acoliver's blog
InfoWorld: Get real, Bill -- we do need more H-1Bs for tech workers
Until we address underlying causes of developer shortage, we'll need all possible H-1B visas to keep the industry going
Recently InfoWorld's own Bill Snyder wrote about the efforts by companies to increase the number of H-1B visas. His article parroted what the headhunters say: There's no shortage of qualified developers -- you just need to pay market rates.
InfoWorld: Why PaaS? Dev, test, staging, no waiting
Deploying directly to your production cloud is all right -- really -- thanks to modern PaaS and NoSQL options
Maintaining and even funding an adequate dev, test, stage, and production environment or a reasonable subset requires lots of resources and discipline. A lack of resources in particular has often put developers in a bind. Even if you can afford to have a cluster of 128-core boxes for production, you may not have (or be willing) to find the funds for an environment that is used only once per quarter or however frequently you issue your releases.
InfoWorld: Down with file attachments! Hail to the Google Docs API update
With massively refreshed Google Docs/Drive APIs, use JavaScript to integrate to your heart's content, create new apps
Last year I started pushing everyone in my company to never send me attachments. I wanted a Dropbox share and a Google Drive share, as well as the ability to collaboratively edit with my coworkers. Nothing is more frustrating than a back-and-forth merge of three versions of the same ODT (the open source equivalent of a DOC) or OPD (the open source equivalent of a PPT) file. We were going to the cloud, like it or not.
R.I.P. JavaBlogs
Atlassian shut down JavaBlogs the original go-to blog aggregator for Java.
In 2003, Atlassian launched JavaBlogs largely as a demonstration for their web frameworks. This was before Jira became their flagship project and they discovered the market for developer tools in the form of web applications was considerably larger than proprietary Java web frameworks. It was also somewhat of an outgrowth of an early list that Atlassian CEO Michael Cannon-Brookes kept of Java oriented blogs. When my original blog and David Johnson’s list was added people finally started to take notice.
InfoWorld: $200K for a computer science degree? Or these free online classes?
If you do the work, you can get a computer science education online rivaling that of the Ivy League. Here's a nice little curriculum for you
I've been taking free business courses online at Coursera, despite some annoying limitations. I love it, especially since I don't have a few years and a few hundred thousand bucks to blow attending our local business school -- which I'm sure is very good, but hey, I have a business to run.
The Missed Opportunity of Coursera
Open Software Integrators is my current and measurably successful shot at running a company. The first pursuit reached so-called ramen profitability, and provided me with just enough profit to keep me feasting on Ramen Noodles or, in my case, canned beans but no more than that.
Ubuntu 13.04 was a bumpy upgrade for NVidia
I have a two year old Dell Precision 4100 with a i7-2760QM CPU @ 2.40GHz, 16g (expandable to 32g), NVIDIA Corporation GF106GLM [Quadro 2000M], an 128g SSD and a supplementary regular hard drive. I keep it docked with a 30" monitor connected.
I've upgraded it through a few releases of Ubuntu. Most recently I upgraded to 12.10, which was a very smooth upgrade. A week or two later (today), I decided to upgrade to 13.04. That was less smooth.
Upon the first reboot I froze on a text-mode screen. I hit the power button and rebooted again. This time, I got a normal graphical login. Upon login I got my usual background but no launch bar or window manager.
InfoWorld: The 14 characters you meet as a coder
Are you a Developer Diva? Perhaps a Holy Priest of technology? Or maybe you're the Hipster Hacker from Hell? Let's find out ...
Developers often think of themselves as the only sane person in the room. This, as you may know, is also a trait of the clinically insane.
InfoWorld: Who nailed the principles of great UI design? Microsoft, that's who
A 12-year-old MSDN article still rings true -- and provides excellent guidance when JavaScript may be giving us too much to play with
Note: This week I'm stepping aside to allow my colleague, Jonathan Freeman, to post this killer piece on UI design. He has been a UI developer for my company, Open Software Integrators, since 2011. -- Andy
InfoWorld: A first look at Gavin King's Ceylon
Gavin King brought us Hibernate and Seam. Now he wants us to drink the Kool-Aid -- or rather the Ceylon tea -- once more