• The Architecture & Design Review
• Hands-On Java CD 2^nd edition available again
• Thinking in Code Audio Interviews
• Thinking in C
• Notes from the Programming the New Web Conference
• Java Posse Interview:   Part I   Part II
• Thinking in Java 4^th Edition
• Audio Interview 2   MP3
  
• What is Consulting?
• Object Design
• Audio Interview 1   MP3

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Blog

• BitBucket/Hg vs. Launchpad/Bzr We recently moved "Python 3 Patterns & Idioms" from Launchpad to BitBucket. Here's why.
• Frequently Forgotten Fundamental Facts about Software Engineering A useful collection of observations about our profession.
• JavaPosse Roundup 2009 Dates Set Mark March 9-13 on your calendar.
• Python Decorators III: A Decorator-Based Build System Most build systems start out with dependencies, then realize they need language features and eventually discover they should have started with language design.
• The Demise of the Headhunter Headhunters are like travel agents, except that it's taking the web longer to make them go away.
• Python Decorators II: Decorator Arguments The decorator mechanism behaves quite differently when you pass arguments to the decorator.
• Decorators I: Introduction to Python Decorators This amazing feature appeared in the language almost apologetically and with concern that it might not be that useful.
• Is There An Equivalent of WordPress for Podcasting? I've been thinking more about podcasting lately, but I haven't done it because I'm too lazy to go through all the steps. Someone must have simplified this!
• The Scrum Blog Because the "Python 3 Patterns and Idioms" book project is distributed, I created a blog for everyone to give scrum-like reports. Did I just invent something?
• Getting Away from "Kinds of Storage" I think the Smalltalk model was way ahead of its time. My vision is to move completely away from the idea of different kinds of storage.
• Do Newsletters Still Matter? Of course I'm asking the wrong crowd here -- you're watching the weblog. Still, you might have some ideas.
• Photos & Article from Info Magazine (Brazillian) While I was in Brazil, I was interviewed for a Brazillian technical magazine, and the issue was just published.
• Discovering Bad Java Smells You know the bad feeling when you start looking at a Java code base that's just wrong. Proving it is something else again. Here's one way to show it.
• Community Book Creation: Python 3 Patterns and Idioms If Python's what I want to do, I should write that book about it. Herein I muse about how to create a book relying largely on community input and help.
• Self in the Argument List: Redundant is not Explicit The response to arguments about self in Python is "explicit is better than implicit." In a discussion at Pycon Brazil, I realized that we do need self in the body of a method, but being forced to place it in the argument list is redundant. I'm not actually expecting it to change, but I want to try to establish that this isn't a dumb argument.

More Blogs      Older Blogs      Oldest Blogs

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Quotes

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
                                    -- Benjamin Franklin

If somebody comes up to you and says something like, "How do I make this pony fly to the moon?", the question you need to ask is, "What problem are you trying to solve?" You'll find out that they really need to collect gray rocks. Why they thought they had to fly to the moon, and use a pony to do it, only they know. People do get confused like this.
                                    -- Max Kanat-Alexander

I don't care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!
                                    -- Vidiu Platon

I'm beginning to wonder if the sum total pain caused by the box-and-arrow crowd has outweighed the occasional usefulness of UML.
                                    -- Carson Gross

You do not have to spend a lot of time and effort on those who strongly resist change. You only have to help and protect those who want to change, so that they are able to succeed. Put another way, your job is not to plant the entire forest, row by row -- it is to plant clumps of seedlings in hospitable places and to nurture them. As they mature, these trees will spread their seeds, and the forest will eventually cover the fertile land. The rocks, will, of course, remain barren regardless. ... once you have figured out who cannot be converted, you should not waste more time trying to persuade them.
         -- David Hutton, The Change Agents' Handbook

... no institution can put all its energies into pursuing its mission; it must expend considerable effort on maintaining discipline and structure, simply to keep itself viable. Self-preservation of the institution becomes job number one, while its stated goal is relegated to number two or lower, no matter what the mission statement says. The problems inherent in managing these transaction costs are one of the basic constraints shaping institutions of all kinds.
         -- Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

A nation ... consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation ... Are you really so scared of terrorists that you'll dismantle the structures that made America what it is? ... If you are, you let the terrorist win. Because that is exactly, specifically, his goal, his only goal: to frighten you into surrendering the rule of law ... He uses terrifying threats to induce you to degrade your own society.
                           -- William Gibson, Spook Country