Saturday, June 23, 2012

It's Not You, It's Me

The other night I was browsing some of the local computer hardware online stores. It was a rainy (or was it sunny?) sunday night (or was it afternoon?). Aware of that it was only two days before the Apple WWDC event, I bought a new Ultra thin Ultra light Ultrabook (or was it a Notebook?). The purchase was made from my not-so-thin and high-fan-speed burning-hot laptop Macbook Pro First Generation Unibody Series. What about the new one?

No, It had no apples.

Yes, It was a rebel act.

I got carried away and made secret plans: “- I should go even further with this and install Ubuntu on it! Linux is cool.”. Man, I wish I had one of those Che Guevara T-shirts to wear that late rainy sunday night in Stockholm.

Later we had The Talk, my Apple Computer and me: “ - MBP, I think we need a break. Yes, I’ve met someone else. I have to find out if the grass really is greener the other side of the source code. It’s not You, It’s Me!”. It had to be said. I had to do it.

Tomorrow is Reboot Day! Time to install Ubuntu 12.04 on my brand new Core i7 Ultra Thin Ultra Light 15” Samsung Series 9. See you later Apple Macbook Pro. 

Actually, I already have installed Ubuntu. I couldn't wait. Friday, between 12 am and 2 am was The Real Reboot Day. To an external SSD. The internal one still has the pre installed Windows on it. I develop .NET stuff and gotta make a living! Well, that was actually not the entire truth. I had to buy a Windows Professional upgrade, the pre installed version from Microsoft could not even join a domain. The Man always wins.

But in the couch at home the rebel act flourishes. I run Ubuntu from the external SSD, download stuff from the Ubuntu Software Centre and wear that Che T-shirt. Okay, that last thing I made up. The Revolution continues (or is it just a dream?).

ps.

By the way, is it possible to dual boot the Nokia Lumia 800?

ds.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Code Food


Recently I got the chance to develop some really nice html5 features, learn new concepts and write code according to those strict JavaScript Douglas Crockford practices that I am a huge fan of. I want to share this knowledge, but how and when?

Most projects I've been a part of during my career has been sort of a silo development environment: experts doing this, other experts doing that. And when they finally meet it’s called “the Integration phase”. Sounds familiar?

I think silo expertise is bad, really bad, because nobody in the project will get the big picture.  When panic hits the project plan (it always does), developer X probably will need hours to figure out what developer Y has written. Start counting the number of WTF’s per minute! Who's paying for that? How can we break this Team Anti Pattern?

Here's a simple idea: have some lunch. Eat, drink and talk with your team - at least once a week. One of you will have something to share, maybe new insights in html5 development or a Visual Studio add in that makes our coding days brighter. It’s not a presentation, it’s just you talking about what you have learned the last couple of days while working in the project. The Project budget can probably afford to pay for the lunch session. If not, go get some pasta salad for your friends, bring your laptop, speak about something during 25 minutes and expect to be served lunch by one of your team members next week. Feeling hungry?