You Get Fifteen Years

If you're in your late 20's - early 30's, read it ;) : http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/unchartered-waters/what-i-learned-from-google-you-get-fifteen-years

Interview with Udi Dahan and Eric Evans

http://vimeo.com/32647895 - pretty good (but brief) interview which touches upon some DDD topics and CQRS. (the one downside, is that the guy holding the interview sounds like a robot and reads all the questions from a piece of paper or something)

The Frustrated Architect

Good talk by Simon Brown @SkillsMatter on the line between being a "powerpoint architect" and actually coding a system's architecture. Nothing really new, but it's nice every once in a while to hear this stuff out load (oh yeah - he also discusses the Agile bandwagon).

1h:10 long - http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/java-jee/frustrated-architect

Feedback Management

Pretty good points made by Scott Berkun (@Hive 2011) about how to obtain feedback for you work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GzRDG2jKf_4

Following Jobs

just sad....  http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/dennis-ritchie/

RIP Steve Jobs

I've never been an Apple fan, but I'm sorry to see one of the greatest IT minds of my time pass. http://www.tcmag.com/magazine/rip_steve_jobs/

Uncle Bob - Screaming Architecture

Interesting post by Uncle Bob on software architectures and what they should or should not be: http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2011/09/30/Screaming-Architecture.html

Although I'm a "fan" of Robert Martin, I don't completely agree with him on this one: an architecture doesn't have any value on a piece of paper, or on a slide or in the thin air. Architectures need to be materialized at some point and for that it's hard nowadays to avoid using frameworks or hardware topologies for that matter.

I'm not saying a framework should be the architecture, but unless you reinvent the wheel each time, you might find an architecture having to be tailored in certain areas so that "it fits". I just don't think you can define and document the architecture without thinking how that architecture is going to be implemented.

-> CoffeeScript

I know Javascript has had and still has a lot of issues and that there are a lot of people unhappy about that. I also know that it's not the cleanest or clearest language in the world, but seeing the "->" as a "first class operator" makes me cringe.

Douglas Crockford, another talk on Javascript

Even though Brendan Eich was under pressure when he first wrote it and therefore some mistakes were made,  my opinion is that Doug Crockford is one of Javascript's "pillars" currently: http://css.dzone.com/news/douglas-crockford-answers

HTML 5 Goodies

If you've been following the updates that HTML 5 will bring to the world of www, then you might've heard of web sockets. Here's a good presentation of what they are and how they "promise" to solve all your problems: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/WebSockets-The-Web-Communication-Revolution

Empowering Events

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Events-Are-Not-Just-for-Notifications

Cat Pictures

Steve Yegge, OSCON 2011 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8 . It doesn't start up as much, but keep watching, cause he makes a really good point. If you don't know who Steve is, tough - google him.

If you work in the industry (and I mean outsourcing - aka cotton-picking for the master), when is the last time you had a long hard look about your work ? Are you really happy doing what you're doing ?

...and keep lying to yourself that you really need the money because life is hard

LMAX - CQRS applied

If you've followed the Greg Young's series of CQRS talks, you should be familiar with the concept. Martin Fowler describes in his latest blog the architecture of a trading system, based in part on the above.

Quicksand

Software development is just like quicksand: once you're in it, the more you struggle, the deeper you go in. Sometimes, if you're really lucky, you get out on the other side. Most of times however, you forget where you are and you keep fighting to break free. Over and over and over...

Craig Larman - Collaboration over Contracts

Very good speaker and especially interesting if you're in the outsourcing business, no matter what end of the "stick": http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Collaboration-Over-Contracts

Greg Young - Simple is better

http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/design-architecture/simple-is-better

DDD talks

A really good series of talks, from DDD eXchange 2011.

Udi Dahan: http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/talk-from-udi-dahan/cs-2041
Greg Young: http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/talk-from-greg-young
Eric Evans: http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/talk-from-eric-evans

Dan North, QCon 2011

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/From-Months-to-Minutes

The Rule of Holes

"When you are in one, stop digging"

Facebook Messages Architecture

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/scaling-the-messages-application-back-end/10150148835363920#

CQRS explained

A good (although older) post, which explains CQRS nicely: http://www.udidahan.com/2009/12/09/clarified-cqrs/  Try to think outside the "layered box" in order to understand CQRS.

Dan North, another Agile talk

good, as usual:  http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Agile-Operations-Optimizing-Business

How organizational structure impacts architecture

Melvin Conway was a computer engineer back in 1968, but I find his observations from back then, all so true today: http://www.code-muse.com/blog/?p=7

Also, if you've heard of Craig Larman (I've heard of him because of one of his earlier books - "Applying UML and Patterns"), then I highly recommend watching: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Large-Multisite-or-Offshore-Delivery. Don't be mislead by the title - it's more about how you should structure your team(s)/organization for proper software development work.

Scaling explained

http://tinyurl.com/3na6aqs

Memory Leaks in Java

Good post about the different types of memory leaks which you should be aware of: http://blog.dynatrace.com/2011/04/20/the-top-java-memory-problems-part-1/

How not to scale

Brilliant short presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPG4sK_glls&feature=youtu.be

Development Environment

Check out the nice diagram http://tinyurl.com/65hwzzz of how a good development environment should look like.

Unlike software design where "adding an extra layer of indirection" helps solve all your problems, try to keep the "layers" of the dev enviroment as few and as simple as possible. And try to use systems which are supported by a strong community (hudson/jenkins split doesn't help one bit in this area)

A decent perspective on Software Architects

Finally, a good post about the so called "Ivory Tower" architects: http://www.codingthearchitecture.com/pages/book/software-development-is-not-a-relay-sport.html.

I've deeply disliked (to avoid using words such as hate) for a long long time this type of people with their precious roles. The larger a software organization gets, more and more useless roles are created. The people in those roles, in the end, not only don't help the actual team working and delivering software, but they slow it down.

On the other hand, never underestimate the human ego when you have a business card with the title "Software Architect"

Mozilla Crash Reporting Architecture

http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/4/12/caching-and-processing-2tb-mozilla-crash-reports-in-memory-w.html

Gosling @ Google

Just read this: http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/next_step_on_the_road
Now, a while ago, both Bloch and Gafter joined Google only to have Gafter leave for M$ last year. Now, since Google is more and more just the Microsoft of the 90's, why would Gosling join them ?

Big-Brother in sheep's clothing

Take a look at one of the latest Facebook initiative: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150114910218920 .
Now, is it just me, or a will  a "software driven network" allow for much better control and inspection, Big-Brother style ? (have a look at the name of the companies who already joined the Open Networking Foundation)

Pattern Redemption

http://beust.com/weblog/2011/03/10/rehabilitating-the-singleton-pattern/

Speaking of which, does anybody remember Resign Patterns ?

Development Ignorance

Good talk by Dan North on how being aware of your ignorance for various aspects of a project, can indeed help you: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Deliberate-Discovery

Drone-based software development

As I'm growing older, I'm starting to question more and more whether top-notch code quality and design are really necessary for a successful product.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still all in favor of the craftsmanship stuff, but given the fact that clients don't care about the code but the end-product and that most of developers I come across now-a-days are just drones, you have to start wondering...

Joshua Kerievsky's recent post on this topic: http://tinyurl.com/5vnx3mx

Conscious Design ?

Check out this good post by Michael Feathers: http://michaelfeathers.typepad.com/michael_feathers_blog/2011/03/data-rich-development.html

He rightfully raises the question of whether or not any kind of conscious design happens anymore in software projects, as opposed to 2-3 years ago. All of this, due to the hype of the Agile methodologies which, when adopted by drones, get interpreted of just banging out code, without much thought.Also, you get a lot of "framework-driven" design, where just by adopting a framework you code in a certain way, not really bothering with the core principles. Speaking of core principles, have look at this "old-school" site with a lot of valuable resources: http://www.laputan.org/

...and please stop being just code drones and actually start thinking about the code you write.
 

Internal vs External Quality

Try explaining the difference to any kind of manager who hasn't come up from the "trenches of programming" (http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TradableQualityHypothesis.html)

Coders@Work

"...Then there was another book that everybody thought was the greatest thing ever in that same period—Design Patterns—which I just thought was crap. It was just like, programming via cut and paste. Rather than thinking through your task you looked through the recipe book and found something that maybe, kinda, sorta felt like it, and then just aped it. That’s not programming; that’s a coloring book. But a lot of people seemed to love it. Then in meetings they’d be tossing around all this terminology they got out of that book. Like, the inverse, reverse, double-back-flip pattern—whatever. 
Oh, you mean a loop? OK." - jwz

Übergeneralization

Every once in a while, when writing code, you may find yourself trying to write it in such a way that it can be "easily extended" and solve a whole lot more than originally intended. 

Have a look at this: http://chaosinmotion.com/blog/?p=622 to see what I mean.

How Nescape became Mozilla

Project CodeRush, a good documentary film on how Mozilla was born: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig&feature=player_embedded

Agile Fuss continued

Dan North, at QCon last year: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Keeping-Agile-Agile

Re: Craftsmanship Movement Pros and Cons

It took a bit longer than I expected, but finally Robert Martin responds: http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2011/01/software-craftsmanship-what-it-all.html

Alfresco 3.4 Installers

If you've installed an Alfresco 3.4 distribution, you may've noticed that unlike the previous versions, Alfresco doesn't offer anymore Tomcat bundles, only full-blown installers - which I personally hate.

However, it seems that using the new installers, you can still get a similar setup to the old Tomcat bundles. Have a look at http://richard.esplins.org/siwi/2011/01/12/automating-new-alfresco-installers for  a full description of how to achieve this.

Craftsmanship Movement Pros and Cons

Dan North has a good post about why, in his view, programming is not a craft: http://dannorth.net/2011/01/11/programming-is-not-a-craft/

I wonder how long before uncle Bob responds.

Monitoring overview

Good article describing the different levels of infrastructure monitoring: http://www.paperplanes.de/2011/1/5/the_virtues_of_monitoring.html

Scrumming your Wedding

Well, it seems people are such Scrum fanatics now-a-days, that they show you how to plan your wedding using Scrum. Check this video out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOiQAYeJF_o&feature=player_embedded

Probably the next books will be about planning your life using Scrum. Funny how no one looks back at history and tries to learn from it.