Author: Yakov Fain

Earlier this year, after completing working on a heavy-duty technical book , I said, “Never again. No more books “. But after a short break, I “ve decided to write a small non-technical book discussing an everyday life of an enterprise software developer.

Observing the business side of the corporate software development cycle is pretty interesting activity, and I write about things AS THEY ARE rather then trying to present a pretty picture of IT departments of enterprise giants that are developing bleeding edge software day in and day out.

I “ve gotten OK from the publisher, and here “s a preliminary layout of this book with a working title “The life of an enterprise programmer “:

Foreword

What this book is about

Part 1: Getting into IT

Do you want your child to be a programmer?

Enrollment in CS and IS majors is on decline

Out of college: catch-22 situation

How to pass a technical interview with flying colors

Interviewing Enterprise developers

Give a second chance

And he hung up during the interview

Part 2. Living in IT

Manage your software development career

Who are these IT contractors, anyway?

Why hire an IT contractor

Will high-paid contractors extinct?

How comfy is your cubicle?

On casual Fridays and a revolution made by women

Arranged Marriages

The Honeymoon

The Family Life (a.k.a. Corporate Politics)

The Family Budget

Divorce Is Not an Option

Corporate Java Training

Who Is Teaching

Finding Quality Training

Enjoy your technical conference

The cost of attending a technical conference

Increase your visibility

Manage your manager

Self-publishing a book is easier than you think

Outsourcing

The world is round

What CIO should know about outsourcing

Ten tips on dealing with offshore developers

Dead souls from overseas

Outsourcing to students

Cultural difference in outsourcing

Russian Programmers

And Pedro said, “Move over, Ravi! rdquo;

Visiting an offshore training camp for programmers

Once again on outsourcing

Insourcing – the foreign programmers

Welcome to the USA!

H1B Visa

How to select a software vendor for your next enterprise project

Political stuff

Another Brick in the wall

What “s your salary?

Underpaid? Quit!

Overpaid? Hardly!

Working overtime? Poor management!

Is life in startups any different?

SOA, RIA and the Human factor

SOA Ground Up

SOA Top Down

SOA as a burner

SOA Maturity

Technical Benefits of SOA

ESB Infrastructure

To SOA or not to SOA

Making Business Users Happy

SOA+RIA

Agile development

Part 3. Getting out of IT

And he was fired

Do not tell me cause it hurts

Thoughts of an aging programmer

My friend is a 72-year old programmer

If you think I “ve missed a topic or would like to share your story that illustrates an interesting, stupid, political, or career aspect of lives of enterprise software developers, just shoot me an email at yfain at sys-con.com.

This book summarizes my personal opinions that were formed during twenty five years of wearing different hats in Enterprise IT and running a small startup. The odds are that you will not agree with all my observations or find some of them rather cynical or even insulting. But this is how I see things today, in 2007, living in the geographical area known as Big Apple.

If you are an active and serious software developer, you have to make sure that your technical skills are not getting rusty. You need to get trained. In our trade the rule of the game is that you constantly have to be in a good technical shape. Your other choice is to keep complaining about outsourcing. Excuses like we are in a crunch situation with our project at the moment, and this is not a good time for studying are good for amateurs.

Can afford to take just one day off, get out of your cubicle and see what other people up to these days? Is J2EE still in favor? What “s this ESB is about? Have you even heard of using Flex as a Web front end of your Java applications?

Do not miss an event in NYC this Monday, that is created for people who think that they are way too busy to take several days off and spend them in the class. Just take one day off and attend the RealWorld Java event. The discounted rate for this event is $395. To get this discount, enter the coupon code “JUGgold ” while registering

Here “s another lame excuse for not attending, “Our corporation has a list of approved training vendors and courses to choose from, and I just can “t go to an arbitrary conference rdquo;. Wrong. Did you even try to ask if you can go? Just remind your boss about all those long hours you ‘ve spent on the project. You need and deserve quality Java training! Most likely your employer has some training budget ndash; use it or lose it. This seminar features many first-class speakers who are practitioners, and many of them are book authors as well.

Yours truly will run a co-located full day bootcamp on development of rich Internet applications with Adobe Flex and Java . If you are interested, send me an email and I “ll ask the meeting organizer to shave of $200 of the registration fees.

Many Java programmers still do not know what ESB, AOP, and Flex are for. How about you? Ask your colleagues the same question and see for yourself. There are plenty of great programmers who just write Java code for their employer day in and day out. Raise your head and look around. Get trained, or else hellip;

Besides developing software, our company Farata Systems works on all kinds of consulting projects for large and small enterprises. At this point you may think that I “ll start bragging about how great we are, and that you should hire us. On the contrary, I “ll tell you about our failures and the lesson learned.

During the last year our company have lost the bids on a couple of consulting projects, and we “ve noticed the same pattern. Here “s one of these cases.

A large company approached us asking to bid on a project. We knew how to do the job, we “ve estimated the time and resources and came out with the numbers: $200K over 6 months. In about two weeks we were notified that they “ve decided to go with a different vendor that offered them to do this job for $60K. We shrugged and moved on with our business.

Six month later, we “ve got a call from the same client asking if we could help with that project. By that time they paid already $300K to the vendor-winner, and the project was not finished yet.

Since we “ve seen similar scenarios in the past, it seems that we are dealing with a sales pattern here ndash; some vendors are giving unrealistically low estimates just to get the foot in the door. Then, little by little they present valid reasons that require additional budget, the client is on the hook, someone “s career is at stake, and they have no choice but sign the next invoice and keep dragging the project until it comes to a full stop.

A little lie during the job estimates seems to be a trick of the trade of any salesman from construction to timeshare business.

When an Enterprise IT department gets the budget for a new software development project, pretty often they ask several vendors to bid on the project. Some of them will come up with beautiful PowerPoint presentations showing where you are now – the current state assessment, the future state assessment, and a roadmap to this bright future, which can be fairly technical. More agile vendors hate this stupid paperwork – they will present you a two-page write-up with technical solution addressing your functional specification. The third type of vendors is prevalent and they will present a decent diagram and some technical meat.

Then the cost comes into picture. Vendors ” marketing people will estimate the cost of the resources. If you are a newcomer in the enterprise software world, you might not know that “resources rdquo; are actually people. Salesmen do not call software developers people, they call them resources. In one of the corporate meetings, I ‘ve heard an account manger saying, “A father of one of my resources died so this resource will not be available for a week “. Could it get any worse? Actually it could, for example, “An ancestor of one of my resources died so this resource temporarily will not perform its functions “.

Getting back to the main subject, if you see a cost estimate of one vendor substantially lower then the others, most likely that they “ll be using dirt cheap resources.

So how you, the enterprise development manager can pick the right vendor that will deliver the project in time (or at least without substantial delays)? Here “s a solution: give each vendor two weeks and ask them to come back with a working prototype of the system to be developed. Important: you have to pay for this two-week job to each vendor.

I want to make it crystal clear ndash; they should come back not with a UML diagram of the system, not with wire frames created in some third-party tool, but with a working application that is built using the software approved for the real project. Of course, this application won “t be fully functional, it “ll run locally on a laptop with lots of dummy pieces of code, but IT HAS TO WORK.

Say you have five vendors bidding on your project. The odds are that after such an offer two of them will quietly withdraw their proposals. One of the remaining three will ask for another week. This is not a good sign and this vendor should be out. The remaining two will present their working prototypes on time and you “ll be surprised to find out that the job of picking the right vendor became extremely easy. Yes, it “s cost you a little bit of money, but it was the money well spent.

This was our lesson learned ndash; if we have to bid on a decent size project, we offer the client to try us on this mini two-week project. It “s fair to our clients, and fair to us.

I have a gut feeling that 2008 will cry for a new breed of IT people called User Experience Professional. These people should be experienced professional Web designers with some knowledge of programming. I already see some serious changes in the process of designing front ends for such boring business Web applications as pension plan management system or a stock trading application.

In the past, a group of programmers would quickly put together (to the best of their design abilities) a wireframe of an application to be developed, discuss the functionality with the users and would start coding. Now it “s slowly changing. Recently, I “ve been running Adobe Flex training for one of the major Wall Street firm. Java programmers were in the audience, we “ve discussed specifics of the integration of the new front end with their J2EE systems, and then I asked them if they took care of the screen design yet. And they showed me a design document. I was speechless ndash; this was clearly the best screen design document I “ve ever seen in my 25 year career in IT. Very neatly done, eye-candy looking screens color schemes were impeccable. They “ve hired a third party firm that does just this ndash; design of user experience.

With emerging of such development tools as Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight we “ll see more people from an artistic crowd (Photoshop Illustrator, AfterEffects, Flash Professional) starting getting their hands dirty with more developer targeted tools like Adobe Flex Builder or Microsoft Expression Studio.

As of today, many Web designers suffer from the lack of knowledge of programming languages (i.e. ActionScript 3) that may be required to get hired for the next gig.

While the merger of Adobe and Macromedia was made in heaven, the skills of developers and designers are not merging that easily and Adobe has to pay more attention to creating some bridging tools that would allow designers fill comfortable in Flex Builder. Microsoft has done a better job in this regard ndash; I “ve seen a presentation nade by a Web designer (not a programmer) of their Express Studio. He felt there at home. Microsoft has their own challenges though ndash; how to bring predominantly Adobe-ish designers to their RIA and User Experience development tools.

Slowly but surely the most active Web designers will start learning development tools. They “ll do it for a very simple and pragmatic reason ndash; to increase their employability.

I “ve created a new users group on Rich Internet Applications under the umbrella of NYSIA ndash; New York Software Industry Association (we “ll have our first meeting on October 9 ). While most of the times I “ll be inviting software developers to present on such emerging technologies and techniques as AJAX, Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, JavaFX, OpenLaszlo, I “ll definitely would love to have there presentations on User Experience at it best circa 2007.

I am very much interested in learning some tricks of the trade of these mysterious people called Designers. If you are a User Experience Expert and would like to speak at this new RIA users group, please let me know.

This is the link to the audio of my carcast #7 (44Mb) where I talk about my experience in book self and traditional publishing:

Related books:

Java Tutorial for the Real World

J2EE 1.4 Bible

Java for Kids, Parents and Grandparents

Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java

I “ll be running a new special interests group on Rich Internet Applications for New York Software Industry Association.

We are going to cover Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, AJAX, JavaFX, OpenLaszlo and more. I invite you to attend our first meeting on Oct 9,2007 , where I “ll give an overview of what “s currently is out there on the market of RIA technologies for development of the entrerprise applications.

I “ll be inviting people representing various RIA technologies to help software engineers and development managers in making the right choices for their new projects.

Please let me know if you “d like to present on one of the technologies mentioned above. Will gratiously accept the appropriate shwags for giveaways .

Careerbuilder posted a job description about Web developer “s opening in a US Base in Iraq:

Description

Title: Web Developer (must have secret clearance)

Job Type: 3 month contract (could go shorter)

Salary: $20k per month

Location: Iraq

Start date: ASAP with 2 weeks training (one in Washington DC and another in Ft. Bening GA)

# of Openings: 1

Summary:A principal Department of Defense agency is looking for programmers, developers or coders to code, support field deployment and maintenance of a new database application which will be used by Army units in Iraq. Scope These are full-time positions (12/7) located at one of the major US Bases in IRAQ. Deployment will be period of 3 months. Training on the application software will begin prior to deployment and will take place in Virginia. These positions are available for full time employment or for independent contractors. These positions are available now

Requirements

Requirements:

-A Department of Defense secret clearance within last 24 months

-Willing to work a 3 month contract in Iraq at US military bases

-2-4 programming experience preferably with JAVA or HTML

-US Citizen

-Knowledge of database systems preferably SQL

Plus:

-Familiarity with military networks and systems is desired, but not required.

-Relevant military background ( e.g. hands-on engineering background in S6 or G6 shop or MOS 25B or 74B is desired but not required.)

-AS or BS Degree in Computer Science minimum

Basically, this job description requires a junior programmer with minimum technical skills who has secret clearance. And for these skills you and I will pay him $20K a month. The war in Iraq is wrong, people are dying there for nothing, it “s lost by the USA exactly the same way as it happened in Vietnam. I support our troops by paying taxes, and decorating my car with appropriate bumper stickers., because I feel sorry for these young soldiers who have to be there. But I do not want to pay $20K a month to a rookie who knows a little Java and “preferably SQL ” to develop and deploy a database application.

I have three questions to the US Army IT commanders:

1. If this is a Web application, why do you need to deploy it on site? I “d assume that each of the military PC has standard software installed including the right version of the JRE.

2. Why can “t you hire a professional here in Virginia, who for $10K a month will tell you how to do it right without the need to go to Iraq? This will save our money and won “t jeopardize the life of junior Java developer.

3. Have you heard that Microsoft and Apple do not recommend using Java for mission-critical application? If not, read this post .

I just finished recording a 7-minutes screencast of ClearBI 1.1 Beta, our Web reporter for rich Internet applications. The cool thing about it that the end user can point it to pretty much any data source (Web Service, JavaScript array, POJO) and create a fancy custom report without help of IT crew. No installation is required – a Web browser and Flash Player 9 is all you need (most likely you already have them).

You can watch the recording (13Mb) over here: http://www.myflex.org/screencast/clearbi_ajax/clearbi_ajax.html

If you ‘d like to play with CLearBI on your own, point your browser at http://myflex.org/demo/clearbi/demo.html . Either repeat the report customization that I did or try to explore ClearBI on your own. You can download the documentation for ClearBI ( the previous version of ClearBI) at myflex.org .

I ‘d appreciate any feedback or bug reports.

July 24, 2007, New York. Farata Systems has announced the production release of ClearBI 1.0, a Web reporter and business intelligence engine for rich Internet applications. While ClearBI 1.0 is targeted for Adobe Flex and Java developers, the upcoming ClearBI 1.1 is a rich reporting component that can be used with any AJAX application.

ClearBI 1.0 is available in two versions: ClearBI Plugin and ClearBI End-User:

bull; ClearBI Plugin allows a software developer create and customize a new report in Eclipse IDE. This report can be integrated into any Flex application by including an extra MXML file and recompiling the main application. The end users will be able to work with the report (sorting, filtering, grouping, export to Microsoft Excel, et al.), but won “t be able to save this customized report. This version comes with Clear Data Builder a code generator, and is offered at $799 per seat.

bull; ClearBI End-User version has all the functionality of the plugin version, and also allows the end users create reports from the universe of the data fields without need to install any software other than Flash Player. The end users create, customize and save reports in the centralized database server without any help from the IT department.

The End-User version is offered as a server license and is priced on a per server CPU basis.

You can develop, save and view reports in Eclipse using ClearBI Plugin:

ClearBI End-User version allows end users to customize and save their reports right from the Web browser using additional toolbar. No software other than a Web browser and Flash Player has to be installed on the users ” computers.

ClearBI designer allows you to specify styling, filtering, sorting, groupings, create formulas and more.

Both versions support report export to Microsoft Excel from Internet Explorer:

We “ve asked Yakov Fain, Managing Principal of Farata Systems about the upcoming versions of ClearBI. He answered, “The next version of ClearBI 1.1 (currently in Beta) will support connectivity of this Flex component with the server-side Java using improved OpenAMF communication protocol, which may present an interest to the organizations that do not have Adobe LiveCycle Data Services. ClearBI 1.1 will also become a reporting solution for AJAX developers. We were able to decouple ClearBI from the data source. For example, this pre-recorded video shows how you can create a Web application that uses ClearBI 1.1 with a data feed provided by a Web service rdquo;.

For more information please visit http://www.myflex.org or http://www.faratasystems.com .