eclipse (3.4) can't resolve classes. Classes that are in the same package as the class I'm editing. Classes that are fully qualified in the import statement. Not good. The last thing I had done was add a Spring @Autowired...