Musings on the Human Condition

[This is an excerpt of my review published in ACM's ComputingReviews.com on January 29, 2015.] Becoming proficient at web application development involves a very steep learning curve and is often a never-ending, career-long endeavor. And yet a newbie has to start somewhere. When getting started, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the vast array of concepts, technologies, and tools one has to master. Often, even proficient web application developers have blinders on when it comes to having a broad perspective on web application development. In general, most developers are adequately familiar with only one or two of the following aspects of web application development: client-side programming, middleware programming, server-side programming, text editors/integrated development environments (IDEs), source/version control systems, data stores, operating systems, network programming, and hardware configurations. Few developers have a broad enough perspective--or what I call a 360-de...

A humorous synopsis of today's major programming languages. Very cleverly done and pretty much hits the nail on the head. Your favorite language is sure to be discussed, albeit not necessarily in complimentary terms!

[DISCLAIMER: I have NO monetary relationship with IBM or any of its subsidiaries.] If you develop any serious software, I'm sure you're tired of manual steps required to collaborate among the various tools involved in the process of Agile software development. You need to take a hard look at IBM's Rational Team Concert (RTC) for its ability to facilitate collaboration among the multitude of tools development shops use for managing requirements, stories, code, builds, tests, deployments, issues, defects and all of the various threads that run through a large software development effort. Hint: RTC has legendary Eclipse pedigree. I've been using RTC for about a month now and strongly recommend it as a solid option for truly end-to-end Agile software development . You may be familiar with other Agile Project Management (APM) tools such as Rally . I've used Rally extensively and it's a good product. RTC, however, is in a league of its own. It has no real compe...

A compendium of open source gems.