In my 2-year old MacBook Pro the trackpad stopped working. Well, it works when I “m on the ground, but when I “m up in the air (on the board of any aircraft) it stops working. Smart me decided to purchase the new toy from Apple ndash; the magic trackpad . Proud of my own yet-another-smart-decision, I boarded the plane. Guess what? The magic trackpad didn “t do the magic. It didn “t work in the air either.

Apparently Apple designed this device just to communicate with the main trackpad via the Bluetooth. But when the main trackpad malfunctions, the “magic rdquo; one does the same. This makes it the most useless over-hyped deficit item I “ve ever seen coming from Apple.

But I “m not angry with Apple, honestly. I purchased their stocks back in January for $203 a share, and now they go for more than $300 and keep moving up. Now I have the money for the new MacBook Pro.

On the positive side, I “m a proud owner of a unique device that QA teams in product development companies should try to purchase from me. They can do accessibility tests of their products on my MacBook. The test lab should be set on board of any aircraft. As soon as the plane will be airborn, they “ll see how their software products suck when only keyboard is available.

Make your bid guys! I “ll put my 15 rdquo; MacBook Pro on eBay with a modest starting bid of $1000 USD.

Yes, I ‘m lying in my upcoming Java tutorial. I went again through the lesson about the Java interfaces. Well done, Yakov! Nicely explained the concept of interfaces and how they are great for offering polymorphic solutions. But I lied. Why?

I did it because this is what Java newbies have to say during technical job interview. Why? Because the chances are very high that people who will interview newbies also think so. And newbies won ‘t be able to convince the interviewer that even though programming to interfaces may look better to those (PEOPLE) who read the code, they still lead to tight coupling between objects. Even the definition “the interfaces is a contract between… ” clearly states that you can ‘t breach the contract, and you must read the contract.

What ‘s better? Events. An object A fires an event to an object B. No, I lied again. An object A is firing an event to whoever. It ‘s none of its business to whom. When Howard Stern broadcasts he has no idea who is listening to him. Whoever subscribed to this message. Think decoupling. Events. Observer-observable. Dependency Injection.

Read my book. Pass the interview. Accept the offer. Walk into the building on Monday. Stop by the cubical of your interviewer and say, “Sorry, man. I lied to you during the interview, but I didn ‘t have a choice “.

What a gibberish is this blog, right? I know.

After all these rumors on Microsoft buying Adobe, several people asked me what do I think of it, and, of course the second question was (it “s always on the mind of every professional software developer), “What to learn next rdquo;.

To be honest with you, this news didn “t get me excited that much. If this will happen, it “ll be definitely more beneficial for Adobe products. With all my respect to Adobe engineers, I believe that Microsoft has a lot more experience in developing and RELEASING software than Adobe. If this happen, Flash and Silverlight will control most of the video delivery market on the Web, and the weak motivation of turning HTML 5 into a standard will simply vanish.

Will Flash and Silverlight merge into a FlashLight? I doubt it. Both of these runtimes can live as good neighbors on every device including iPhones. I still believe that Apple will stop playing stupid and will let Flash Player on iOS ndash; the sooner the better for them. Steve Jobs should do it at least for the sake of getting a standing ovation during his next year keynote when he “ll state that over the last year Flash Player has resolved its technical challenges and we decided to let it in. Whatever. Just do it.

Will I start studying Silverlight and the whole shebang that comes with it? No. I “m a Java developer who spent the last four years of my life developing applications having Adobe Flex clients talking with Java-based servers. And regardless of what some people say after recent actions of driven-by-lawyers Oracle “s, Java is stronger than ever, especially after IBM joined Oracle in OpenJDK efforts.

I highly recommend you to give a close look to Java EE 6 ndash; which is a robust and easy (I mean it) to use enterprise platform. If Adobe will decide to move away from Java and cater to .Net then be it. But I “m staying with Java!

Two years ago I switched from Windows computers to MacBook from Apple, and there is no way back. Why? If you understand the difference in driving Mercedes and Ford, you know the answer. During this time I ‘ve been using a number of non Apple programs on this computer, and the only negative experience I got so far was from Microsof Word – I have to use it to submit my new book chapter to my publisher.

Now let ‘s switch to the world of smart phones. I ‘ve been waiting for Android phones and honestly tried to find the device that would give me a better than iPhone experience. Peer pressure, you know. Android is open platform, as opposed to closed iOS controlled by evil Steve Jobs.

But the more I read about legions developers that heroically overcome difficulties in creating pretty much useless applications for Android the more I ‘m proud of myself for purchasing iPhone 4, the Mercedes of smart phones. Viruses are entering Android OS.Armies of software developers are writing mediocre programs for Android. Enjoy your freedom!

Maybe Steve Jobs is right in forcing people writing better quality code? Maybe he ‘s trying to keep the wannabe programmers away? Is he building elite guild in the software industry?

What do you think?

Just came back from Oracle “s JavaOne and in three weeks will attend Adobe MAX conference. The quality of technical presentations at these events is pretty high. But being a speaker myself, I pay attention not only to the content, but also to the style of the presenters.

In particular, one of the JavaOne presenters have used 95(!) slides. This is clearly too many. The rule of thumb says that you should have about one slide for each two minutes of the talk. But there was another presenter who showed one slide in the beginning and then announced, “This was my last slide rdquo;. This sounded cool. The audiences like cool effects. Then the speaker delivered an excellent interactive hands-on presentation. The presentation has finished with well deserved round of applauds to the speaker.

The morning after

I got 95 slides from the first preso and one from the second one. This makes is 48 on average. It “s about the right number. The average temperature in the hospital is 98.6 deg;F. But if I need to study these two covered subjects, I have lots of reference materials about the first one and none about the other.

Of course, you may say that conferences are about getting ideas, seeing “concept cars rdquo;, partying, and networking. Google has abundance of technical facts and figures on any subject. But still hellip; I really liked that second preso and wanted to repeat it at home. Tough luck.

Maybe slides are not evil? They can be helpful not only for the audience, but also for the presenters (especially for rookies) to keep them stay focused on the topic.

Some people go to Jennifer Lopez concert just to see her. She doesn “t even have to sing. Let her just walk on the stage. To the left. To the right. Turn around. Just stay like this for a minute, will you!

But geek presenters are not glamorous music or Hollywood stars. Geeks should leave something to the audience. As a matter of fact Jeniffer Lopez is also selling her CD “s at the show so you can enjoy repeat performance at home hellip;if you have good imagination.

So here “s my humble suggestion to the technical presenters: you must hand something out to the audience after your walking on the water is over. This can be a slide deck, the code, your article, blog, or a book. A little something tangible to remember your performance. How did it go? To the left. To the right. No need to turn around. Ain “t no Jennifer here.

Tonight I “m going back home after attending JavaOne 2010. These are my fresh notes about this event.

If you are reading this, you know something about Java. At the very least you know that this is a case-sensitive programming language and the HelloWorld is not the same as helloworld. If you don “t know this much, consider listening my new audio podcasts “Java for Blondes “.

Attendance

On the same note, Sun “s JavaOne was not the same as Oracle “s javaone. This year it “s a small conference. It felt small. Even though it “s a part of the huge Oracle Open World conference (41 thousand attendees), JavaOne crowd was modest. I don “t have the numbers, but based on my past experience. It seems that only between three and four thousands of Java people are here. At the end of 90th, the peek attendance at JavaOne allegedly was around 15K, and in 2006 – 12K.

Forget about technical session attended by 500+ developers. Most of the auditoriums were for 100 or less attendees. Javaone 2010 had obvious symptoms of men disorder called Shrinkage .

Lawyers

The other thing I miss was the excitement. Didn “t feel it. Oracle is about business. I got a feeling that lawyers run Oracle, not engineers. Just read these evidences I “ve collected during these three days.

1. To get the wi-fi access, you “d have to read and agree to the following statement, rdquo;Use of this Internet connection is intended solely for Oracle OpenWorld, Java One and Oracle Develop attendees. Unauthorized access or use may result in termination of your access, disciplinary action and/or civil or criminal penalties. To the extent permitted by law, your use may be monitored. rdquo; But guess what, Internet connection really worked! Now I know, that the wi-fi issues on other conferences are caused by criminal bastards that are sneaking into the event venues and perform unauthorized access.

2. Every slide deck of the presenters working for Oracle had a slide that started like this “The preceding is intended to outline our general product directions. It is intended for information purposes only… rdquo; Basically they didn “t live me a chance to sue them if the syntax of closures in the project Lambda will change between now and release of Java 8 in 2012.

3. Before the Java keynote on Monday night, the voice have read pretty long message from the lawyers. This message was also conveniently displayed on the screen for deaf people.

4. Oracle employees are trained to say “No comments rdquo; to strangers. First, one of the Oracle people told me this at a party, and then, executive VP of product development has demonstrated this technique when asked about Gosling “s initiatives by Computer World.

Session Scheduling

I don ‘t know if Sun Microsystems made any profit on previous JavaOne ‘s, but for Oracle this conference is clearly business. I “m not even talking about the airline-quality lunches. They wanted to save money on the venue. The rooms for presentations were smaller than needed and people who didn “t pre-registered for the talk routinely were standing in lines hoping to get in. I wouldn “t think it take a rocket scientist to predict that Brian Goetz will easily fill the room. Apparently I was wrong. After waiting in line for 15 minutes into the presentation I gave up.

People who planned the room/talks had no clue who is who in the Java community. Because of this, lots of talks were rescheduled . If you didn “t pre-register, upon arrival you could find out that this session is not here any longer. Where? Sorry apparently it was cancelled. The scheduling and notification systems were poorly done.

One hands-on lab (was there more than one lab?) was rescheduled 20 minutes before it was supposed to start, and two hours later went as an instructor “s demo because of some technical issues. Unpreparedness.

The bright side

I didn “t pay for the conference pass. My kudos to Oracle for giving free passes to all Java Champions from around the world who wanted to come. I also enjoyed preferred seating at the JavaOne, private meeting with Olympic Champion Apolo Ohno, party with JUG leaders, and nice jacket with the JC logo. My special thanks to people at Oracle who are responsible for JUGs and Java Champions programs.

Cinderella

When I was walking to the Hilton hotel to register at JavaOne, I noticed these colorful pavement signs. Did you get the message? I did. Oracle Develop and JavaOne are moving in opposite directions. Yes, JavaOne was Cinderella at Oracle “s ball. But the Cindirella story had a happy end, remember? Pretty soon expect to see an online post addressed to Oracle regarding the future of JavaOne. Something “s gotta give.

A couple of years ago I went with my friends to a regular trip for salmon fishing on the Lake Ontario. The captain who we usually hire said that it was a busy season, people like ourselves were coming non-stop, and he didn ‘t have a day off for 40 consecutive days. He concluded that next week he ‘d to take a couple of days off. When I asked him what he was planning to do, he said, “Not sure…probably will go fishing somewhere. ”

Somewhat similar has happened to me today. After spending a couple of hours writing the next lesson to my new Java tutorial I got tired, and decided to relax and have some fun. During the next half an hour I recorded the first podcast in a new series of audio lessons “Java for blondes “.

After this recording I felt refreshed and relaxed and went back to work.

I got an email from a person claiming that she found my profile on oreilly.com. I ‘m pretty sure that Juliana is a computer literate person, maybe even a geek. Since I can ‘t use her offer (married, two kids), I decided to share Juliana with you. Please read her email, feel free to get in touch with her, and most importantly, remember that the distance and colour (is she Brit?) don ‘t matter.

Please write her an email and say hello from Yakov (trust me, I ‘m not getting any referral fees, just trying to pay back). Below is the original email I got from her – I didn ‘t change a word.

HI

My name is Juliana,i saw your profile today in (oreilly.com) and became intrested in you,i will also like to know you more,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am.

Here is my email address (juliana4u_2006@yahoo.com)

I believe we can move from here!

I am waiting for your mail to my email address above..

(Remeber the distance or colour does not matter but love matters alot in life) yours

Juliana