Happy Turkey Day

I'm stuffed. Happy Thanksgiving.

I am not working today! In fact, I get to sleep in for a week. I will be working (from home), but it will be good. I've been keeping "developer hours" lately. I know you know what I'm talking about. It's turned me into a cranky, snippy, sleepy girl developer.

I will be working, obv, during this time off. However, I also want to focus on this site and doing some articles. Things have tapered lately because I haven't really had the time to write as much as I'd like.

I am NOT complaining, no matter how much it sounds like I am. I'm super excited about the launch and everything that goes along with it. Next Monday my boss and I review his new web site. That's prettty exciting. I can't begin to tell you all how much I've learned, it's dizzying.

Anyway, hope you all get to sleep in tomorrow too.

DISCLAIMER: There is no funny in this post. My bad.

Rating my iPhone Applications (straight up Ebert style)

According to Josh who commented a few posts ago, "developers don't need iPhones, only sheep do." That being said a lot of us have them, the 3G one and the OG (Original Gangster). First of all, quit acting like you are cooler than me because you have the 3G, I am yet to see a compelling reason to switch (except that I may get less attitude from sales people who told me the only skins they have are for the 3G like I was carrying around a VCR). I figured I could rate the apps I have used and maybe you could share some of your own? If you don't have an iPhone make sure to tell us why your phone is cooler, I can be convinced. Here goes:

 

Ok, so I downloaded a twitter client because I didn't really want to get twitter texts. To be honest with you I'm not a huge fan of Twitterific. I swear it kills my battery (a conclusion I came to after gathering much circumstantial evidence). I really fare better by going to twitter on the browser on my phone. The mobile UI that is provided by twitter is much cleaner, and straight forward. I give it 2 out of 5 tweets.

 

 Taptastic is the perfect game to play when you are somewhere and you are uncomfortable and you want to pretend you are doing something important. It's a game that flashes little boxes on the screen and you have to tap them. Get it? Taptastic! I have never gotten past the third level, nor have I wanted to. Altogether a good purposeless app, 7 out of 10 carpel tunnels.

 

 So it could be that my hand eye coordination stinks because, unlike you guys, I haven't been playing first person shooters my whole life. It could be that I have the attention span of a goldfish and I didn't play with it long enough. However, it also could be that  Tap Tap Revenge just stinks. It's supposed to be like guitar hero, but it's not. I get the strings at the right time and it doesn't register and the music isn't melodic enough to get into. I give this app 1 out of 10 pretend instruments.

 

 Spore is the only app I have paid for. It was 7.99 (actually, that's a lie I have paid for 2) and I think it was worth it. I got a real feel of the game (it is like a small portion of the real game – the beginning I gather). I'm currently stuck on level 27 I think, it's a level that you have to push one animal into another round animal to kill it but if you push the animal too much it dies. It's heck-a annoying. I do feel like I got my moneys worth and got at least an hour of entertainment. I give it 4 out of 5 over-hyped PC games.

 

 Ok, so I bought this Absolute Fitness app when I had a large motivation to get fit, it worked well. It's a food diary/calorie counter/weight tracker/workout buddy. The only thing is that it's time consuming, but I think I may start tracking again since it's holiday time. The price is a little steep $14.99, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. Some failings: the food list is incomplete, I would love it if it remembered things you input recently. I give it 3 out of 5 muffin tops.

 

Pandora seriously takes the cake as being the best application you can download on your phone IMO. It has come in handy so many times. At work we have one of those sound systems where you can just plug in your ipod and I put it in there sometimes. I listen to it at the gym when I want a change from my workout songs.... it's great to have assorted music you will like so handy. I give it 9 out of 10 awesomes.

 

These applications are all ones I think are good ideas but have never used:

iTalk looks good because I constantly get mislead by CS people trying to get me off the phone. Then I call back when something doesn't happen, like a refund, or a cancellation, and a different CS agent says there is no way I was told what I was told. This is never fun so I keep meaning to start recording these calls but I forget.

 

 

The Fake Calls thing is exactly as it appears, I haven't had to use my phone to get out of a sticky situation yet.

 

I have used Say Who once, it's a voice dialer, it's pretty good but in order to use it I have to do as much tapping as if I were dialing myself...so eeeeeeeh.

 

So, that's it! Later gators.

Seriously, Someone Start Working on Some Awesome Forums

RIGHT NOW.

Why are there no awesome javascript-y forums? I like the Channel9 ones, but they are buggy (sorry, usually I love M$ junk).

This is a huge market. Get on with your bad self, independent developer!

Honestly, there is never a reason for a full page load when navigating an individual forum. You will see on my site the need for new pages is slim. I may have gone overboard, lol. I overzealously avoid postbacks (though, JS nazis like BillRob may disagree)

I commented my code tonight (rare - in good practice as we all know I believe) and this is what it looked like:

 //only return classifieds that are active and <45 days old

//THIS IS WRITTEN LIKE GARBAGE

Thus illustrating yet again how comments are only needed when your code is pooly written and therefore wouldn't make sense to someone else quickly.

That's it, it's 1am and I still have a TEENY bit of work to do.

Reflect on this

Note: upon beating said horse until dead with pragmatic friend I do not agree with sentence one of principle 5. I also don't buy into the docterine of Buddhism, nor do I believe that these words generally reflect Buddhism, or that they don't for that matter.   

 

Not Gonna Lie, I'm Pretty Psyched

So, tomorrow, I'm going to be talking to a group of girl scouts about being a developer!! It means a lot to me because one of the reasons I do all this is that I want to get girls excited about technology. It's so rare to see a girl on fire about it like a lot of guys are. They are in approx 4/5 grade so it took a lot of thinking to figure out what to talk about.

So, I put together a power point that I think is good. I posted a question on SO and people gave me great ideas. A super analogy using sandwhiches and a great programming tool for girls named Alice. I will post about how it goes. The theme is "Girl Power," and I def think it's super empowering to be the girl swimming upstream in an 90% male community.  

Project is going well, but as usual things are crazy. It's so great to see things completed!!!!! Looking on schedule right now, but you know how things can pop up.

I'm actually going to need some testers soon, I would love volunteers and a chance to show off the application.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ERIKA L FOR BEING THE 400th COMMENT!!! YOU WIN A FREE DRINK (she's one of my best friends, but I didn't tell her I promise!!!!)

up-diggity-date

My boss was a bit startled this morning when he walked in and saw me sleeping on the couch, lol. I tried to explain that it's a very "developer" thing to do, that there is a lot to be done in only a few weeks, but I think he may just think I'm a nut job. Whatever, I got on a real tear late last night. Got "in the zone" if you will. 

I have a very good friend who is turning into an amazing resource in this stressful and intense time. It's great having someone who I can ask questions to who has been here before. I love this, I love building my own application (it's my company's but you get the drift.) Tomorrow I start looking at production servers. I hear Rackspace is the bees knees, but a bit expensive. Anyone have any reccomendations?

I got a new "Girl Developer" logo. See below. It was made by a great kid named Lloyd Humphereys and you can see a link to his blog on the right. Check it out, he's really bright and resourceful. I may put him on retainer. 

Wanna see a girl that kicks some serious butt? Leahculver.com - check it. She built Pownce, which apparently everyone uses and I'm the last one to the party. I love the interface, and the idea, and the fact that a GIRL built it.

It's not that I feel un-included by the boys... I've come to the conclusion that everyone has really welcomed me into the community and I honestly think they aren't thinking "stupid girl" when I am around. It's been great, but, being in the minority of women in this field it's great seeing another girl kicking *** and taking names. Its really inspired me to keep on trucking when things get stressful.

Off to bed! (at home) Happy developing.

Oh, and PS, our president has a website. He wants to keep us informed. Nerds FTW!!!!

PPS cellphones.org named me one of the top 25 "Geek Blogs" .. how cool is that? Here is a link. 

My Friday Night

Dinner from Delicious Heights in Berkeley Heights... BEST TAKEOUT AROUND

BQ Chicken, asparagus, greenbeens

Bottle of Sav

Tivo

Pajamas

bbq sauce on my pants

Bought a new monitor, pretty sweet HP 22" for $250

This is my first photo journal... good idea? working tonight, a lot to get done in

few weeks.

Hooray science! BO is POTUS.  Interesting impacts all around,

but here's some trivia I found interesting. This is a great thing for 

science and technology. 

Anyway, back to work. Night!!! 

Three Great Reasons Why Even Lonely Developers Need Source Control

Sometimes, when you're a lone developer on a project you skip some of the important facets of developing as a group. Like iteration planning, bug tracking, and source control. Well, I'm here to tell you that having source control is the most important part of your application (that's not written by you, that is). Here are three great reasons why you should never develop without it, in desc order of importance.

You sporadically do really stupid crap.




Let me illustrate with a story. One time I was getting ready to go out with my girlfriends., this was a few years ago . I had just gotten out of the shower, so I was wearing a towel. I was simultaneously on the phone and putting the stuff I needed on the floor in front of my mirror, for instance my makeup, and a hairbrush, threw my curling iron on, and lay out my clothes. I chatted some more with my girlfriend and sat down to start prettying up. Well, I guess we all can see where this is going, I sat on the curling iron. It's a salon curling iron, so it gets up to 400 degrees. For the rest of my life I will be literally branded by this colossal momentary lapse in judgment. Now, if you asked me a year beforehand “Sara, do you think you should do something to take precaution for sitting on hot styling tools?” I would be like, “Why, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard.” Well, guess what, you've done something just as stupid (get off your high horse, you SO have) and though you're thinking “Why, I would never trip over a rabid squirrel and toss my laptop in the sewer” it just COULD happen. Then where would you be? Source control is important because you never know what can happen and you always want to have a backup.

 

As programmers, sometimes our brain writes checks our fingers can't cash.




“Why, I think I should which from Castle to LINQ this weekend.” “C# looks cool, let's switch from Java this week” “Wouldn't it be great if we created a new utility project and condensed all our object methods into one big class arraigned by related data by page this afternoon?”

 

My father is one of my four favorite men on the planet, however, one of his hobbies is starting projects around the house. His hobby often doesn't include finishing protects around the house. He's really done some beautiful work on their home, however, my mom has had to explain to guest swhy we had a half of a deck, no bathroom tile, and, when he decided to get aluminum siding, a black tar-paper house. I'm sure she would have loved it if my father had checked in early and often so she could just roll back his changes after a few months.

 




Listen, sometimes doing something new can be fun, and great ideas occur to us all the time. When we get to implementing things we can make a bigger mess then we intended. When we ensure we can bring back “the last time things worked” before we started gutting things. Or, we could just decide we liked our earlier solution and revert back to it. Either way it's a good call.




 




You obviously care about your development as a talented programmer. I mean, you're active online you pay attention to the blogs, you keep up your skills. Wont it be nice a year from now to look back and see just how far you've come? I mean, I know we tend to run into those things in our code ever so often, but usually we fix them as soon as we can. It's always great to reflect, and chuckle a bit at prior naiveté. The other day I was going through my stuff and looking at the LONGEST if statement since the beginning of time I think, and I realized, I didn't need any of it. That one line took care of the whole thing. Seeing my application like it is now will probably make me smile down the road.

 

There are a ton of other reasons to use source control as a lone developer, but those are the top three in my book. Though you may not take the time to set things up it's invaluable. It took me two days to set up svn for the first time (I also had to set it up on the mac's of the designers as well because I had hoped they would use it for cataloging designs, these hopes were quickly dashed). It was an investment, but worth it and in the end I learned a new skill. I could do it again now in much less time.

 

So, take care of it, because I don't want to hear you whine when you DO get attacked by that rabid squirrel, because it will be too late.