acoliver's blog

Catherine Bracy, a brief profile

Submitted by acoliver on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 11:43

I think I started following Catherine on twitter due to a “friend of a friend” kind of introduction. I recently interviewed Catherine for an Infoworld article on Code for America. We talked about a number of other issues and about her background, in particular. I felt that while this material didn’t make sense for the article, it might make sense to start doing profiles on people that I interview beyond the topic at hand.

InfoWorld: Code for America. Think global, code local.

Submitted by acoliver on Thu, 04/18/2013 - 10:52

Code for America is bringing positive change, recruiting developers to apply simple Internet technologies to everyday municipal interactions

Recently I was forced to interact with my local government. This involved several pieces of paper being signed and notarized, as well as multiple trips in person to nondescript offices. My staff had to shepherd me around town and calm me down while I dealt with my psychological rejection to all things that require my participation in monotony ("seriously, isn't there an app for this?").

InfoWorld: 16 ways to torture developers

Submitted by acoliver on Mon, 04/15/2013 - 12:21

Hi, my name is Initech, and I have a developer abuse problem

Having great developers means creating a great environment. In an increasingly competitive world, that means everything from free food to paid screw-off time. But not everyone has gotten the message.

Some places still practice developer abuse. Here are its many forms. Do not indulge in more than one or two, or you may never see your best developers again.

1. Hellish security

InfoWorld: How to teach a Java EE app new NoSQL tricks

Submitted by acoliver on Mon, 04/15/2013 - 12:09

Sun dumped JavaEE Pet Store, but a bright developer modernized it, and we ported it to NoSQL with Couchbase

Java Blueprints were developed to show you design patterns in enterprise Java. The Java Pet Store was designed to demonstrate the quintessential Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application. This was mainly in the heady days of EJB 1.1-2.1, which had many failed and defective technologies, including the now-dumped Container Managed Persistence.

JavaEE Pet Store goes NoSQL - Instructions

Submitted by acoliver on Mon, 04/15/2013 - 12:00

These are the instructions for building and running the project associated with the Infoworld arcticle JavaEE Pet Store goes NoSQL with Couchbase. For our builds we use Ubuntu 12.10 server edition. We started from a clean install with only the updates applied, ssh installed (for copying files to and from the server) and Java (we used Oracle Java 1.7.0_17). Also, these instructions are adaptations from the Couchbase installation instructions on their download site as well as from the original project instructions in the readme of the project on Github.

InfoWorld: Can TomEE save Java EE?

Submitted by acoliver on Mon, 04/15/2013 - 11:55

Founder of Apache TomEE project believes there's life left in the Java EE programming model, leads the charge to prove it

The world of Java EE (formerly J2EE) seems frozen in time. The people who care about application servers tend to dwell in gray cubicle farms. They need WebSphere to stay up on their P6/P7 hardware, but aren't really thinking about the future too much.

The counterpoint to that legacy caricature is Apache TomEE -- and the recent announcement by PaaS provider Jelastic that it's adding support. TomEE is a Java EE version of Apache Tomcat that embraces several related Apache Java projects as well.

InfoWorld: 10 steps to becoming the developer everyone wants

Submitted by acoliver on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 14:38

You're a crack coder and people depend on you to solve their issues. Still not enough? Here's how to hit that next level.

You thought it was all about programming skills. But you were wrong! Great code is fine, yet commanding better work and a higher salary depends on ensuring more people know who you are. In other words, you need to market yourself. Here's what seems to succeed.

InfoWorld: The developer's checklist to prepare for the cloud

Submitted by acoliver on Thu, 03/07/2013 - 09:37

InfoWorld | Epic codefest: 7 programming languages in 7 days

Submitted by acoliver on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 12:49

Marissa Mayer is completely right

Submitted by acoliver on Tue, 02/26/2013 - 15:06

It may surprise some of you that despite my open source roots and business, I’m not on the whole a big fan of telecommuting. I’ve worked for companies where it worked and companies where it didn’t. I nodded my head when I read about Mayer’s switching Yahoo away from telecommuting. She is totally right.