I’m on a EJB3 mission March 15, 2008

The Hunt

I’ve gone on a mad hunt across the internet. It started a few weeks ago when I realized that my JEE knowledge needs to be improved. I mean, I know the concepts, I’ve got the basics, sheesh, I’ve even been on an EJB3 course! The problem the way I see it is that I haven’t studied and implemented something all the way through.I haven’t properly, practically built that many proper JEE apps. If any.

So with bow and arrow, or rather in this case, Google and keyboard, I went hunting. I quickly realized that it wasn’t as easy to find proper resources as I first anticipated. I should probably indicate that my quest was to find a tutorial (if that is what one would call it) that would take me all the way through. I mean everything. I wanted something that can lay down all the groundwork and then build on that solid foundation everything I would need to know.

Problem was that all the tutorials had some sort of problem. Some would indicate that I would need to know technology x and y, which I did, but then go on to assume I had knowledge of other technologies and concepts that I did not. Some “tutorials” would be very vendor or technology specific; for example, a tutorial on writing WebServices using Eclipse, Ant and whatever arbitrary tool (Ex Axis) doesn’t teach me what it is all about. It means that the arbitrary tools do a lot of work for me, work that I would like to understand before I use the tool. All of this takes away from a complete learning experience.

Looking at these problems from another angle would let me come to realize that maybe it all doesn’t really matter. Going to the beach by means of train or bus really doesn’t make any difference to my prospective day of sunshine, does it?

The Find

Well, I have a personality that borders on the over zealous side which I realize might somehow be detrimental to my health. Either way, I found a set of resources which I believe will get me where I want to be. I will list them here:

• Sang Shin’s Java Passion
  When I attended Sun Tech Days this year in Johannesburg this man’s passion was so strong right off the bat that it affected and excited everyone attending. I like his site since it takes you through groundwork before it gets to the main meal.

• Sun’s Java 5 EE TutorialThis is probably the starting point from Sun’s perspective. It’s based on Glassfish which is the reference framework from Sun. This book looks to be the Full Monty sitting at 1124 pages in total.

• Mastering Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, 4th Edition

  

• Online resources other than those listed above:
  http://www.java.net
  http://www.netbeans.org

Oh time, oh so precious May 22, 2007

I attended a ‘Time Management‘ course on Friday presented by my company’s in-house training institute. Frankly, after the previous course I wasn’t looking forward to it (let’s just say the facilitator wasn’t my type). I think the fact that my time management skills was SO bad, and the real urge for me to fix it, overcome this fear. The course turned out to be very useful and this facilitator _much_ better

So, Java certification? I’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time now but I haven’t had the time. Yeah, I know, it’s everybody’s excuse. Let me put it like this; my dynamic personality has the ability to take on either the chronic-procrastinator-persona or the obsessive-workaholic-persona. It doesn’t leave much space for anything else. In the course they talk about Type A and Type B personalities. Most people know about these already. Type A is the workaholic, perfectionist, I’ll rather do it myself and be sure it’s done right type. Where Type B is more laid back and relaxed.

I knew this stuff before and I knew the characteristics of both applied to me. What I didn’t realise before was that I am Type A at work and Type B at home. To the extent of opposite extremes. In other words, I really did need that course and I really do need to do something about how I spend my time. The certification will require for me to overcome my laziness at home and do some proper hard work. Eek! I do so much like to lie in bed and watch episode after episode of Prison Break or Numb3rs or whatever after a long day of obsessive overindulgent urgency at work…

I’ve created a schedule that sort of loosely sets out a plan for how I will spend the time that I have to myself on a daily basis. It takes into account time for going to gym three times a week, social nights twice a week, and open weekends. The open nights and weekends can really be used for anything and I can for example swop a Wednesday’s open night around with the studying of Thursday or the reading of Tuesday; to allow for things to happen when the time fits and so not to be too strict.

To start me off on the certification I found that JavaRanch has a lot of useful information and help. I also trolled over to Amazon and found a few books that will help me along, specifically “SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide“. While I was at it I created a Amazon wish-list. *nudge nudge wink wink*

Right, so according to my schedule…hmm… I was supposed to be in bed 36 minutes ago! *sigh*

Why do you do it? (updated) April 10, 2007

This morning, trying to get back into the working mood after the long easter weekend, I got a good dose of ‘Coding Horror’. Keep in mind, in the back of my head I was completely confused, comtemplating which direction to take my life (very long story) and questioning the motives I had for the last 10years. It’s a little tough when you start to think that you may have gone off and spent a lot of time and effort in something you’re now not so sure about…

Anyhow, Jeff’s post SEOs: the New Pornographers of the Web (see the qoute in the grey box) kinda struck a cord with me where he tells the story of his cousin Steven. Steven wanted to be a musician; I reckon he saw a band one day and thought that it was way cool and that being on stage in front of thousands of people should be his dream. He ended up chasing this dream relentlessly, but he was chasing it the wrong way. He was going for the dough and not for the dream, he was hunting fame and fortune and not the passion that comes with a true love for music.

I sit with almost the same kind of problem. I’m so worried about my life and the things I want to achieve that I get impatient with the pace my career is going at. Instead I should focus on that which I love about development and enjoy that everyday. I hope this is just a phase that will blow over…

(…update – 16 April ‘07…)

Coincedentally, a few days later on the same blog, Jeff’s post again touches a subject I think is closely related. In “Is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a Failure?”, Jeff questions whether the idea of paying people small amounts for small tasks, specifically Amazon, really is beneficial to their business. The reasoning is that reviews at Amazon and other sites are useful because people aren’t hunting a few dollars, they do it because they want to give something back to the community that’s been so helpful to them. Jeff calls this the intrinsic motivation: “The theory of intrinsic motivation goes a long way toward explaining why Amazon’s unpaid user reviews are so popular and effective, and yet the paid Mechanical Turk service appears to be withering on the vine.”

I’ve always had the belief that this intrinsic motivation is what makes any successful website really successful. slashdot.org, digg.com, distributed.net, seti@home, wikipedia.org, youtube.com etc to name just a few. It is true that there are people that will always try to exploit this intrinsic motivation for monetary gain, but the reason that the majority of the general public contribute, is this intrinsic motivation. It’s being part of a community and seeing your contribution being accepted by your peers (for example digging and your digg count).

At the end of Jeff’s post he quotes from Mary Poppendieck’s Team Compensation (pdf). It argues whether giving children allowances based on work they perform is such a good idea. I’ve been brough up this way, my dad argued that it would teach me that one needs to work to earn money. That it would show me that nothing in life comes without hard honest work. I agree with that to a certain extent and I can understand the concept now, back then of course it was a little more difficult  

The opposite is that children are not paid for doing household chores. At first I didn’t see the point, but after thinking about it for a while, it did start to make sense. In fact, it made more sense than the opposing theory. Remember the intrinsic motivation I mentioned earlier; that is the core of the second theory. Instead of being tought that every bit of work you do, you do it to earn money, you are now tought that maybe it’s (also?) about something else. You mow the lawn because you have to help your dad who is sick, or you wash the dishes because your mother made the food and your brother cleaned the garage. Whatever the reason, you learn that it’s not just about money.

Could this be part of the reason why so many people (it’s probably just me)  when you ask them about their work say: “…it’s not the greatest job in the world, but it pays the bills…”.

Regarding myself, I wonder why I did and still do many things. I feel that if you do something just because “…it pays the bills…” you will never be happy. Let’s face it, the average person spends between 8 and 9 hours a day at work, which accounts for atleast half your day. After chores and whatnot, the time left for personal endeavours isn’t much, all the more reason why a job that you atleast like a little bit can make you a happier person. I think you should find a balance between something that pays that bills and something that you love doing. I also believe that your job should not be the same as your hobby, it’s about balance and getting your mind to take a break.

What is it then that drives you?

Software By Rob November 3, 2006

For a developer in the corporate world, things might not always be sunshine and cocktails with pretty little umbrellas. Developers tend to be a different breed of species all together. Pointy-haired bosses aside, managing a bunch of code junkies can be even worse, most probably because of the differences between the kind of personality management has, and that of the developers.

A technical manager, or someone with technical experience and background can be a wonderful gift to any development team, since they can be the bridge that crosses the divide between the technical and business side of any project.

I found this blog, www.softwarebyrob.com, where the author touches on many of the issues related to exactly this issue. I’ve started with ‘Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money’ and I soon moved on to the comments and some of the other articles.

It’s a great read, enjoy…

Firefox 2.0 November 2, 2006

Yes, its been out for a while, I know. One of the gripes I had with the version 1.x tree was that if you opened a page in a tab, and it started loading something huge, and you closed that tab, it never stopped the transfer. So for people like us still living in the dark ages due to a telecoms having complete monopoly, it’s a bit of a problem.

Version 2.0 however, it seemed to have stopped. The looks differ, it’s a bit more silver, and a bit more shine, but it still feels like the same ‘ol browser.

I guess we’ll have to see in the weeks to come…