Every now and then, I come across articles about the future for software developers that I find interesting. I usually note the URL and figure I'll get around to mentioning them here eventually, but...well, this will probably be the first time I've followed through with it.
The proliferation of Web technologies has been much on my mind lately. Last week, I talked about the continuum of Web development tools, ranging from traditional browser-based technologies all the way to applications deployed as binary executables. The interesting thing is that all of these tools are designed to achieve similar goals. So which do you use?
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On the other hand, this fragmentation of the market creates a kind of skills crisis. No one Web developer can excel at all of these technologies; the development methodologies behind some of them are virtual opposites. The pressure on developers, therefore, is to specialize. But how do you choose one tool to be your bread and butter from a field this broad? And by the same token, how do you recruit talent for your Web project when your technology requirements might eliminate most of the applicants?
Of course, software development as a profession has always required a certain amount of agility. Experienced systems programmers will tell you that computer languages really are all the same, and that learning Python is trivial if you already know Java.
The most agile developers, however, are those who approach programming with a firm grounding in computer science. Likewise, I suspect that the current abundance of Web tools is a sign that the Wild, Wild West of Web development is coming to an end. Increasingly, ad hoc projects and cobbled-together tools will give way to those that emphasize the values and methods of traditional software development, such as design patterns, code reuse, and refactorability.
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So why did I quote this article?
Well...primarily, I guess it's because I lose for not being a CS major. I took the path of least resistance and now I am paying for it. But I do have some super-sweet marketing, management and accounting skills. Take that, Mr. Computer Sci guy!
Secondly, I'm currently working with 3-4 different languages (not all for web-based apps) on a daily basis with no common design or structure standards, so the article hit a nerve. But I guess the variety keeps thing interesting.
My AJAX thing
In other nerd-news, I was searching for a code-sample for something (I forget what) a couple of month ago and happened upon the DaniWeb tech forum. I didn't actually find the sample I'd been hoping for, but I saw, as I was looking around, that DaniWeb was a strong community with a surprisingly broad variety of topic/languages.
I decided to join and chimed in on a couple of the topics being discussed (something about a SQL query and another about Coldfusion). Somehow, I even wound up in a thread about AJAX and commented on another member's code, even though my knowledge of AJAX was purely theoretical at that point. One thing led to another and I ended up learning how to do a little bit of AJAX. It's not anything super impressive, but I had fun creating it.
Here is the little code-thing I came up with to illustrate my point in that AJAX thread. It loads from a few MySql tables into a dynamically-built XML page. The tables are generic and could contain any type of data (which is assigned different levels to drive the hierarchy of an unlimited number of dropdown boxes). The labels to the left of the dropdown boxes are also dynamically loaded from a MySql table. Ideally, each lower level of dropdown should be disabled, but I didn't bother going that far (I also didn't put much data in at the third dropdown level).
If anyone tells me they want it, I'll make the source code available for download.
One of these days, I'll finish my take on an online Infocom text-based game (a php, data-driven, generic game template driven game) and subject you all to that one too. Count your blessings that I spend so little time on it.
I really had intended to rant about my car last week, but...well, you know.
As I drove home from work last Wednesday (in my super-sweet ride, a 1992 Saturn SL1), something very, very bad happened. A new message lit up on the dashboard's warning console: "Shift to D2." I'm about as mechanically-adept as a tree stump, but even I could recognize the warning for what it was: transmission problems.
Ah, crap.
I pulled the car off the freeway and parked it for about fifteen minutes (wishfully thinking that it wasn't a real problem and hoping it would just go away on it's own). I returned to the car, started it up and was relieved when I started driving and the warning light didn't immediately come back on. I made my way to the freeway entrance and merged without any warning lights (well, any that hadn't been there before the transmission problem appeared), but after driving a few miles, the warning reappeared so I made my way for the nearest exit.
Oh yeah, I should mention that I realized my wallet was back at the office sitting on my desk when I parked the car for its first breather. So I not only had no money or a driver's license - I also didn't have the roadside assistance card for my insurance company with me. And there had been a few computers stolen from the office in the semi-recent past, so I was worried that my wallet might go missing. I dreaded having to report all my credit cards, driver's license, etc. stolen and having to get them replaced.
After parking for the second time, I called the wife (who I needed to bring me home after the car was taken to whatever repair shop it would eventually go to) and then realized - only after grumping at her about not having the roadside assistance information handy - that there was an insurance card in the glovebox that would at least get me to someone who could connect me to roadside assistance. Duh! So while waiting for the wife, I arranged for towing.
It took the tow truck over 90 minutes to arrive (it was rush hour and apparently he was stuck in traffic), but the car did eventually make it to the local Aamco (an hour after they were closed). I had called the manager, named "Bart" funnily enough, while waiting for the towtruck to let him know I was coming and he had filled me in on the night-drop process.
Oh, another fact that's worth mentioning here: the "Shift to D2" light wasn't the only warning light I had been seeing on the dashboard. The "Service Engine Soon" light had been on for a few years (despite having been serviced repeatedly) and the battery light had been active for about two days prior to all this fun.
This car is 16 years old, is creeping up on 1000,000 miles (pretty low mileage for a car that old, actually) and has a variety of other problems - the odometer stopped working in late July, the driver's window won't roll up/down, the passenger-side windshield wiper doesn't work and the windshield squirter doesn't work - but there aren't really any problems that are very major. Paying for the transmission to be rebuilt was definitely more than I was willing to spend on the car, though, so I started looking into getting either a new car or a semi-new used car. I haven't had to make a car payment in about four years (the Jetta had been paid off since 2004) and the financial gymnastics to squeeze a $300-$400 car payment into the monthly budget were giving me some serious anxiety.
When I arrived at the office the next morning, I found my wallet just where I had left it and nothing appeared to be missing, so that was one load off my mind. And then I heard from the Aamco guys later that morning and received better news than I had expected: the battery light had been telling me that my alternator was failing, which meant that the electrical systems had been running mainly from battery power for the past few days. And when the battery had dropped past 12% of capacity, bad things had begun to happen (it was at 9% by the time I took it in). The transmission is controlled by an onboard computer that fails when there's not enough power, so this gave the appearance of transmission problems when there really weren't any.
The alternator was replaced, the battery recharged, and I drove away from Aamco a much happier guy than I'd been the day before.
So the moral of the story is to not ignore the warning lights on your dashboard. In my case, I blame the "Service Engine Soon" light that had been on forever despite the car having been serviced repeatedly. On the bright side, even that light is off now. Oh, and I found a mechanic that I think I can trust. So that's another bright side.
The end of Opus
The recent Opus strips have been hinting pretty strongly of the coming demise of Opus - much as Berke did with Bloom County so many years before. November 2 will be the last strip. Forever.
Here's an example of why Berke's Opus strip was great (even if it wasn't always "great," it was really, really good often enough).
With about a minute left before Apple's iPhone went on sale, Matt Robell threw his three-month-old Verizon Chocolate music phone onto the Fashion Valley sidewalk. Several times. Then he ground it into the concrete with his shoe.
The crowd around him cheered.
Loyal Apple customers have long been called the iCult. Yesterday's gathering - a 13-hour wait for Robell and the others at the front of the line - was complete with a sacrificial altar.
"I don't need this $&!% anymore," he said, stepping on his phone one more time.
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Are people really this easily manipulated, this stupid and - most frighteningly - this impulsive? Yes, Margaret, apparently they are. And Bereke, left-leaning fella that he is, is sensible enough that he recognizes it.
The comic pages are going to become a less interesting place.
On the bright side, he's going to be focusing on writing children's books like Mars Needs Moms and Edward Fubwupper Fibbed Big, so that's good news. I love those books - the stories and the art are so well-done. I thought I had rambled on about them both here, but I can't find them now...so they must have been written about and then never posted. Maybe I'll do it later.
A Terry Pratchett update
I can't believe that I haven't mentioned here is Terry Pratchett's battle with Alzheimer's here yet. I found out almost a year ago that he had been diagnosed and have been following the progression of his condition since then, but just never got around to mentioning it to anyone else. My bad.
I actually did have, in my copious unused rant-notes, several items relating to Terry, I just...you know the rest.
In December 2007, at the age of 59, Terry announced that he had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. I was concerned that I'd find myself talking to a Terry who was less sharp, less smart, than the friend I'd known for quarter of a century, and was relieved to find him as bright as ever. I asked about the Alzheimer's. 'If I look at the table to see if my mobile is there, the chances are I won't see it even if it is actually there. But if I know it is there, I will see it. Sometimes the brain will overrule the eye and say that something isn't there, even though it is. And because that something could be the little girl in the pink dress on the zebra crossing, I don't drive a car any more.
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I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimer's it's the best form of Alzheimer's to have. This is a moot point, but what it does do, while gradually robbing you of memory, visual acuity and other things you didn't know you had until you miss them, is leave you more or less as fluent and coherent as you always have been.
I spoke to a fellow sufferer recently (or as I prefer to say, "a person who is thoroughly annoyed with the fact they have dementia") who talked in the tones of a university lecturer and in every respect was quite capable of taking part in an animated conversation.
Nevertheless, he could not see the teacup in front of him. His eyes knew that the cup was there; his brain was not passing along the information. This disease slips you away a little bit at a time and lets you watch it happen.
When I look back now, I suspect there may be some truth in the speculation that dementia (of which Alzheimer's is the most common form) may be present in the body for quite some time before it can be diagnosed.
For me, things came to a head in the late summer of 2007. My typing had been getting progressively worse and my spelling had become erratic. I grew to recognise what I came to call Clapham Junction days when the demands of the office grew too much to deal with.
And here's a video interview I found, but never posted, with Terry talking about his trials with Alzheimer's.
Part I
Part II
It's all just so sad.
I've got Terry's new book, Nation, on hold at Mysterious Galaxy right now (as well as a new illustrated collection of old Robert E Howard stories and The Graveyard Book). It's only a couple of miles from the office, but I just haven't found the motivation to drive over there yet.
Douglas Adams died seven years ago. His Hitchhiker's books have held a special place in my life for much of my adult life - much as Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories have become close friends and not "just" words on pages. The loss of Douglas meant I was losing any possibility of having new adventures with my good friends.
But the unthinkable is happening. Another author has been commissioned to pick up Douglas's mantle and take my friends on new adventures.
And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Douglas Adams's increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy is to be extended to six titles, after Adams's widow Jane Belson sanctioned a project which will see children's author Eoin Colfer taking up the story.
And Another Thing... by Colfer, whose involvement with the project was personally requested by Belson, will be published next October by Penguin. No information has yet emerged about the plot of the novel but Hitchhiker fans will be hoping for a resurrection of much-loved characters Arthur Dent, Trillian and Ford Prefect, who were all apparently blown to smithereens at the end of the fifth novel, Mostly Harmless.
Adams himself had plans for a sixth Hitchhiker book, saying in an interview: "People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so five seems to be a wrong kind of number, six is a better kind of number."
But his death in 2001, aged 49, meant the book was never written, and "legions of Hitchhiker fans were left with their hearts beating a little too quickly for all eternity," said Colfer, author of the bestselling Artemis Fowl series for children.
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I haven't read Eoin (pronounced "owen") Colfer's Artemis Fowl novels, so I'm completely unfamiliar with his style of writing, but I do trust that Douglas's wife has protected Douglas's legacy by carefully selecting the right person for the job. At least Eoin isn't going to try to write the new book in Douglas's voice - he will be using the characters, places and familiar situations of the HHG universe, but will be telling the story in his own voice.
I'll be glad to see my old friends again, but I'm also a little bit sad that they won't exactly be...the same old friends I knew. I think I would have rather have seen Neil Gaiman take a stab at writing HHG. Or Terry Pratchett.
I'm happy. But I'm sad.
And for those of you who have never read any of the HHG novels, I have just updated the Douglas Adams section of the site. I will probably be adding more content to this section as time goes on (stuff about the movie, BBC TV version, books, etc).
