Today I was rick rolled yet again, and it really got me thinking about these internet phenomenon, also known as a meme. What makes a good meme? how do they start? Does anyone actually know how any of the current or past memes were started? This is my venture to find out, is it possible to force one? or is it something that just evolves on its own.
I will be writing a series of articles in my attempt to create my own meme explaining all the steps I have taken and the progress so far. I have my own check list of things that I think meme’s have in common
1 ) Misleading Domain name? check.
2 ) Funny content, somewhat embarrassing ? friends will get a kick out of forcing each other into. check.
3 ) Cheese factor? check.
Today I conceived the idea, found the video, registered the domain name, added the video to it, added tracking to be able to determine the success rate. After much debate I have decided not to name it, I’d like to see some evolution, what does it evolve into? only time will tell.
Tomorrow starts the introduction into the world! Off we go!
There are probably as many theories on proper commenting of your code as there are developers writing the code. What is worth noting? what is not? I think to much focus is wrapped up in rules that make writing good comments confusing to new and seasoned developers alike. I will go over a few simple rules I like to stand by.
1) Use XDoc comments wherever applicable. There are a number of tools out there that will make your life a lot easier when generating base documentation and HTML versions of your API documentation. They are quite useful.
2) Don’t comment just to comment. Quantity is not better than quality in most situations and this one is no exception. To many comments can be distracting and take you away from what is important; The code.
3) Answer the write question. To many times I read comments that always answer the question “What?” . If you can not easily read your code and determine what its doing you may want to consider addressing the problem a different way. There are a few exceptions to this rule with complex algorithms and methods, but you should use comments that answer this question minimally. The real question that should be answered is “Why?”. 6 months or 2 years down the road when you open up the code its probably going to be fairly obvious what the code is doing, what will not be so obvious is why you did something that particular way, some business based rule that was determined in a meeting that made sense at the time, is now just a big question mark. You will thank yourself when you don’t have to rewrite something just to figure out there was a reason you had done it that way.
4) Use examples. Even the best documentation and comments can leave confusion to people not as familiar with the code as you are. Be sure to include small snippets of code demonstrating how to use a class or method that you have created if there may be room for confusion.
5) Don’t be afraid of humor. Hunting down defects or just implementing a new feature can be long and tedious at times. At 3am when you or a fellow developer are knee deep in code you’ll appreciate the laugh it will remind you how much fun coding is.
>компютриs getting a little riduculous with the number of “Is Linux Ready for the Desktop”, “Is Linux Ready for the Masses”, “Will This New Release of Ubuntu Make Linux Ready” articles I continue to see. What constitutes ready? Linux has been a stable operating system with all the functionality you would expect out of a modern Operating System for years. For that matter so has Mac but they still haven’t come close to touching Windows’ market share. I don’t believe we will ever see any Operating System over take Windows, in reality I think we will slowly watch these market shares level out.
Ninety percent of these articles compare Linux to Windows in order to be “ready”. Well the day Linux is like Windows is the day I find something else. Linux should keep its independence. The differences it has in comparison to Windows is part of what makes it so great, and the reason I use it as my primary Operating System. Windows is not for everyone, neither is Mac, Unix, Linux, or any other operating system for that matter. The freedom of choice is the best part about these different products. Making multiple clones of Windows with different names will just complicate things.
Linux continues to accel and innovate. Many of the complications people feel that Linux has are in the hands of third party vendors. Hardware vendors not releasing Linux native drivers, or the documentation so that Linux developers can add more support for new hardware, as well as software vendors still ignoring the Linux market. On the software front this should become less of an issue as more web services are launched to provide the services we are currently using desktop applications for. This is one of the main reasons that would keep people from migrating, that along with companies current setups and dependencies on Windows. Before any migration can take place people need the willingness to change, no one wants to feel like they have to learn how to use an Operating System again. We still have a significantly large computer user-base that are just not knowledgeable with computing at all.
Let each Operating System serve its purpose, and stop comparing them to Windows as the basis of whether or not they are “ready”. Windows comes with its complications too. To each their own. Accept the differences each has, and focus on how each can improve. I’m not looking forward to 50 million clones of Windows. If thats what I wanted I’d use Windows. Let’s instead turn our focus to interoperability between these different operating systems, standards, etc. This is where we need help the most.
I have been an avid user of Vim for some time now. The more I use it the more things I discover I can do with it, and the more I fall in love with it. There are a number of colleagues of mine who also share the same passion for Vim as I do and quite often we share tips and tricks as well as custom maps and plugins that we have written with each other.
I have noticed there isn’t really a great way to bring Vim users together to share tips, tricks, maps and plugins or really a place for new comers to go to get assistance from veteran users, aside from information scattered across linux forums.
So with great pleasure I announce the launching of VimForums.com which in time should become a great resource for Vim users.
After writing my previous rant about recruiters titled Trapped in Recruiter Hell. I decided that it might be beneficial for me to compile a list of tips for dealing with recruiters to alleviate some of the hassles. There are several mistakes I see people make, or things that contractors just aren’t aware of before jumping in to a contract position.
Is It Really A Good Opportunity?
When looking at any job offer through a recruiting firm the first and foremost thing to remember is that recruiters are sales people. Despite what any recruiter says, they are not out for your best interest. They are out to get paid and make their commission off of your placement. The rate they offer you is determined by them for maximum profit on their end, not what they feel is fair.
The person contacting you has probably merely scanned your resume looking for buzzwords and thats if your lucky. They have not paid a bit of attention to any detail inside your resume so don’t take their word about how great an opportunity is. See my previous post Trapped in Recruiter Hell for a good example of this.
Be sure to ask a lot of questions about the position. I have dealt with many recruiters who knew less about the position they were trying to fill than they knew about me. If you’re uncomfortable about any aspect of it walk away. Don’t get yourself into a bad position its not worth it.
Moving across the country for a 3 month contract with possibility for a permanent position is not a good opportunity, not for anyone. Unless maybe they are offering you a substantial amount of money and relocation help, just don’t go and sell your house. I’ll come back to this later.
Negotiate! Negotiate! Negotiate!
It still astonishes me how frequently I talk to leased workers who came in at an extremely low rate simply because thats what they were offered. A useful piece of advice is never take what they are offering, recruiters will always low ball you. Keep in mind the recruiting firm is making a lot of money off of you, the rate at which the employer pays them is far higher then what they are offering you. Tap into their profits a bit, get yourself a good rate.
Most recruiters will not give you benefits unless you ask them for them. Be sure to ask if they’re offered. If they do not, insist they furnish you with a couple more dollars an hour to account for them. I have yet to have a recruiter decline this request. My most recent encounter I ended up receiving both the benefits and the higher rate.
Payment Terms
Save yourself the hassle don’t fall in to the 1099 trap. Many recruiters will try to get you into companies under a 1099 Independent Contractor agreement. This opens up a whole can of worms you don’t want to deal with. Be prepared to pay around 15% more in taxes because your paying all the employment taxes yourself. You will want to store money throughout the year or make quarterly payments so your not in for a huge shock at the end of the year.
Try your best to work under W-2 as a standard employee so the recruiter is covering a portion of the taxes. If you cannot work under a W-2, do yourself a favor spend the $400 and form an S-Corporation. This way you can pay yourself a portion of your pay as a salary and the rest as dividends. This will save you from paying employment tax on all of your income. It will also put you in a position to be more aggressive with your deductions. I have met several contractors who will only do Corp-to-Corp billing.
Expect To Be Extended
Don’t count on being converted after your 3, 6, or 9 month contract is complete. Despite what percentage of people your recruiter tells you get converted. The facts are not in your favor. Most companies rarely hire on after the first contract especially if it’s a contract as short as 3 months. They more often then not will extend you out for a longer period of time. Be prepared. Keep in mind, a lot of employers who use leased workers have several at a time, you are competing for the same permanent positions as all the other contractors, the ones before you, and even ones after you if they are exceptional workers.
Contractors are often hired because more staff is needed to get a project / company off the ground, and far less to maintain it or continue running the project after its been launched. So as sad as it may be you have to come to the realization that not all contractors will be converted. Which brings me to the next point.
Mitigate Risk
Recruiters lie, they embellish. They try to make your opportunities with the company out to be more then they really are. I’d say 75% of contract workers are only working under contract for the chance to take the permanent position. A recruiter will not tell you your chances are slim. So you need to mitigate the risk of being left unemployed.
Make sure you save money, don’t take all that money you’re making and throw it away on new gadgets and toys. Contract positions come and go, they are risky thats why you make more then a salaried employee.
Don’t sell your house and move out of state, or across the state. You don’t want to be left in a position in 6 months where you don’t get that permanent position you were counting on, and now you need to find a new job, and find a new home. The converse of this is also true. Don’t up and by a house near your contract position to have the chance that in 6-9 months you will need to find your next contract position and close a lot of doors for yourself because you are unable to sell your house.
Do not wait until the last minute to look for something else, give yourself at least a month, preferably 1 1/2 to 2 months to find a new job. If it gets this close to the end of your contract without any traction being made to convert you or extend your contract its not worth the risk. It is their fault for not keeping up on it. Always keep your options open.
Prevent Resume Rot
Resume Rot is a horrible thing. You end up in a contract position using all these out dated skill sets and before you know it the industry has changed, and your left back out in the job market hunting. Keep yourself up to date on current industry standards and technologies. This will keep you in a good position if things don’t work out where your at.
Follow Up
Be sure to follow up regurally with your recruiter about the status of your contract. Don’t count on them to contact you. It’s unreliable. Make sure you jump on their case to find out about an extension with plenty of notice in advance. They may drop the ball.
I have been offered a permanent (cast) position at Disney. April 7th marks my first day as a Disney cast member. Up until this point I have been a leased worker.
I have been working for Disney Internet Group as a leased worker since January of 2007. This has been a great experience for me and has introduced me into the world of a relaxed work environment. The people I work with are fantastic, and the work is very rewarding. We all work hard and play harder. Everyone here is extremely intelligent as well as quite amusing.
I couldn’t begin to sit back and reflect on all the great moments here, the inside jokes that seem to persist for months at a time. The Nerf gun raids on other teams. Turning our entire floor into a miniature golf course, with teams creating their own themed holes.
My current role is as a Web Developer on the Walt Disney World booking engine. Which is the 800lb gorilla here at the office. It has been very rewarding to watch the site grow and see my ideas come to life on such a large scale. Being presented with problems, or ideas and being given the opportunity to run with it. To use my own creativity to solve the problem. Disney places a lot of faith in their developers and that we have a say in what is released into our site. There have been numerous times I have pushed back on features or changes that I didn’t feel were in the best interest of the site, and they were withdrawn. It really gives us a sense of pride and ownership of our product.
One of the greatest experiences to me is still hanging out at the parks with other developers having drinks and socializing with guests in the park. It’s really rewarding to talk to people who have booked on your site, and are having a fantastic time on their vacation. There is a bit of amusement on our part sitting back and thinking, these people don’t even realize that they’re having a conversation with several of the people who built the site they used to book their vacation.
I have shared many laughs and many late nights with other developers here and love every minute of it. This is a great opportunity for me and I look forward to my time to come with the company.
This day and age its nearly impossible for anyone in the IT field to not have run ins with a head hunter at one point or another. Many employers have moved to the try before you buy philosophy. Get the expert in there doing work for a few months and see how things turn out.
This interaction irritates me quite frequently. Who am I kidding it irritates me about 90% of the time. Dealing with these people is rarely a good experience.
Never Ending Phone Calls & Emails
First and foremost you have to deal with the never ending calls from about 30 of these places at a time. That of course is provided that there are not multiple recruiters from the same office calling you about the same position which seems to happen more frequently then you’d expect. They will continue to call you and / or email you until they reach you. The greatest part about this is as an 8+ year web developer I will get phone calls about a Sales Floor Manager at a car dealership. Which brings me to my second point.
Lack of Knowledge
It’s quite amazing that a recruiter would not try to have at least a brief understanding of a field they are recruiting for. They call you about positions you are either completely over qualified for or under qualified for. It’s become quite apparent they only scan your resume for keywords before calling or emailing you telling you that after “reviewing” your resume they feel you are a perfect fit for a position they have. I can have a description of a previous job that says I use an internal language that is java based and I will be determined to be a perfect candidate for a Sr Java Developer position with a minimum of 5 years experience. Don’t even attempt to tell me you feel I’m a perfect match for a position you have with a client until you have actually read my resume.
Whats Best for “You”
Honesty is a trait you should never expect to find in a recruiter. Most of their effort is spent trying to convince you how great of an opportunity they have for you. When in reality they mean a great opportunity for them. I had a great example of this happen to me a few months ago.
I received a phone call from a head hunter about a position in Miami, FL. I currently live in Clearwater, FL this position is on the other side of the state. Through numerous phone calls and emails I tried to inform the head hunter that I was not at all interested in the position. She always had a rebuttal for how it wasn’t an issue. I have both a Doberman and a Pit Bull which are banned breeds in that city, of course that wasn’t a problem because there is a town about an hour outside of Miami where they are allowed. Transportation to and from this city isn’t that big of a deal because there is a bus running in and out. It continued over and over. “I really would hate to see you miss out on such a great opportunity”. After probably about ten emails I had enough, and informed her “A great opportunity for me? how can you say this is a great opportunity for me. I have to move across the state, with no help with relocation. Receive a salary lower then what I currently make, at a higher cost of living. I’ll have a longer commute to work. I’ll work for a company I have never heard of when I currently work for a prestigious name. How exactly is this a great opportunity for me? What makes it so great? The only person who benefits from this so called opportunity is you.”. Needless to say I never received anymore replies.
Disappearing Act
Once the head hunter lands you in the position don’t expect to hear from them again. Mission accomplished they collect their commission and move on to the next victim. Almost every placement I have ever gone through I either never heard from my recruiter again, or maybe once every 3-6 months. I once had a position where my recruiter didn’t even keep track of my contract end date. I ended up being informed by the employer at the time that it was the last day of my contract and I wouldn’t be coming back after the break. My recruiter should have known this already, but apparently didn’t want to be bothered to make a phone call to let me know. Amazingly enough about 9 months later I received an email from this same recruiter with another “great opportunity”. I hope he isn’t waiting by the phone.
Update: As a follow up I have posted a list of 7 Tips for Deailing with Recruiters
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So here it is. Now to start filling this with some content.
I have been playing with a lot of new things (Zend Framework, Ext JS Framework, Blueprint CSS) so I should have some posts regarding my experiences coming real soon. As well as a few sites I’m working on preparing for launch I may throw some teasers as I work on development.
Overview
I have been playing around with a multitude of editors, and plugins over the several years that I have been doing web development, always searching for the next best thing, I have been through more editors than I can count of all different types; vim, jEdit, phpED, Zend Studio, Dreamweaver, and many more. For a long while I stayed clear of Eclipse, it always seemed to be a bit bloated for my tastes, I can admit now I was a little quick to jump to conclusions. The more I developed in a number of languages the more I realized I wanted to use one editor for all of them, Eclipse continues to grow and adapt to the ever changing development community. It has a number of useful plugins that do everything from add support for additional languages, revision control, to integrating directly with a number of issue trackers.
Limitations
Eclipse does however have limitations in my view. One of the things I dont like about Eclipse is that common functionality between editors can be limited, each language implements its code folding in a different manor, that is however if they implement it at all. I think some of this functionality could be exposed on a generic level. For instance, maybe a general preference to enable folding on tabs, or brackets { }, brackets are common in most languages to define blocks of code, it would be useful to have this functionality available by default in the editor for unsupported types, the ability to fold on tabs is huge for me, a lot of code no matter the syntax people generally keep a manor of spacing to define blocks clearly, to be able to fold on those makes it easier to view what you want, this is one of the features I miss most about jEdit, other functionality I miss about jEdit was its ability to expand a fold into the full buffer, let me explain this more in detail, when folding was implemented you had the ability to select a fold and show only that block of code in the editor window, which stops you from over scrolling the block of code you need to focus on, and finally SuperAbbrevs; Eclipse does have functionality like this available for Java, but I think this is another feature that could be implemented in all editors generically, what this plugin did was allow you to define tags, that when typed and a key combination was entered it would replace it with your abbreviation (code template) I’ll show you a brief example
I would define an abbrev like this for the value “fore”
if(is_array($${1:array})){
foreach($${1:array} as $${2:key} => $${3:val}){
$end
}
}
Now inside my editor if i typed “fore” and pressed the hotkey it would output the following and i would already have selected “array” inside $array. As i type it would replace the value in both sections, upon pressing tab i move to the next variable “key”, then “val”, and the final tab would put my cursor inside the foreach loop.
if(is_array($array)){
foreach($array as $key => $val){
}
}
Defining helpers like this can reduce your development time a lot and enforce good practices.
These are only a few pieces of functionality I feel Eclipse is lacking to make me a truly happy man. Over my time doing web development I have found a number of useful plugins to Eclipse, I will discuss some of my favorites I use on a daily basis below.
Revision Control
I’m a big supporter of revision control, and I believe that it is a necessity for any serious developer, it can save you a lot of time tracking down issues that may have been introduced in new code, rolling back changes to get rid of features, or bugs. It also simplifies the development in groups of more then one user, but this could be an article all in itself about all the benefits to source control.
The two revision control systems I commonly work with are Perforce and Subversion, both have plugins for Eclipse, P4WSAD for Perforce and Subclipse for subversion, these allow you to interact with your repository without ever needing to leave the development environment.
PDT - PHP Development Tools
PDT although not officially released till September of this year is currently in a Release Candidate state, and an extremely powerful tool for PHP developers. I use the plugin on a daily basis.
- Support for PHP 4 and 5
- Syntax Highlighting
- Syntax Validation
- Code Folding
- PHPDoc Support
- Code Completion - This reads PHPDoc as well and displays this information when the content assist drop down appears, supports PHP’s native functions and show descriptions and parameters.
- Code Outline
Aptana
I have only recently started playing with Aptana, but I am extremely impressed with it thus far, I know I have probably only scratched the surface of the functionality it offers; and same as PDT this is still in a pre-release state so plenty of functionality to come, Although Aptana does provide PHP support I am incredibly fond of PDT and have been sticking with that, rumor has it 1.0 release of PDT will incorporate the HTML / CSS / Javascript support from Aptana, One can only hope. I am only going to address features I have personally used.
- Javascript / CSS / Javascript Syntax Validation
- Javascript / CSS / Javascript Syntax Highlighting
- Code Folding
- Code Completion - the amount of code completion this offers is insane, it will code complete your user created javascript functions, CSS will code complete your tags by id if you type # in the document, after setting in your preferences which browsers you want to support code completion will also show you what browsers support the CSS attribute, or javascript function it is suggesting, javascript code completion will also tell you what versions of the DOM support it.
- Outline view
- Javascript debugger
- FTP / SFTP support
Mylar
Another useful plugin that I have only recently just found. Even the name of it is creative, for those that don’t know mylar is a polyester film that is used to make inexpensive viewing glasses uses to look at solar eclipses, it keeps the eclipse from blinding you, Mylar does the same thing, it keeps you from being blinded from Eclipse. Mylar is a task based view of Eclipse, when looking at your project structure, your outline, or even the code unfolded there is way to much to look at. This plugin allows you to create tasks, which have a context associated with them, it keeps track of what you do when you have this task activated, and limits the views in the project explorer, the outline view, and the unfolding of code to only the pieces you have interacted with while you have had this task activated. You have the ability to set portions of code to a higher priority, remove files from the context, or clear the context all together. This plugin comes in extremely handy for me in my day to day work, as things of higher priority always come up, I just create a new task and move on, then when i’m ready to go back to what i was doing I reactivate my old task and it brings up any files I was working with and limits the views to only what I was looking at.
The functionality doesn’t end there. It integrates into several issue trackers already, Bugzilla, Trac, and several others. So your tasks are automatically pulled from your issue tracker and you can close out the tasks right there without leaving your IDE, and also allow you to associate a context with it. Even if your issue tracker isn’t supported a feature that proves to be extremely useful is the ability to import / export contexts. So if I work on a defect and pass it along to another member of the team I can email him my context, or attach it to the defect, So he can work with what I already have.
Conclusion
Eclipse is a very powerful tool for web developers to have available, and the plugins for it continue to get better. I know I have only scratched the surface of some of the plugins I use regularly, and I know there are many more plugins I dont even know exist.
So I decided to move my blog, it was hosted on Alakriti but i’m working on migrating my personal stuff to its own site, to make room for business only stuff to be on Alakriti. So over the next few days I will be importing some of my articles from my various blog and getting this thing styled more to my liking.
Fair warning some posts will end up before this one, as I am going to date them to the date they were posted for historical tracking.
