Category: Archive

That morning on September 11, 2001 I was driving to work on New Jersey Turnpike. Back than I was working on a equities trading system for one of the world “s largest brokerage houses. NJ Turnpike is a highway that has a segment with a nice view of Manhattan “s skyscrapers and I casually turned my head to the downtown area. A smoke was coming out of one of the twins . I turned on the radio ndash; they were no sure what has happened, but suspected an accident caused by a plain crash. I called to our friend who was working in the building, but got his voicemail. He managed to survive. I called home and asked them to turn on the TV, which shortly started to show that first plain coming into the building.

By the time I arrived to work, the smoke was coming out of both towers. We were standing by the windows watching this horrible reality show from across the Hudson river. Then they closed stock market and we were told to go home. Our company has lost the building, the brokers needed to relocate to new place for work and our cubicles were given to them. The following Monday we were called back to work, but not to our cubicles, but to another floor. I “ve never been to this floor before. Imagine the open space with rows and rows of workstations, AC and power units hellip;I was amazed ndash; how they were able to put all this up together in several days! It turned out that these DR floors (disaster recovery) were standing like this for years, until this disaster has happened. The stock market was up next Monday and it was business as usual.

But starting from that day the life of New Yorkers was not “as usual rdquo; and will never be the same again. Everything was quiet in this multi-national melting pot. Seldom race crimes were punished and people got used to the fact that they have to get along, and either respect other nationalities, or at least adjust to the fact that you live and work with people who came from all over the world for a better life. September 11, showed that there is another group of people called Islam fundamentalists, that have chosen a different approach. Instead of trying to improve the lives of their people, they decided to make lives of Americans worse. And I have to admit that they are suuceeding. Big time. On September 11 people were dancing in joy in some of the city quarters populated by Muslims. One of the newspapers was writing about a Muslim student who came to school before that day and warned some of his friends to stay away from Manhattan on September 11. He knew.

Next day, lots of people in Russia, were happy that at least someone have shown these filthy-rich Americans a real power.

Then this hunt for Osama have started. Yet another failure. Fifteen out of nineteen people on these planes were from Saudi Arabia, but USA was bombing Afganistan. To destroy Taliban and give locals a better life. They did not need better life. They just needed to produce cocaine, and last week their President has admitted that opium production kept growing, and he could not do anything about it.

During three years we are watching another attempt to bring a better life to Iraq. Unfortunately, many American families have lost and keep losing their kids in that yet another lost war. American do not trust Muslims anymore. On the other hand, the entire world hates America now. US government suggests to American tourists keep low profile around the world.

Four years ago my wife went to Kiev, Ukraine to visit friends. I purchased and gave her a photo album with heart breaking pictures of burning twins, of people jumping out of the top floors of the building in a search of an easier death. When she came back, I learned that most of the people who saw this album were neither impressed nor did they care.

I “m riding a bus on New Jersey Turnpike every morning, but I do not see WTC Twins there. A new construction is about to start at the ground-zero site, and by 2012 beautiful three skyscrapers will rise there. They will rebuild the site, but there is no one who can rebuild our souls. They are permanently damaged.

I left my car at the parking lot to board the Manhattan bus. My next door neighbor Larry did the same thing five years ago. He never returned to pick his car. His wallet was found a year later in the Staten Island landfill where they were sifting through the garbage hellip; Rest in peace, Larry, and all other victims of terrorist -animals no matter what “s your nationality is, and where you live.

I am a professional programmer from Java camp. I do not use any Microsoft products other than Office. I also do not have Apple notebook yet. No Linux on my PC either. But this does not stop me from respecting these products. I hate when people bash Microsoft just because it ‘s Microsoft. Yes Vista is delayed, yes, its adoption rate will be slow, but how can a magazine like Business 2.0 propose to boycott Vista ? This is just disgusting and not professional.

How much do you need to hate Microsoft to suggest this? Stop bashing Microsoft .

How comfy is your cubicle? Actually do you even have a cubicle? Is it decorated well enough?

Being a consultant, I have a chance to work at different corporate cites. Some companies use open space setup where everyone can see each other, which is just horrible. In some cases you see cubes with tall walls when the entire floor looks like a deserted maze. Joel Spolsky keep stating that every programmer has to have a private office. This is great idea, but the chances are close to zero that you, a programmer will have your own office. My working space during the last six months consists of two square feet area on the conference room table covered with cables, wires and power cords. Am I complaining? Not at all. I am a consultant, which means that I need to help the client with solving THEIR problems, not mine.

An absence of working space stops me from bringing any personal belonging to work. I come with my laptop, connect to the network, put on my headphones and start working. When I leave, no cleanup is required. As if I never even was there.

I ‘ve seen another extreme on corporate floors: overly decorated cubes: tons of photos, books, about a dozen of different plants, sport memorabilia, and mugs with logos of all previous employers… When I see something like this, it seems that peope think that they will live there forever. Imagine if they get fired – they ‘ll need to bring a moving truck to take all these items home. I used the word fired on purpose – these people are not planning to leave the firm voluntarily. Ever.

Barnes and Noble offers help for people who like decorating their cells. It ‘s called Cube Chic . Now you can have the Garden Cube, the Cabin Cube or even the CEO Cube. I guess, your self esteem will go up if you ‘ll turn your cube into a CEO-like office.

No, this is not for me. Let me push aside all these wires and power cords away, so my laptop and elbows will fit.

Java on the desktop today

A discussion on the future of Java on desktop is going on right now at JavaLobby .

A anonymous poster (rba1988) asks the following question:

“I was just wondering what you people think of the future of Java standalone/desktop applications. What ‘re your opinions on this? Do you think people will continue developing pure Java applications that you won ‘t find on web pages but on the desktop. Or do you think that Java programming are really meant for applet development and not for application development? rdquo;

The readers of this respected online forum are actively participating in this discussion and, as usual they try to protect their ten year old pet called Java. Some say that Java is improving on the desktop and has good opportunities there. The reason is simple and prosaic: Java Swing puts bread on their tables. They do not want changes. They do not want to learn another language or tool. They can do everything with Java Swing.

C “mon guys, get real. IMO, Unless Sun will do a major rework, Java Swing will slowly but surely go away: first, from the Web applications arena, and in several years from the desktop. Sun Microsystems has been treating Java on the desktop as Cinderella way too long. Now Sun is way behind. So who ‘s way ahead? Adobe with Flex 2 on the Web and Apollo on desktop and Microsoft with their WPF/E.

Swing is very very powerful tool, but it ‘s very expensive. I ‘m talking about real-world applications not mortgage calculators. You do not pay for a Java license, but you pay high salaries to people who develop in Swing. They write tons and tons of code. In addition to this, IDEs generate tons and tons of boilerplate code. Someone has to read and understand all this.

What about deployment? HelloWorld with one text field and a button won ‘t run on your PC unless you ‘ve installed the JRE that weighs 16MB (Sun is trying to make it lighgter for the Web ).

Yesterday, I was creating an application for my client in Flex 2 that runs in Flash Player 9. All of a sudden, some big shot came in and a quick demo was required. No, the big shot can ‘t stop by my desk and wants to see this Web application in action on his laptop in his office. No problem, because I was not using Swing. I was using Flex 2, so I copied a couple of files to a webapps directory under Tomcat, and emailed him the link. He clicked on the link, and a message “Flash Player 9 is required. Do you want to install it? rdquo; poped on his laptop, he pressed OK and 5 seconds later, he was working with my application, which was working with Java messaging feed on the server side. Do not trust me? Click on this link (it “s not my yesterday “s application but is similar to that) http://samples.faratasystems.com/porfolio/PortfolioRpcDemo.html

It should be up and running within seconds. By the way, this entire application including quote generation (random numbers by a POJO), charts, RSS read and links to Yahoo financial news is less than 300 lines of code.

Adobe or Microsoft?

The next question is, who is going to take a lead in the RIA area: Adobe or Microsoft? Let “s talk about penetration of new software. Do you know which OS I am using at work? Windows 2000 professional. Let me check my calendar…Yep, it ‘s 2006.

There is no other software in the world that has such a high penetration rate as Flash Player. As per Adobe within a year something like 80% of people upgrade Flash Player to newer version (the numbers might be slightly off). Within three months 50% of user will switch to Flash Player 9. Do you know which JRE version is used for most of the applications at my current client ‘s site? You got it, 1.4.2. It ‘s been two years after release of Java 1.5.

I bet on Flash GUI talking to Java on the server. Today you can create Flash applications using Adobe Flex,plain ActionScript coding or Open Laszlo. Next year, Adobe Apollo will let you create full featured desktop applications that integrate HTML, Flash, JavaScript and Acrobat with full access to your file system.

Competition: Microsoft WPF/E and C# combo. On the side note, Java Swing beats C# on the GUI side. My friend is working for a company that has decided to replace their Swing GUI with C# in their financial trading application. They can ‘t get the same performance they had before…Anyway, it won ‘t be easy for Microsoft to catch up with Adobe , but hey, it ‘s Microsoft. Gotta respect them.

AJAX won “t become a mainstream on the business applications landscape. It “ll find its limited use in consumer facing applications like Amazon, Yahoo, Google and major online retailers.

A happy Java ending

I love Java…one the server side where it shines. Well, there is one more area for Java: mobile devices. More and more people believe that their cell phones are not just telephones that should be used for dialing phone numbers, but also cook breakfast in the morning. Java is a leader in the mobile space, and I do not see any danger there for Java. Flash Lite is way too young, and is making its first baby steps at this moment.

I’m really impressed by how easily new words are introduced to the English language. This one came from the world of programming.

Last weekend we’ve had a mini family vacation. Since I always have with me my laptop that is equipped with a broadband Internet connectivity, I’m always online. This also helps a lot when you are traveling in a car/bus/train (I’m publishing this blog while sitting on the bus that is moving on a highway). It also helps when your kid is bored in a hotel room…

When I found my 12-year old son was using my laptop,we’ve had this conversation:

“What are you doing, Dave? ”

“Watching a cartoon on youtube.com “.

“How is it? ”

“It’s nice, but a bit buffery ”

When the Internet connection is a bit slow for a video stream, it takes time to fill the buffer with all these bytes, hence a new word: buffery. A year ago he would have said “It’s nice, but a bit choppy ” or something…

Any good programming language is easily extendable. The same holds true for human languages. I love English!

As per Charles Oliver Nutter , two core JRuby developers, Charles himself and Thomas Enebo, will become employees at Sun Microsystems this month.

To me, this is a clear indication that Sun Microsystems is seriously evaluating where to go with Java:

1. Keep adding new features to Java, which in my opinion is wrong .

2. Create a new language using JVM as a foundation, which in my opinion is right .

3. All of the above

Let ‘s keep an eye on Charles Oliver Nutter ‘s blog, but do not expect too much of a leakage there – he is now Sun ‘s employee. Two talented software developers standing on the shoulders of the super powerful marketing machine is a win-win situation for everybody.

Good luck Charles and Thomas!

Christophe Coenraets, a senior Flex Evangelist from Adobe has published a blog showing a number of sample Flex applications that communicate with Java on the server side. And yes, Christophe knows Java. His blog “30-minutes Flex test-drive for Java Developers ” is a recommended read for Java developers and architects who are ready to consider anything else besides Java Swing or AJAX for creation of their Rich Internet Applications.

Also, there will be a couple of free Flex-for-Java presentations for software developers who work in New York City or in New Jersey:

On September 13, myself and Victor Rasputnis of Farata Systems will present at Java users group in New York City at Google’s offices. Register today if interested, there is only a hundred seats available on the first-come-first-serve basis.

On December 5, I’ll be presenting at Princeton JUG on the same subject.

This Web site gives you an idea of HOW to design your future Web sites with Flash. It’s like this concept car that you see at an auto show: most likely it’ll never hit the road as displayed, but it shows you the trend. If you want to see a good example of a Rich Internet Application, check out the web site of J.K.Rowling. This is not just a Web site, this is a user experience.

Hey you, people designing Web sites for business applications, stop creating these plain looking boring Web sites. Your business users are people as well, and they want to have some fun at work. Your future site may not look exactly the same as this site for Harry Potter’s fans, but think out of the box and be creative. If you are given a functional spec with a last-century look and feel, suggest a different solution by creating a quick prototype in Flex/Flash and showing it to your business users. Chances are that they may like your design better, you’ll have more fun creating this Web application, and they will have more fun using it.

Up till last year there was a real estate boom in Florida. The salesmen kept telling you the stories that it’s a lot cheaper to live there than, say in New York. I always knew that it’s a BS. Milk, bread, cars, restaurants, clothes are not cheaper there. The houses or apartments that I’d like to live in, are not cheaper that in New York either. So what’s cheaper there? Cigarettes. But I do not smoke.

Then I ran into this job ad in Orlando, FL. I’m sad to admit that I do not qualify for this $35-an-hour job. I do not have all the skills required in this job description: I do not know ColdFusion and ASP.

What’s the bottom line? Given the real cost of living and low salary rates, most of the programmers will get extinct in Florida pretty soon. Only the real expert telecommuting from Florida will be able to survive. But as you know, it’s not easy to find a telecommuting job in America, unless you live in Bangalore or Mumbai.

Even though English is not my first language, I like it. This language is alive, and it has a logic to it. You can take a root of any word and build a new word out of it. For example, let’s take the suffix “er “. If you know the word “law “, you can easily figure out what the lawer is. To teach – teacher. To learn -learner, to program – programmer. Now let’s drill down a little bit.

I am a programmER. But there are different programming languages. There are people who program for the Flash player, or simply Flash pregrammers. I tried to apply the same logic and attached the suffix ER. I got Flasher assuming that it’s a programmer who writes program for Flash. But according to Wikipedia, a flasher is “a person who displays their body in a form of indecent exposure “.

So where is the bug? In English or in Wikipedia? So the ER rule does not always work which is a bug in English programming language. The word “their ” in Wikipedia does not sound right to me either in this sentence, which is another bug, but this time in Wikipedia. So how am I supposed to improve my English?

But wait a minute, there is a fifth meaning of this word in Wikipedia: A person who creates computer animations using Adobe Flash! Hmm, I’m not exactly creating animations…I write business applications in Flex. Am I a flexer? Neither Wikipedia nor Dictionary.com know this word yet. So now I’m the first one who coined this word: Flexer! If I register with Wikipedia, I can create an article for Flexer! Nay, it’s getting too late… It’s time to sleep…

But still, I like English, because I can improve it… if I create an account with Wikipedia!

OK, one last tip for those who are struggling with English. I always use Google when I’m not sure about some English word usage. For example, I was editing someone’s technical article, that had “irrespective to “. I had a gut feeling (not the knowledge) that it should have been ” “irrespective of “. In cases like this I go to Google and do a search on both phrases (it has to be surrounded with double quotes). The first version returned several thousands, while the second one returned millions. So I’ve corrected to “irrespective of “. This is not a 100% correct way of learning English, and may be there are some cases when “irrespective to ” can be used, I just do not have time fora fundamental study and donot want to take chances.

Good night! Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy and socially dead.