Category: Archive

Last week, a US based Flex/Flash developer who IMO belongs to the top 20% Flash developers twitted that he was contacted by a recruiter offering a contract paying $55 per hour. While $55 per hour may sound a lot in some of the developing countries, the cost of living in the USA makes this rate a joke. And we are not talking about some rookie who learn Flex last week in a classroom. Pretty sad, isn “t it?

Next day, a manager of a large corporation asked me if our company can provide them with a senior Flex/Java consultant working onsite in a greater New York area. The rates were $60-$80 per hour plus this software developer would have to go through another consulting company that was on a preferred vendors list of this large corporation. This middleman would also need to get a cut from this rate. Let “s do some math together assuming that the corporate client is willing to pay $80 p/h for this developer.

The preferred vendor will shave off, say, eight bucks. Our company has bills to pay too, and let “s say we “ll take $12. This means that we can pay $60 per hour to a senior Flex/Java developer living in the USA. I can “t find a plumber in our geographical area who “d be willing to clean my toilet for $60 per hour. Last week I had to bring my car to a repair shop to replace worn out brake pads. They charged me $90 per hour for labor.

I deeply regret that I can “t outsource cleaning toilets and changing pads to one of the less expensive countries.

So what does it mean for Flex/Java development in the USA? These are the choices that the enterprise development managers will face:

1. Hire anyone who knows how to spell Binding, AMF, and Servlet and keep he fingers crossed that these guys won “t bring the project to a full stop.

2. Outsource the software development to another country where Flex senior developers started to lay eggs and breed.

3. Stop fooling around and offer reasonable rates in the USA to bring local talent to the project.

In the past, the Wall Street companies were known for selecting the last option. During the last two years their habits changed and they go number two.

Other industries do a number one. When a development manager smells troubles, s/he hits the Panic button and tries to switch gears to select number three, which may not be available cause the good spellers ate almost all the budget already.

Dear corporate hiring manager! Don “t fool yourself. There “s no free lunch. I know, the rules in your company changed, and the HR rats wrote the instructions that tie your hands down. Still, fight with them to make an exception that would allow you to bring a real talent on board. Your career is at stake here.

1. Last year, the Princeton Java Users Group that I “m leading became homeless. We lost the host that was giving us a place to meet and pizza.

2. Last year, New Jersey Flex Users group ceased to exist ndash; not sure why. The Garden State, where every other person is in IT deserves better.

3. Being a proud Jersey resident, the next week will be the second time I “m presenting this year hellip; at Atlanta Flex User Group Atlanta. No, it “s not Atlantic City, NJ. It “s Georgia.

4. Flex and Java nicely compliment each other in lots and lots of real-world enterprise projects in the greater New York Area, which wouldn “t be able to run its IT operations without us, Jersey hero commuters who spent 3.5-4 hours a day getting through the tunnels and bridges to that famous island and back.

5. Recruiters have hard times finding developers with Flex/Java skills.

6. I “m ready to create and run a new Flex and Java Users Group in Central Jersey as soon as someone will offer a place to meet and pizza to eat. It has to be a meeting room that can feet at least 30 people. This is all I “m asking for. The hosting company will be entitled for opening 5 minutes of each meeting announcing their products, or job openings. And people who attend users groups are real developers! If interested, send me an email at yfain11 at yahoo.com.

7. My role is to bring qualified presenters and present myself on the subjects that interest enterprise Flex and Java Developers.

8. All of the above is a just part of my contribution to Flex and Java community.

9. Now let me take care of the bills. I “ll be running a week of live online introductory Flex 4 training on the week of July 12, 2010. You can attend without the need to travel. For details and registration visit this site.

10. The next one-day advanced public Flex workshop on modularization of Flex applications will take place in Lansdowne Resort, VA on July 27, a day before the CFUnited conference starts in the same venue ( this workshop is not affiliated with CFUnited). Here “s the registration page.

11. In August-September I ‘ll be running a week of online live Intro to Java class – stay tuned.

That “s all folks. See you in one of the meeting rooms.

Six months ago I started following Adobe ‘s advancements in the creation of a cross-platform solutions for smart mobile devices. In general, it ‘s nice that finally Adobe realized that it ‘s time to do something about the close to zero penetration of Flash Player in mobile space (I ‘m talking about the real thing, not Flash Lite). When you think about the lack of Flash on smart mobile devices, all of a sudden the statistics that claims 99% penetration of Flash Player on desktops becomes irrelevant. Especially given the fact that search-engine optimization for Flash-based Internet applications is nothing more than an urban myth. If Amazon would redesign their Web site in Flash, they ‘d be out of business pretty soon – people wouldn ‘t be find them on Google (Ichabod, the headless Flash Player proved once again that headless and brainless are synonyms).

The news about automatic code generation from CS5 to iPhone as well as other droid-shmoid gadgets sounded exciting. But there was one thing that bothered me a little: Adobe was offering a cross-platform solution. Been there. Didn ‘t work for Sun Microsystems that presented Java as “write once run anywhere ” fifteen years ago. But hey, maybe this time it ‘s going to work? Maybe Adobe will implement RIA with Flash smarter than Sun did with Java Swing? Adobe ‘s CEO ‘s mantra is “author once and get it across multiple devices “, which is to me the same as write once, run anywhere.

Steve Jobs doesn ‘t let Flash Player on iPhone? No biggies. Smart folks at Adobe came up with a workaround to let ActionScript developers write programs AS USUAL, and then with a click of a button turn it into a native iPhone application that can be offered via Apple ‘s App Store. How this would be happening? A special tool would be extracting the ActionScript bytecode (ABC) from the compiled SWF file that would be then fed to LLVM compiler that would turn it into another compiled code for the iPhone ‘s ARM processor.

Read about details of this solution here, and note the following statement, “If you have any experience developing applications with Adobe Flash Lite or other mobile platforms, you can use many of the same tricks and techniques… “. But what if you don ‘t have such experience like the vast majority of today ‘s ActionScript programmers? Then you ‘ll be developing a Flash application AS USUAL, but now it also can run on iPhone.

I like Apple products, I respect Steve Jobs a lot – both as an amazing businessman and a very strong personality (don ‘t forget that recently he healed on the verge of death and went through a liver transplant surgery). But a lot of his recent statements sounded crazy to me. You can ‘t deploy a program on iPhone if it ‘s not written in C, C++, Objective-C, or JavaScript. How crazy it is? One person on the Net compared it with not accepting an MP3 file to iTunes store, if it was not created in GarageBand application. This sounded as a valid analogy, and being Adobe ‘s fanboy I wrote a couple of blogs making fun of Steve. The problem is that I ‘m also an Apple fanboy. I use MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad daily. I can appreciate the quality of these devices and extremely friendly and intuitive user interface. iPhone OS is probably the first operational system that any trucker from Alabama can figure out without going through any special training.

When I spent more time thinking about crazy Steve, some of his unreasonable requirements become reasonable. No, I don ‘t buy most of his accusations in the recent WSJ article on Flash. The very fact that he wrote this article tells me that he ‘s feeling pressure from AAPL stakeholders, and it only get worse next year when Android based devices will started competing with iPhone. Hopefully, Adobe will deliver an Android solution that will be well performing and feel native (no cross-platform, please). But I can hear that besides having business reasons to not letting Flash on iPhone, he does want to guarantee a ultimate user experience on his devices.

Is it even possible to generate code from ActionScript that will feel native on iPhone? Three months ago I learned about a product called Elipse Studio 3 by OpenPlug. These guys are also working on a cross-platform solution, but their approach is different, and IMO, better than Adobe ‘s CS5 code generators. The difference is that Elipse Studio 3 generates the C++ source code from a Flex application as opposed to extracting the code from SWF to be recompiled by LLVM as CS5 does. When the C++ code is generated, developers can MANUALLY change it and use the real native API offered by Apple to create components that not are native, not just feel like ones.

The OpenPlug folks don ‘t believe that infamous 3.3.1 amendment to the iPhone constitution will affect them as their applications will have C++ code at some point, and Flex developers will have a chance to use native API to create iPhone experience. But I don ‘t think that they sleep well at night – there ‘s no protection from Act of Steve.

I didn ‘t use Eipse Studio 3 and can ‘t endorse it yet, but it seems that they outsmarted Adobe at least in their approach. My only question to OpenPlug folks is this, “If you let me manually edit C++ code and use native API, you assume that I know C++, and if this is the case, why do I need to write code in Flex/ActionScript in the first place? ” Expected answer, “Developing in Flex is a lot more productive than in C++, and you don ‘t have to really know C++ that well, you just have to learn how to insert and manipulate objects from iPhone libraries “. And then I ‘d go, “If people don ‘t want to learn C++ well, they won ‘t be able to create the real iPhone user experience and Mr. Jobs will be angry again “. Maybe not. Nobody knows.

In on of my No BS IT podcasts, I ‘ve compared relations between IT consultants and agents with how whores and pimps operate. Last week I was wearing the pimp ‘s hat, and here ‘s the story.

A group of consultants from our company works for a very reputable customer. You may not know, but it takes a lot of work and repeated performance for a small company to establish and maintain good relations with multi-billion dollar giants. We respect the rules, and whenever new job requirement comes in, we spend time finding a really good candidate before submitting the resume.

This time our client needed a strong Java consultant. None of our consultants was sitting on the bench (read standing on the corner), and we ‘ve asked a partner company if they may have someone who meets the requirements. They sent us the resume of Puneet Pagi, and it was good – there were lots of Java EE technologies and great projects, which looked real.

Real-shmeal…I interviewed Puneet to check if his technical level matches the resume. He was real.

Submitted the resume to the client, and they liked it too, politely asking what would be the convenient time for Puneet to come for a face to face interview. I passed this request to Punnet, and he sounded excited. This was ten days ago.

Five days passed, no word from Puneet. The client sending me emails asking why I haven ‘t responded. I knew that there was something fishy with this candidate. OK, picking up the phone.

“Puneet, I ‘m been waiting for your response for five days… ”

“This week was very busy for me, and I wouldn ‘t be able to go for an interview. ”

“I never asked you to go there this week, I just asked what would be a convenient time for you. Listen, I understand that people may be considering multiple opportunities, there is nothing wrong with this. Just tell me, so I ‘ll present to our client the right way. ”

“No, it ‘s nothing like that. It ‘s been a busy week, but I can go there on Monday or any other day next week. ”

“Are you sure? ”

“Yes ”

I made arrangements with the client, three people were involved to get Puneet a visitor ‘s pass, three client ‘s developers were assigned to meet with Puneet on Monday. Everything ‘s ready. The only thing that financial giant forgot to do was to roll out a red carpet.

On Thursday night, the HR person from our partner company called saying that Puneet notified them that he ‘s got an offer from another company. Basically, he lied to me.

Our consulting partner sent us an email with apologies. I apologized to our client. They understood. I still have some bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I ‘m sure our client has it too. Now we need to rehabilitate our reputation by sending them best of the best. We will.

Puneet didn ‘t bother apologizing. Remember, he had a busy week building his career.

Dear whores, pimps are your friends. Team up with them – it ‘ll be beneficial for everyone. I know, you are not happy that pimps are getting their cut from your hourly rate, but they don ‘t get it for nothing.

This game with the resumes exaggerating everyone ‘s skills is not perfect. I know that people make up “real-world ” projects to get their first jobs. But why in the world can ‘t you stop lying at some point?

Good luck, Puneet with your career. I wish people will always treat you the same way. What goes around comes around.

I ‘ve been reading a review of this week ‘s CloudExpo that took place in New York City. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to attend this event and can ‘t report on the quality of this conference, but one item took my attention – the author complains about the poor quality of wi-fi connectivity.

Having poor wi-fi at conference is a fact of life regardless of how big or small the event is. If you never organized a conference or a seminar, you may not be aware of the super expensive cost of offering Wi-Fi for all participants. Hotels or conference centers can easily charge $1000 a day for wi-fi for a 30-people event. I don ‘t know how much Javits Center charged for this poor wi-fi, but I ‘m pretty sure it was at least $20,000.

But my main message is not to save a little bit of doe to poor event organizers. I ‘m in general against having wi-fi at any conference.

Let me ask you a simple question, “What an attendee needs wi-fi for? ” I hear you, to check emails. Is it so? If you are a big shot (a team lead or even a c-Level manager) you ‘re definitely carrying. Blackberry, iPhone, or even Droid. So you are covered in that department. If you are not carrying, the business can survive without you being constantly on a leash.

What I really see on each and every conference (I usually attend/run about a dozen events a year) that attendees are casually browsing the Internet, twitting, facebooking, blogging while attending technical presentations. I haven ‘t spotted anyone yet watching a porno movie while attending an IT session, but I ‘m sure it ‘s coming too. Is this why you or your employer paid for the ticket? I don ‘t think so.

To make the story short, I ‘d like all meeting organizers to gather somewhere for a week (Miami, Vegas, Hawaii) and create a new movement (under my leadership): “Say No to conference Wi-Fi “.

To demonstrate my leadership and put the money where my mouth is, I ‘m announcing that there will be no wi-fi at my upcoming seminar on Modularization of Enterprise Flex Applications on May 17 in New York City. Instead, I ‘ll offer a discount code that will save you one hundred of American dollars. Just enter the code saynotowifi at the registration page.

Two most fashionable discussions for this Spring-Summer season are:

1. Will Apple kill Flash Player?

2. Will Apple kill Adobe?

Apple won ‘t kill neither Flash Player nor Adobe. Yes, Steve Jobs is going slightly mad. He goes against all rules in the industry, and there ‘s no logic in his statements. For example, today Apple allowed Opera browser on iPhone violating their own non-compete rule for accepting application for the iPhone OS. But if you think about it, all important shifts in the computing industry were made by “crazy ” people who were pissing against the wind.

At this point, let ‘s enjoy Freddy Mercury, the best impersonator of Steve Jobs – they even look alike. Three other guys in this video play roles of CEO ‘s of Adobe, Google and Microsoft.

But having said all this, it ‘s obvious that Adobe is too slow in releases of new software. Silverlight will become a serious competitor next year. The statements about Flash Player installs on 98% of desktops connected to the Internet don ‘t make me happy any longer as there are close to zero installs of Flash Player on the smart mobile devices. Five years from now most of the end-user computing will be initiated from hand held mobile devices. Google and Android go strong though!

Yes, Android phones will get Flash Player 10.1 in a couple of months but this is not enough. And yes, Windows Mobile 7 will support it too. And yes, Adobe has agreements regarding Flash Player with 19 out of 20 vendors of mobile devices. But that vendor #20 is very important regardless of how slightly mad its leader is.

I ‘m wondering if Adobe is working secretly on their own mobile device? Just a thought. These days any respected software company has to have their own line of mobile phones.

When the outside temperature rises

And the meaning is oh so clear

One thousand and one yellow daffodils

Begin to dance in front of you – oh dear

Are they trying to tell you something?

You ‘re missing that one final screw

You ‘re simply not in the pink my dear

To be honest you haven ‘t got a clue

I ‘m going slightly mad

I ‘m going slightly mad

It finally happened – happened

It finally happened – ooh oh

It finally happened – I ‘m slightly mad

Oh dear!

I ‘m a big fan of Queen, and you?

Yesterday, Apple introduced new features of iPhone OS 4. Nice. Really? Should we embrace the platform and, for a lousy $99, become a developer for this API?

Those people who bothered to go through the application process noticed the difference in a clause 3.3.1, which in the past was just merely stating

“Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. rdquo;,

the new version (the beta of iPhone OS 4.0) has the following interesting fragment:

“Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited). rdquo;

First of all, this change is a stab in the back to Adobe, that invested heavily into enhancing the upcoming CS5 release with the ability to EASILY create iPhone applications in ActionScript. Apple kept quiet (chuckling in the bushes) for all this time and made this licensing change just several days before the release of CS5.

This is just a clear indication of the fact that Apple hates Adobe. And I want to make it clear. It “s not about competition. They simply want to apply techniques of a bully-looking security guard deciding who can get into the only night club in town.

“I don “t like the way you dressed. Get out of here. rdquo;

I love this analogy of what Apple just did:

Unless you ‘ve recorded your MP3 in GarageBand they won ‘t sell your music in iTunes Store.

I “ve seen many products compete, but this is something else, and this is dirty. Why would Steve Jobs make such decisions? I can just make up two reasons:

1. There was some personal conflict between Steve Jobs and Adobe ‘s CEO while the latter worked for Apple.

2. I applaud Steve Jobs for overcoming serious health problems and coming back to make Apple even stronger (since Jan 26 I made almost 20% on AAPL stocks), but after a person was on the verge of death, his values were changing and Steve might have decided to just do what he really wanted especially having $4B in the wallet.

Adobe ‘s CTO remains polite, but states that iPhone is not the only multi-touch device and CS5 will be a valuable tool for many developers for various smart phones.

But what do they hate Java and C# for? I don ‘t know.

Apple also seems to be afraid of people who are using the approved API but do it better than their own developers.

Side Bar

I like Apples products a lot. My family likes them too. Two of my sons and I use MacBooks. Each person has an iPod. Last Saturday I bought an iPad, and it delivers great experience.

Last month I wanted to sleep with iPad and I did it. And it was good. When I posted this photo on Twitter I got the following response from @schmidtkevinall “Are you sure your MBP didn ‘t sleep with your iPhone and produce that iPad? rdquo; And it was good.

iPad is much more superior to iPhone. It “s large, it “s fast, it “s long lasting. It just doesn “t make calls, but calling iPhone a phone is also an exaggeration, if you know what I mean. It lets me spending a little more time in bed checking emails keeping it on my belly. I eat breakfast with iPad ndash; my son Dave came up with a nice idea of a free iPad stand.

What I don “t like about iPad is that my wife took it yesterday to show her colleagues at work and “forgot rdquo; to take it out of her bag when came home. I have a feeling that she wants us to get used to the fact that it “s her toy now.

As a matter of fact, iPad is the best gadget for non-geeks, including your parents and grandparents. They “ll love it!

One of my readers sent me an email with a detailed comparison of features of his Sony Vaio and iPad explaining why it make a lot more sense to buy a decent laptop than an iPad. What a baloney!

Comparing technical sheets of iPad and a powerful laptop is like comparing technical features of the elite escort girl and a good loving wife.

A tried and true loving wife can do many different things, while that escort girl can do just a couple but how! Ask Eliot Spitzer.

The good news is that the word cheating is not applicable here. You can use a good laptop and an iPad at the same time.

Conclusion

Today, iPad is the only whore in town. Ok, make it two: iPhone and iPad. But guess what, every whore becomes old at some point. Android and Win7 mobile have entered the turnpike already, and they are moving really fast. HP Slate is coming closer too hellip; Let “s welcome them. The more the merrier!

My deep condolences to the citizens of Poland on today ‘s tragedy – the plane crash, where almost a hundred people died. But what makes things worse is the cowardish coverage of the event by a largest Russian news portal Lenta.ru and Channel 1, the main TV channel of Russia. I just finished watching the main daily news in Russian called “Programa Vremya “. More than a dozen times the Russian KGB-raised leaders Putin and Medvedev and reporters stated either that the “Polish delegation was coming to participate in the 70th anniversary of a massacre ” or “the Polish delegation was coming to participate in a memorial ceremony “.

These cowards didn ‘t have balls to openly state that this was a mass murder of more than 21000 Polish military men by Soviet NKVD – the ancestor of KGB and today ‘s FSB. Most of the Russian people either don ‘t know about this event or were made to believe that this killing was made by Nazis. Until Russia will not find a way to openly admit that Stalin was a criminal of Gitler ‘s caliber, they won ‘t have a future.

Watch the movie Katyn by the famous Polish director Andrzej Waida. Read this article about Katyn or use Google ‘s service to translate and read this entry from Polish Wikipedia or this one from the Russian one.

I got it yesterday at 5PM. The Apple store at the nearby mall was crowded, but at the end of day there were more people in blue shorts (I was told that there were a 100 of them) than customers. The salesman immediately showed me a shelf with nice looking iPad jackets-turn-into-ipad-stand for only $39.

Needless to say that many people left broke after shelling out five or six hundred bucks for something they unconditionally loved for a least two months without knowing what for. I didn ‘t buy that $39-thingy. My son David immediately found a decent replacement for it.

If you ‘re broke but have 2 min to watch (if you don ‘t have money, you ‘d better have some time), here ‘s a short instructional video.

It doesn “t take a rocket scientist to notice a serious decline in printing of computer books let alone computer magazines. I enjoy reading books on software and visit the nearby Barnes and Noble book store at least twice a month. During the last three years the number of book cases that display computer books substantially shrank.

Today, newly baked programmers prefer Google to books. They don “t realize that Google is OK when you know what you are looking for, while books can give you a new perspective on what you are planning to do.

Publishers don “t want to print books that no one wants to buy. But today I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

During my today “s visit to B amp;N I noticed a series of book on the shelf on digital photography. I “m one of the legions of people who are thinking of replacing a point-and-shoot camera with a digital SLR like Nikon D90. There were about ten different thin books on that shelf, and I picked D90 one. It was about 65 pages thin. I quickly skimmed through the pages learning that comparing to a pocket camera one of the main advantages of D-SLR is the ability to change lenses. On top of that, these cameras use a small mirror that allows you to see exactly what you “re shooting plus you can make more shoots per second. Not much information for a $25 book.

Than, I picked a similar looking book about more expensive camera – Nikon D300. Boy, was I surprised! This book had the same text as the D90 one. The same intro to what “s D-SLR, the same sample photos. The only difference I noted was the picture of the camera itself plus a couple of pages showing a little bit different controls.

Why literally the same books have different titles? Wouldn “t it make sense to publish one book for D90 and D300 highlighting the difference in several pages? Nope. The secret was that each book came with a DVD, which contained 80 minutes of instructional videos! Here we go! The printed part of the book didn “t really matter. It was a compliment to a video that apparently would teach you specifics of the camera you “ve chosen.

See where I “m going?

The new generation of computer programmers doesn “t want to read either. They want to watch a mooovie. It can be a Youtube video on how to do something, it can be a screencast. The material has to be consumed as easy as possible.

But since not everything in software can be videotaped, the next generation of computer books will still include a couple of hundred pages. Maybe some code samples and short instructions should go there.

Remember those 1500-page Bibles on software? I declare them officially dead. 1000 pages? Dead. New generation of programmers suffers from ADD and short attention span.

From now on, a 500-page book is called THICK. Five years from now, 200-page software book will become a de-facto standard. But they will come with DVD “s where the authors click through all examples that were mentioned on paper.

Wiley Publishing has come up with a series of books called “24-hour trainer rdquo;.

It “s not the same idea as “C++ in 24 hours rdquo;. I guess, they meant to say that you “re buying a trainer that “s with you 24 hours a day. Each book is a set of short lessons with an instructional DVD. My hat off to Wiley who figured out the trend even sooner then O “Reilly! Welcome to the future!