Added a new section to tell a little bit about the confused mix of everything that is me.
Everything you never wanted to know about Conor O' Kane
Anyone reading from Japan (i.e. Andy) may not be impressed by this news, but for those of us from ye olde GSM networks it was certainly impressive. I saw for the first time, television on a mobile phone the other day.
A friend of mine has a new LG phone on the CDMA network of Reliance here in Jaipur, India. I was looking at his phone a couple of days ago and watched a brief news clip from Aaj Tak, an Indian news station. The frame rate was slow and the image tiny, but that just reminded me of the early avi clips on PCs, when the video was in a tiny box in the centre of the monitor and the film was grainy and the frame rate matched a snail's pace. PCs have come a long way since and doubtlessly mobile phones will as well.
On an unrelated note, I'm in love with FeedDemon, although I think it will make me less productive as I can now easily follow any blog I find any way interesting. It's only $30 to buy so I may purchase it soon! No bugs so far except for it crashing once when it hung trying to display a webpage (which displayed ok upon relaunching it). Don't like the 30 uses trial though, especially when it decrements if it quits because of an error and you have to restart it..
Ah.. back in IE ;o)
Continuing with trying new software today I have decided to catch up with the 21st century and get myself an RSS reader. Downloaded Feeddemon from Bradbury Software. Really sharp looking program. Really nice introduction the first time you run it as well which introduces you to the basic concepts of how it works.
I'm going to give this a go and hopefully it'll help me keep track of my favourite blogs. Only issue is that I'm using a shared pc here in work and amn't comfortable with other users of the pc being able to see what content I read. Not like I'm reading anything suspicious.. oh no.. *ahem*
Just tried a new browser called Firefox. Seems nice enough. Few annoying things so far are that it seems to load images more slowly than IE, although that may be IE's use of a cache? Other annoying thing is it not rendering the movabletype entry editing form properly! Unusable (almost, I'm typing this entry in via Firefox, but it's hell).
In following the current debate on offshoring I see some focus on the process that is used and how this is crucial to the success or failure of a project. To a degree there is an acceptance of bugs in software development. New processes such as agile development are emerging to improve the process. But maybe the process will always have flaws because our fundamental concepts of software development are wrong?
Some aspects of Agile Development and eXtreme Programming revolve around daily builds, fixing bugs as soon as they're found, and working in such a way that known bugs or dependancy issues are caught before they spiral out of control. The xUnit series is becoming very popular for unit testing with frameworks such as .Net and Java. More and more focus seems to be moving from RAD (Rapid Application Development) to what I'd call RBF (Rapid Bug Fixing - not catchy I know, how about RAP - Rapid Application Patching? ;o)).
But maybe we are missing something fundamental? Maybe we're making tiny improvements on an inherently flawed way of producing software applications?
I read a few interviews with some senior Sun people recently and they had some very interesting insights. The two main concepts from the articles I will link to that I would like to draw attention to are
Now these two are linked in some ways, but the first point can be addressed while still staying inside our current software orthodoxy, while the other can't.
In my experience (which is admittedly very limited), most computer science programs fall in one of two different directions. In one direction are the programs that rely heavily on theory. Students come out knowing a broad base of theory but with very little that they can immediately apply in their first job. It does however provide a solid foundation for further learning.
In the other direction are the programs that have modules with names like "Web Services with .Net" and "Cisco router administration." Students on these courses learn a lot about the latest industry technologies, maybe VB .Net or Java or J2EE, whatever. When they graduate a project manager can pick them up and assign some code to them and they can be useful almost immediately. However maybe their theoretical base is less solid than the students from more theory-oriented courses and this could potentially hamper them later on, or at least make life harder for them.
And of course most computer science programs will fall somewhere between these two extremes.
Richard Gabriel, a "Distinguished Engineer" at Sun, has a very interesting idea about how a computer science course should work. And maybe this type of course would produce better developers than the previous and current generations?
But even these graduates who would leave college with a lot of experience will still be trapped in the orthodoxy of current mainstream computer science. Jaron Lanier, technology prophet (my own description :o)), has some interesting ideas about reimagining basic computer science concepts. In the interview with java.sun.com he mentions that even the file is currently an orthodox concept but it wasn't always part of the mainstream of computer science.
Victoria Livschitz, another Sun person, also has some interesting ideas regarding the idea of proper reuse of software modules and the level of intuition lacking from software development at the moment.
Reading the ideas and opinions of such people is really humbling but also very inspiring to get an insight into some of the minds that are leading the way towards a better and cooler technological future.
Links:
Interview with Richard Gabriel
Interview with Jaron Lanier
Interview with Victoria Livschitz
Added a seperate area of the blog for storing bookmarks. It's mainly for me but I also write each link as an entry so anyone can check it out and maybe find an interesting entry/link to check out.
I have a small bookmarks tool on Redbrick but the postgres database seems to be down a lot so I've decided to find some space on this site for sticking temporary links for a time when I can put them somewhere else for safe keeping.
Oh, also I will add categories to my posts in an effort to make my site more searchable (if it ever gets to such a size that searching it is hard..).
How to keep track of information and learn new stuff without spending too much time just surfing the web or going through forums?
Lately I'm trying to curb my web surfing by reducing my visits to non-essential sites and by unsubscribing to mailing lists or newsgroups which I don't need to keep track of. Hopefully I can find other ways to make myself a more effective information processing machine :o) All suggestions welcome!
I recently sat in on an interview for the first time. It was an interesting but slightly uncomfortable experience.
When you are in an interview as a candidate you are focussed on the questions and thinking of your answers. As an observer though it's hard to not feel pity for the candidate if they get stuck on a question or give the wrong answer. Or if your co-interviewer gives a bitch of a question which you know they will have little chance of giving a good response to.
Still it was good experience and it also gave me some small experience of how people can tend to put a lot of waffle and padding in their CVs..
The point that I'm stuck on is what to ask them to do to test their aptitude in the absence of any or little previous work experience. I guess you want to give them some intelligence tests or problems to see their problem solving skills, ala the infamous Microsoft tests. What I looked for myself was a passion for software but the candidate seemed a bit like a rabbit caught in headlights by that point in the interview so they stuck with the safe answer which was a disappointment to me as I was really hoping they might be a passionate candidate. Passion for software or learning would really impress me if I was interviewing someone again. Although I guess someone can fake passion if you don't probe too much and get into a nerdy conversation with them. When I say passion I suppose I really mean nerdiness. Obsession with technology. And do you want a nerd who wants to work with the coolest new technology if the job you're hiring for is some boring bread and butter application which has nothing new or interesting about it?
If anyone is asked if they want to sit in on an interview I would definitely recommend it. It shows you aspects of both sides of the interview process that you might not have thought of before.
So I've started my own personal blog! Again! ;o)
The software I'm trying this time is called MoveableType. So far it seems up to the job and easy to configure although the default style leaves a lot to be desired.
I'll also put this in an "About Me" section but since I haven't set that up yet I feel the need to introduce myself. My name is Conor O' Kane and I am a software developer from Dublin, Ireland. Currently I am working in Jaipur, India with Compucom Software Ltd on a number of projects. I am here as part of an AIESEC traineeship. I graduated in 2002 with a B.Sc. in Computer Applications (aka Computer Science) from Dublin City University, Ireland.
I wanted to set up a blog to have a forum to put up any articles I write as well as more general personal items. People who know me from the Redbrick forums might be worried about high noise to content ratio but I will try to keep a balance :o)
I already keep a blog of my experiences in India but that blog will end in a couple of months when I finish my traineeship. Whether or not I leave India then is something I am still deciding..