Somewhere to write when I want to say something.

In case you haven’t done so, go download firefox 3 to break a world record http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

I found this the other day

http://www.fukung.net/images/2674/designer.gif

I find it so true, it applies to programmers too, in fact it applies to everyone that works providing a service. Enjoy.

Now this is a really nice one from microsoft. To reproduce:

1. get linux on a ext2 or 3 partition.
2. get the ext2/3 windows driver
3. load your partition into any letter, I used Z and X
4. download visual studio 2008. (don’t worry you don’t need to install it it will crash before the big download) I used the C3 one.
5. run said installer, and you get a neat error.

Now my question is, why on earth are they unpacking in other letter other than c:? Even better why they don’t do a check instead of taking the last letter available?? nice way to go really, go microsoft!

Well this is something I have been wanting to do for a LONG time. But so far I didn’t found a good alternative.

I’m a long time svn user but doing this with svn presented the following issues.

• having one .svn in each folder is not an option it’s just too much hidden things everywhere plus it will cause some weird clashes
• .svn is a pain, specially when you are grepping the source and you get double results (although I fixed this with a bash alias)
• svn urls are confusing and long
• ignoring files is directory based so svn status will show a ton of things

Today for some reason I started reading the mercurial documentation and it just hit me, this is what I needed. Why? well…

• one folder with all the versioning info
• sane ignores which are file based not path based
• super easy backup. as the distributed version system will let me clone the repository or even better use a Bundle
• in-place import this is a great feature svn is lacking*
• non-intrusive

So lets get dirty first create the repository. And lets add a basic .hgignore, I got the .hgignore file tip from here which means I’m not the first one to come up with this idea. And lets commit that.


$ cd
$ hg init
$ printf "syntax: glob\n*\n" > .hgignore
$ hg commit


Now we need to figure out which files we want to get into the repository so lets figure that out.


$ ls -a1 >> .hgignore

note, that’s a “one” it will output the file in columns, if you didn’t knew that go read the man page, you will love all the switches.

Now we need to edit the .hgignore file a bit delete the following lines

*
syntax: regexp

./
../
also delete (or comment with a #) all the lines of the files you want to version (remember this is an ignore file)

then just start adding files and when you are done commit. And now you have full history of all your changes, Which is awesome for managing your config files, remembering all the tricks in your .vim or .bashrc and exporting them to other machines.

EDIT:

* in-place import means that the original code you import into the versioning system becomes a working copy.

In SVN when you do an import the original tree does not become a working copy of the code, so you have to do an import then a checkout into the same dir from which you imported. It’s very tricky and most people don’t know about it. Although There is a way to trick svn into doing it but most people don’t know about it.

First of all please no “2005 call he wants his revelation back” jokes.

Honestly I didn’t put a lot of attention to this the first time it came around. I just though, it was a bunch of buzz… but it turned out to be a huge success, and even though I still don’t like the toolkit, because it’s way too narrow. (which now I understand why) I have to totally agree with the philosophy. Most of the stuff that is said in this book I have either said, think or didn’t had the words to articulate my thoughts. But I knew it right after reading the “essay” (books is split into “essays” instead of chapters).

It will take you at most 2hrs to read it entirely (if you where like me), maybe a week or more if you haven’t even think of it’s core ideas. and some will probably never understand it. This is how companies should work, this is how software should be build, and this is how I plan to run my company. Anyway without anything else to say please enjoy this little gem of modern software development, Getting Real by 37 signals.

that is exactly what I have been doing for the past…. well lastpost-thispost. But that’s over. I just can’t be like that.

I have been wondering about several things lately. Lets take for example a loan I get a paper from a bank normally that says they are going to give me several other little papers in exchange for me giving back even more papers in several years. Now the good thing about this is that those little papers turn into something useful for example a place to live so people actually care about .

Another example is when you know something that you know will benefit others but you are not allowed to say it, for example there is a way to gain an advantage in getting more papers than what you should get, now the thing is that part of the agreement for you to get more papers involves not telling anyone that you are actually getting more papers because that will generate a momentum that will end up in even more papers being push out. Now the dilema is after you got your papers how there is nothing stopping you from hanging out the information, but whoever gave you the papers trusts in that you won’t release said information.

Another good way of trust is when you are working, you actually give part of your live (according to the local papers it’s 44hours per week) and you are trusting that after 2 or 4 weeks depending on your trust agreement, you will get some papers which you will eventually take to someone else that trusts he can give those papers to someone else so we all get what we want, or don’t want but need or simple don’t want but someone is making us get them.

So in the end the economy is just a huge trust network in which everyone  is just trusting the other part doing good, now the most interesting part of everything is that no one trusts on the other part, and yet the only way they can live in society is with trust, irony is beautiful….

This post had sometime on the “drafts” everything but the last part was written several months ago.

Today someone ask me why aren’t you finish with the java certification, my answer was something like “well you know because ehhh yea”, but in reality I knew exactly why. I have lost faith on the language, java no longer excites me, sure is useful to have the compiler bark at you for every little detail. But they have added so much crap on top of it that programming Java is no longer fun.

The first place where I think Java stop being fun, was when you totally needed an IDE to write anything useful, and of course when everyone was using eclipse. Don’t get me wrong eclipse is very nice, it even won me over from netbeans, but what I don’t like about it is when someone has no clue of what’s going on because they have delegated all knowledge of it to the IDE, one particular case version control, you will be impress of how many people don’t know how to work with CVS and/or SVN, just because the smart-asses at eclipse decided to do things “a little different”.

The second place which is actually in order of how I found out and now how much they suck, is J2EE.  Interesting enough the problemwith J2EE is not sun but everyone else. Starting with the application server, why on earth you need a program to run a program unless it’s running several programs? Then the zillion frameworks and crap on top of http + html it’s just ridiculous.

Now that said I finally got my act together and went to take the exam, considering the fact that I barely study for it, that I had about 10 days of party and that the thing asked a lot about “the name of the methods that does foo” I got a not so decent score but I pass. So yes my friends you got a new SJCP in the group (yay!) Now lets keep on bashing on how cobolist it’s starting to be and how big huge and monstrous systems are not the way the computer world should be heading too.

The other day I sat down and watch a lot of Google developer day videos, here are the ones that catch my atention the most.

update: for some reason not all videos are loading. Here are the links
google maps
googlegears
data API
geoweb

google maps

googlegears

data API

geoweb

I just wanted to point out this great book someone send me the other day. I’m not sure of it was because my situation is very simular, and in fact I have reach the last chapter (both in my life and reading it). And even though I had no rockefeller I knew it was time some time ago. Here is the ebook, and yes it’s in spanish.