Coding Horror has a sweet write up on Coding Buddy.

But the part I loved the best when it showed up in the RSS feed was the associated sketch.

Priceless

I know on several projects I have ran into this and even though in certain situation you can’t blurt out WTF, but you sure are thinking it along with the slow dull screams of WTF am I doing on this project!

Coding Buddy, its truly fact and not a work of fiction.  It can make a big difference.  I know even a conference call can help shake out the WLF/minute level.  Being someone that is working on three projects (day job and other) coding buddy is solely missed.

Sometimes you don’t get the added benefit of sitting next to other developers all day.  Sometimes that is good, sometimes it makes you review some of you project code months later and the WTF meter is pegged.  What the heck was going on then.. normally deadlines that “others” wanted met, 60 days before the project even started.  I count myself lucky that in all my development life I have only been in one project that I would call a complete failure and that ship just sank of horrible death.  Definatly no coding buddies there and a bunch of developers all on islands to themselves.  Never good.

Design first, Think often, Refactor more AND talk to a coding buddy (even if it is your childhood furry bear) so the w/min levels are under control.

Friends don’t let friends code without a buddy.

The Apache Wicket team is proud to present the second release candidate of Apache Wicket 1.4. This is the first Wicket version with java 1.5 as minimum requirement.

1.4 is really starting to shape up and since the whole generic movement in the project has settled since M3 days, I am going to have to jump from 1.3 to 1.4 big brother.

Wicket is the only way!

The best web dev tool there is reaches 1.3.0 Final.

They have really made some great progress lately and for those of you not using Firefox 3.1 yet, you can go get this now.

Firebug 1.3.0 Final Released

If you are using Firefox 3.1 you will still need to go get the 1.4 alpha (or soon to be beta).

Firebug Release Directory

Thank you again Firebug team!

It appears Microsoft is updating their virtual earth product with all new imagery.  To do that, they are updating 48 Terabytes of data.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/01/01/microsoft-virtual-earth-gets-a-48tb-update

That takes backing up and moving data around to an all new level.

Can you only imagine the hardware infrastructure in place to handle that upgrade, roll-out and production support.  I know I read specs on their server farm for virtual earth when they first turned the switch on quite a while ago, but I am sure that has only grown as they have continued to one up Google.

There is a great Coding Horror write up by Jeff which gives a interesting perspective (most likely management.. but still the same) on the trade off of what your developer costs you and what new more powerful hardware costs you.

Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive

The post eludes to several key points, many of which I try to get management on numerous efforts to understand all the time.  Some hold true, but there is a point of no return.  Sometimes just throwing iron at it will only make more of mess (especially in the energy conscious era we have stepped into these recent years.)

Remember the quote, “To make money, you have to spend money.”… well the spin I see here is, “To save money, you have to spend money, sometimes.”

This directly ties into the The Programmer’s Bill of Rights.

I remember the days of Windows development that I heard that they did not want to give the development team too fast of machines, since then the code they wrote would never perform well on “normal” hardware that end users would have.  That was some what true, but much less important (excluding fancy fancy stuff) in a web centric world.  Now it has to deal with the size of the pipe and not the engine.

Over the years I have seen more times than not, is not about optimizing (as eluded to by Jeff) but cleaning and/or refactoring.  I usually find 9 out of 10 times if I refactor code when trying to make more out of it I get more bang for the buck.  But that also means you live a life of refactoring (which all good developer should).  This helps with:

• Stop the code decay / erosion.  All code dies over time.  (Try to get management to understand that one right?  Some developers don’t even understand it sadly enough.)
• Make the code more clear and concise for future developers who will have to read it.  (If it doesn’t you probably refactored wrong).
• Enhance the current functionality with less code (more bang for the buck).  Yes Virgina, there is a Santa Claus and this can happen to you too.
• Evolve the code to newer library/standards/technology.

The last bullet point is something I have found very important in the Java world.  You find that you have (or someone else) has written code for a project 5,6,10 years ago based upon JDK, lib, etc at the time.  If you evolve the code to use more modern JDK run-time libraries or even specific 3rd party libs/projects that didn’t exist back then, you can get some great windfall.  (Of course done with great scrutiny).

As always, there is not just black and white.  There is not just one solution to all problems.  Find the right shoe and make sure it fits.

Apache Wicket 1.3.5 released.  The only way to do Java web development anymore IMO.

The Apache Wicket team is proud to announce the availability of the fifth
maintenance release: Apache Wicket 1.3.5. A lot of bugs have been squashed and
several improvements implemented. It is recommended you update to Wicket 1.3.5
at your earliest convenience.

Apache Wicket 1.3.3 Release news