Misc. Misc.
From time to time I see bugs in the code and I start thinking "really? is it possible that no one noticed that bug before?". I thought it might be worth writing a little post on what helps me to deal with bugs and software quality in general and what are the common pitfalls in developers' thought process. Although it is not a very extensive post i hope it may inspire some developers to handle code with more care :-)
To make it short and clear, I liked the book a lot. From a very begining it is clear that author has a vast experience in software design and development.
There are a few bits that really stand out.
First of all I loved the chapter showin pair programming and minimal effort principles. It is really fun to read and shows some very interesting observations.
Well, i am not sure what to think of this book. It is a bit uneven as it is a composition of many separate articles written by different authors.
First chapter was really poor. A lot of talk but no real value. How many times do we have to hear that architecture and design are important? Entire chapter is a very vague and buzzword filled blob.
Second chapter was actually very entertaining but again also bringing little value. Author describes two systems he used to work on. He brings a list of factors that made them fail / succeed. I like the chapter as it seemed a bit funny and had some good points.
After many years of reading references to it, i finally read Design Patterns by the famous Gang Of Four (GOF). Book is probably one of the most quoted and refereed IT books ever :-). Many of the articles I have read, that referred to the book, were really badly written. In most cases I had a feeling that authors did not understand design patterns at all. As a result my impression was that book has to be poor as well and does not do good job explaining patterns. This made me think that book has to be horrible if so many people write these vague and confusing articles referring to the GOF book itself.
This post is my final look at the total of nearly 1200 pages long CISSP book.
In the end i think it was not a total waste of time as i really liked the physical security chapter and also chapter about cryptography was not that bad. Maybe it was not that bad of a refresh. But was it really worth it?
I would definetly not recommend it as i cant see who can really benefit from that book, its not senior and not junior, does not explain things well nor provide deep insights. Its just a too long poorly written book in my opinion.
Wordpress is a very nice blogging solution but does not really allow to create and publish multilingual blogs out of the box. The good news is that it allows you to set the language for frontend so that users see localized messages.
Writing wordpress posts in your chosen language is one thing but then you make sure buttons, error messages and other labels are translated. This is where gettext and translation files step in.
I personally liked the chapter about physical security. I have not heard about some of the ideas described there and I must say its quite interesting. I am happy I kept on reading so far as this part was quite cool.
Authors describe what are the high level factors of physical security. They describe how different types of physical security elements work for example keys, magnetic cards, chip cards, as well as construction elements. Its even hard to describe but I really liked that chapter.
Lately I see it on almost every CV we get. Everyone is a PHP consultant, Web Architect, Web UI Expert and god knows what!
In PHP world its quite obvious but not as annoying as in Java community. Almost every single Java candidate we get writes in his resume with terms like: Architect, Enterprise Consultant, Principal Architect, Solution Architect, Senior Enterprise Architect …. oh my god I want to shoot myself.
Then there is a list of JSR specifications or some other nonsense with every box checked as expert or whatever. You ask the guy in for a interview and he does not even know what is a compound index in the database. I mean come on. Why there are no Software Engineers any more?
I have had this discussion like a dozen times already so I thought I could write it all down.
In many cases it is not that big deal. The problem is that people seem to be blind and ignore the fact that accessors can cause design issues. Its more about principles and overall rules. You wont get swine flu and die if you keep on using getters and setters. So don't panic! But your code may be cooler and more coherent if you stop for a minute and consider should they be there.
Synopsis: Its the first time i decided that i have to cut the book in parts to actually read it! Yes i took the biggest knife i had at home and cut the book in 5 parts.
Second part of the book is even a bigger disappointment than the first one. I read chapters 4 to 5 which amount to about 250 pages.
Chapter four is a very vague description of access control methods in the organization. It is a ton of fluff and very little real concrete information.
Its the first time i decided that i have to cut the book in parts to actually read it! Yes i took the biggest knife i had at home and cut the book in 5 parts. Thats why i will review this book in parts : - )
First part i read is chapters 1 to 3 which spans over more or less 150 pages.
If you are looking for a motivation book, full of interesting insights and tips for planning a successful career this is a book for you.
Its a very lightly written book. You can read it in one go and you wont feel you are reading an IT book. Its more of a story and list of hints how to improve yourself and how to fit better in the modern IT market.
First of all lets make it clear, memcahced on mac? why bother?! Well i have to work on mac at work so i dont really have a choice. I assume if you are interested in that hint you are in same situation. Personally i think its just pain that i dont work on debian but any way.
If you need memcached running locally on mac download sources of libevent from lib event site. Then follow typical procedure of compilation and installation:
Its really basic stuff but worth to remember that you can easily validate XML Schema under linux command line with xmllint. It can be especially useful if you have to automate some xml files validation in crons etc.
Its a really great Jquery book. I liked a lot the fact the authors simply let you see the power of jquery not getting too deeply into javascript. There is no cross/browser details or low level tricks.On the other side authors dont skip over important details.
Book has a very good structure and consistently presents Jquery API. I thik there is not much more you could expect from the book in that area.
