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Gartner Identifies Four Converging Trends That Will Change the Face of IT and Business

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:00:02 +0000

Gartner has identified four broad trends that will change IT, and the economy, in the next 10 years:

Cloud
Business impact of social computing
Context Aware Computing
Pattern Based Strategy
(Link: Gartner Identifies Four Converging Trends That Will Change the Face of IT and Business)

The End Of The Road For SOAP Web Services?

Brent Sordyl — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:00:02 +0000

They haven’t put their press release on a web page anywhere as far as I can tell but WS-I (“Web Services Interoperability Organization”) has finally run out of runway and will now be absorbed by OASIS according to their PDF release. It’s nor surprise, they told us back in July that it was going to happen. As far as I can tell, that’s the end of the WS-* family of specifications – there will be no more, and they are destined purely for “maintenance” at OASIS with the submission of remaining profiles to ISO taking place.
(Link: The End Of The Road For SOAP Web Services?)

Demystifying agile, top 7 myths. | Making Good Software

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:00:02 +0000

Applying agile principles to everything is not only wrong, but lends to dogmatic ridiculous situations, like never documenting the code, never creating documentation or never creating even a light design upfront.
(Link: Demystifying agile, top 7 myths. | Making Good Software)

Best practices for scalable, high performance systems « Wille Faler’s Buzzword Bingo

Brent Sordyl — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:00:02 +0000

1 Offload the database – Avoid hitting the database, and avoid opening transactions or connections unless you absolutely need to use them.
2 What a difference a cache makes – For read heavy applications caching is the easiest way offload the database.
3 Cache as coarse-grained objects as possible – Coarse-grained objects save CPU and time by requiring fewer reads to assemble objects.
4 Don’t store transient state permanently – Is it really necessary to store your transient data in the database?
5 Location, Location – put things close to where they are supposed to be delivered.
6 Constrain concurrent access to limited resources – it’s quicker to let a single thread do work and finish rather than flooding finite resources with 200 client threads.
7 Staged, asynchronous processing – separate a process using asynchronicity into separate steps mediated by queues and executed by a limited number of workers in each step.
8 Minimize network chatter – Avoid remote communication
(Link: Best practices for scalable, high performance systems « Wille Faler’s Buzzword Bingo)

Software engineers, Web developers are in short supply across the nation – chicagotribune.com

Brent Sordyl — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:00:02 +0000

Chicago-based Groupon opened an office in California’s Silicon Valley this year when it couldn’t find Chicago developers fast enough.

It took the company about 18 months to hire 30 developers in Chicago, said Andrew Mason, founder and chief executive. “When we opened an office in Silicon Valley, it took us a matter of months to match the size of our Chicago team,” he said.
(Link: Software engineers, Web developers are in short supply across the nation – chicagotribune.com)

Is your future in IT a job in the boonies? – InfoWorld

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:00:02 +0000

Rural outsourcing companies are able to keep their costs down largely because they can pay lower wages to employees. For example, new hires at CrossUSA typically make 30 to 40 percent less than what they earned in their previous IT job. That means you can expect to draw a significantly lower salary than you might get working in New York or Boston.
(Link: Is your future in IT a job in the boonies? – InfoWorld)

Oracle-IBM pact cuts Android off at the knees

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:00:02 +0000

Here’s the story in a nutshell: Android apps are written in a restricted dialect of the Java language, which meant the platform had a vast and skilled developer community from the moment it was released. The components of Android that allow it to run Java code are based on the Harmony project, an open source implementation of Java created under the aegis of the Apache Software Foundation. The vast majority of the code in Harmony was actually written by IBM employees, because Big Blue decided Harmony would be where it would direct its Java development efforts.

But that’s no longer the case; the core of the IBM-Oracle deal is that those employees will now switch their attention to OpenJDK, Oracle’s in-house open source Java implementation. The move completely sucks the wind out of Harmony’s sails, with Tim Ellison, one of Harmony’s senior developers, essentially conceding the project will probably fold in short order.
(Link: Oracle-IBM pact cuts Android off at the knees)

Oracle and I.B.M. Agree to Java Pact – NYT

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:00:02 +0000

But I.B.M. announced on Monday that after Oracle extended an olive branch, Big Blue decided to set aside past hostilities from the Sun days. I.B.M. said it would shift its Java development efforts from the initiative it sponsored, called Apache Harmony, to the one begun in 2006 by Sun, called OpenJDK.
…
Still, Oracle’s dispute with Google casts shadows over Java’s future in general. For example, Google, Mr. Lea said, has more people working on OpenJDK projects than Oracle, and the lawsuit restricts communications between the litigating parties.
(Link: Oracle and I.B.M. Agree to Java Pact – NYT)

NoSQL Comparison from thoughtworks

Brent Sordyl — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 14:00:01 +0000

NoSQL is a large and expanding field, for the purposes of this paper the common features of NoSQL data stores are:
1. Easy to use in conventional load-balanced clusters
2. Persistent data (not just caches)
3, Scale to available memory
4, Have no fixed schemas and allow schema migration without downtime
5, Have individual query systems rather than using a standard query language
6, Are ACID within a node of the cluster and eventually consistent across the cluster
Not every product in this paper has every one of these properties but the majority of the stores we are going to talk about support most of them.
(Link: NoSQL Comparison from thoughtworks)

Loosecubes – a global network of shared workspace

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:00:02 +0000

Loosecubes is a community of independent people building a global network of shared workspaces. We bring together people who have great space and people who want to work in it. We don’t set the terms, you do. Loosecubes does not own or rent any workspace. We started Loosecubes because we needed a place to work that made us feel more inspired, not less. Where you spend your working hours has a huge impact on your life. Working in a beautiful and functional space can make all the difference.
(Link: Loosecubes – a global network of shared workspace)