JavaRanch Radio

Blogs I am in the middle of writing

I have a habit of writing to the point where I am satisfied, then abandoning the work. In some cases I come back to complete the piece, but sometimes not. Below are some that lie in limbo...

Evolution of a graduate developer - about the transition from graduate level to competent developer and the skills and knowledge retain and approximate order of readiness.
Form over function - hardline developers push the importance of an application's function (how things work) over the form (or how it looks), but in the real world it works the other way.
Frameworks - One sizes fits nothing - follow on from a discussion about frameworks and their scalability and suitability for use at certain levels of scale.
Josh Says - an extended discussion on Joshua Bloch's Effective Java 2nd Edition, with code.
The Rigid, Agile and Chaotic Lifestyle - stories about appraoching situations in different ways.
Thoughts on JavaFx - A blog that I wrote and lost before posting from a while ago.

Win a copy of "Practical Dojo Projects"

This week, we're delighted to have Frank Zammetti helping to answer questions about his new book Practical Dojo Projects. Frank will hang out in the HTML and JavaScript forum.

The promotion starts Tuesday, September 30th 2008 and will end on Friday, October 3rd 2008.

We'll be selecting four random posters in this forum to win a free copy of the book provided by the publisher, Apress.

Please see the book promotions page to ensure your best chances at winning!

Kid in a Bag

I picked up my daughter from school today. It was raining pretty hard. As I approached the school on foot I saw a man walking away. He was carrying a small child, kindergarten age I guess. The kid was entirely inside a plastic bag. It was a clear, see-through bag, maybe a dry-cleaning bag for a coat or something. The boy's head was in the bottom of the bag, and the top of the bag was hanging past the kid's feet. The kid was drowsing on the guy's shoulder (either falling asleep or, I don't know, maybe SUFFOCATING!)

I (and a few of the Moms in the area) called out to him, "Hey, buddy!" But he just kept walking. I ran up to him and tapped him on the shoulder: "Excuse me -- you can't do that! You can't put a kid in a plastic bag!" He limply pulled at the bag to show that it contained some air as well as a kid, then started to walk away.

My question is -- what do you do? I'll tell you what I did: I reached out with two hands, grabbed the bag in front of the kid's face (it's over the guy's shoulder, remember) and ripped an enormous hole in the bag -- then walked away.

I think that's the right answer.

Google Chrome Debugger

I wrote up a little article on using the Chrome Debugger. It is a little rough, but some day I will edit it when I get time. You can find it here: http://www.pascarello.com/lessons/browsers/ChromeDebugHelp.html

Eric Pascarello
Coauthor of Ajax In Action
Moderator of HTML/JavaScript at www.JavaRanch.com
Author of: JavaScript: Your Visual Blueprint for building Dynamic Web Pages

The Fifth Value

I was just watching a presentation by Kenji Hiranabe on Toyota's product development.

In the presentation, Kenji talks about meeting a Toyota Chief Engineer, Mr. Nobuaki Katayama. Now, Toyota's management culture has been the topic of an increasing number of articles and talks over the past few years within the agile software development community. One of the things that many such presentations have pointed out (myself included) is Toyota's appreciation for skill and craftsmanship.

Kenji's presentation about Mr. Katayama, the Chief Engineer for Toyota Supra, Lexus SC and others, includes a very illustrating example of how this shows - Mr. Katayama designed manual transmission systems for 18 years before becoming a Chief Engineer.

18 years.

That's quite different from what we're used to in so many organizations in the western world where it's commonplace to have product managers and other senior management without any clue whatsoever regarding what it takes to build such a product. It is most unfortunate that we have this dominant model where people with an MBA and a pure management background are considered prime candidates to lead a product development organization. In practice, that often leads to sub-par products that are managed by cost and sales rather than by quality and value delivered to the user.

Too few of these organizations' managers seem to truly care about the products they're building nor do they seem to understand how those products are built.

In his keynote speech at Agile 2008, "Uncle" Bob Martin proposed a fifth value to the Agile Manifesto:

Craftsmanship over crap.

I have an addition, too.

Ownership over authority.

Our Team Room

I've just recently posted a photo of our new team room to the Flickr Agile group:

Click on the image to get to the Flickr page, including a short description and the option to look at a bigger sized version.