Blog of Karthik S

Ideal Software development process

2011-12-09T11:45:00.007-05:00

Architecture Phase:

Analysis:

Reason: Way the Business process works needs to be be reflected in the software solution created.
Steps: Review existing business process. Identify brand position.Identify user profiles.Create use cases.Research supporting technologies.
Deliverable:Project Analysis report

Interface Design:

Reason: To ensure software is intuitive, easy to use, and really does what you need it to do—well before moving into development.
Steps: Design an interactive prototype that allows all the project's stake-holders to engage with the system in real-time.
Deliverable: Completed User Interface design.

Usability Testing:

Reason: To ensure the software is effective and easy to use.
Steps: Use focus groups of target users to test the system and provide feedback until the function and usability is correct.
Deliverable: Software Usability report

Fabrication Phase:

Software Engineering:

Reason: You can't build a house without a blueprint.
Steps: Create the domain mode, data schema, programming API, documentation system help.
Deliverable:UML class and data model diagram.

Coding:

Reason: N/A
Steps: Develop system component, perform unit,coverage and load testing.
Deliverables:BETA deployed to staging servers

Beta Testing:

Reason:Find and eliminate problems before the software is launched. Well proven fact that a bug discovered in production is costs exponentially more to fix than the one found in development.
Steps: Test all use cases and conduct acceptance testing.
Deliverable:Deployment ready software

Production Deployment:

Reason:N/A
Steps:Prepare Server and deploy code to production.
Deliverable:Production code and documentation

Job Interview preparation

2011-07-15T14:20:00.001-04:00

These questions assume you’re being interviewed by the person who would be your manager:

When you’re selecting a new employee, how do you make your decision?
I’m very interested to learn more about your business. If you don’t mind me asking, what are some of the challenges you’ve been facing recently?
What kind of qualities do you look for in a Job Role (ie, Customer Service Manager) ?
How do you personally define success within your team?
Could you tell me a little bit about the best employee you ever had? In your opinion, what made them so good?

Programmer Myth

2011-05-11T07:47:00.000-04:00

Myth: Programmers get to write code all day.

Truth: Most programmers spend a ton of time (in no particular order):

Carefully composing e-mails to other programmers/mailing lists/non-technical folks
Sitting in on meetings, working on mockups and DB schemas, worrying about performance implications of proposed features
Writing bug reports and searching through bug DBs
Supporting Production environment, scrambling to figure out why systems with numerous opaque layers are failing, digging through multi-GB log files with command line tools
Explaining downtime to users/higher ups
Contributing solutions to strangers’ problems
Reading documentation/books/programming blogs/release notes/vulnerability announcements
Searching for existing code that does what you want, maybe without knowing what that’s called
Installing, configuring, and testing a codebase then finding it won’t work for you
Googling error messages
Learning source control tools, bash, GNU utilities, and Linux file permissions (and/or the Windows equivalents)
Configuring IDEs, virtual machines, web servers, databases
Determining which tasks to prioritize from an endless supply

Cancun

2011-04-24T16:50:00.003-04:00

4/18: Flight - Checkin - beach - show mexican

4/19: Beach - Kayaking - show hollywood

4/20: Isla Mujers - Swim with Dolphins - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Mujeres

4/21: Beach - Pool time -Market downtown

4/22: Cenote : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote and Chichen Itza - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichen_Itza

My First Android Tablet NotionInk Adam

2011-04-06T15:59:00.002-04:00

Int vs Ext

2011-03-20T08:49:00.001-04:00

http://allendowney.com/essays/tyranny.html

Management

2011-03-14T08:11:00.001-04:00

Reasons to avoid talking on the phone

2011-01-27T07:54:00.002-05:00

Don't have time to think about the response.
Constantly get interrupted.
Cannot experience the body language.
Can get distracted by TV,internet etc.
Can get lectures instead of conversations.

Being a Producer

2011-01-21T08:18:00.001-05:00

Create things that matter to yourself and others.

Inspire others to better themselves.

Add to conversations instead of watching others talk.

Made the world a better place in one way or another.

Knowing specific frameworks

2010-12-03T19:24:00.003-05:00

Ten years ago, not many frameworks existed in Java, so the average number of third-party libraries included in a project were 1-5, but today, the average has grown to around 30+ like Spring, Hibernate, JUnit, Struts, Commons, TestNG, Google Guice, GWT, apache commons family et al. These frameworks change rapidly and it is impossible to know all these frameworks and it is also impossible to know some frameworks completely. The biggest detrimental this is causing is in the hiring process. Managers pass over qualified resumes looking for the names of frameworks only to land on someone less qualified who decided to put a particular framework on their resume. These folks are not necessarily technology experts so they try to bring in a candidate that has the exact blend of frameworks that the company is using. This does tend to exclude perfectly qualified candidates with real talent.

Ten years ago, having just the knowledge of a language or knowing one object-oriented language, could get you a job doing Java or C++. Now, you have to learn and have experience with every framework imaginable just to get your resume to a hiring manager. It doesn't matter what language/framework a developer knows, they are all similar. A talented developer has an interpreter and compiler in his head and thinks in pseudo-code anyway. Applying that to a language or framework is just a matter of figuring out the syntax...and that is the easy part. The talented developer just assimilates the differences.

Most jobs require a combination of 1) wisdom/sound judgment, and 2) knowledge/education/training. Of the two, the second is much easier to pick up on the job.

Notes from Investor Manifesto

2010-11-28T11:37:00.004-05:00

The stock shareholder is last in line to receive payoff. This is risky and hence deserves the higher return on average than that earned by bondholders, who get their money first.
Diversification over different kinds of stocks asset classes works well over the years and decades, but often quite poorly over weeks and months.
For estimating future returns, rely only on interest and dividend payouts and their growth/failure rates and NOT on historical data.
Home ownership is not an investment. It is a consumption item and it always costs more than renting after taking into consideration taxes and maintenance.
Performance comes and goes but fees from actively managed funds are forever and cannot be surmounted even over long run.
Investment Definition: The deferral of current consumption for future consumption.
A balanced portfolio consists of significant allocations of both stock and bonds.
Nations with the most rapidly growing economies often have the lowest stock returns. In many developing markets, government does not protect shareholder as well as in nations with more established legal systems.
Regard yourself has an average when buying or selling and consider who you are trading against.
Do not trade with any mutual fund that is owned by a publicly traded parent company- Sooner or later the profits for these companies must be paid by its customers.

Computer Software Generation

2010-11-27T12:28:00.002-05:00

- new() replaced with Factory.
- Replaced with Dependency Injection
- Replaced with IoC container
- Augmented by XML Configurations
- Supplemented by @nnotations

Value averaging technique

2010-11-25T14:32:00.012-05:00

Establish a target amount for each period (example shown is every month) based on your risk tolerance. Adjust your contribution every month according to the value of each each allocation. Increase allocation if the value of a category has fallen and decrease allocation if the value of a category has increased.
Bonds - (VBMFX(BND),VBISX(BSV),VFSTX(VCSH),VFISX(VGSH),VIPSX)

Stocks - Large Blend (VV) Small Blend ( VB)

MONTH	Bonds 30% (VGLT,BND)	US Large Market 10% (VUG)	US Small Market 9% (VBK)	US Large Value 10%(VTV)	US Small Value 10% (VBR)	REITS 4% (VNQ)	Foreign Developed Large Markets 5%	Foreign Developed Small Markets 4%	Foreign Developed Large Value 4%	Foreign Developed Small Value 4%	Foreign Emerging Large Markets 5% (VWO)	Foreign Emerging Small Markets 5%(VWO)
JAN	125	41.6	37.5	41.6	41.6	16.66	20.83	16.66	16.66	16.66	20.83	20.83
Feb	250	83.2	75	83.2	83.2	33.32	41.66	33.32	33.32	33.32	41.66	41.66

One more thing to learn in college

2010-11-23T06:40:00.002-05:00

Apart from focusing on getting good grades, start getting out of classroom and network and start working for people to build a solid portfolio. Decide on what kind of work you like and start telling people about it.

Nurturing Kids

2010-11-12T07:22:00.001-05:00

A kid, who has been protected and habitually given whatever he wanted, would develop "entitlement mentality" and would always put himself first. He would be ignorant of his parent's efforts. When he starts work, he assumes that every person must listen to him, and when he becomes a manager, he would never know the sufferings of his employees and would always blame others. For this kind of people, who may be good academically, may be successful for a while, but eventually would not feel sense of achievement. He will grumble and be full of hatred and fight for more. If we are this kind of protective parents, instead of showing love we are actually destroying the kid.

You can let your kid live in a big house, eat a good meal, learn piano, watch a big screen TV. But when you are cutting grass, please let them experience it. After a meal, let them wash their plates and bowls together with their brothers and sisters. It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, but it is because you want to love them in a correct way. You want them to understand, no matter how rich their parents are, one day they would also grow old. The most important thing is your kid learns how to appreciate the effort and experience the difficulty and learns the ability to work with others to get things done.

Stuff costs more than you think

2010-10-20T08:30:00.000-04:00

http://thintz.com/essays/less-stuff

Productivity at work

2010-09-29T20:39:00.002-04:00

Longer the workday, however does not mean more productive. About the same amount of productive work gets done in either case with a shorter workday and less relaxation in-between work. More emphasis on quality and individual work time. Often we treat working more like a social atmosphere, and less like a workplace.

Value of Time

2010-09-28T19:24:00.001-04:00

Time is more valuable than skill, money, and almost any other resource. Why? Because with enough time, you can hone skills, raise capital, nurture relationships, and find what is required for an exceptional life. You can always acquire more material things, but you cannot invent more time. When we place a value on our time, we become aware of how we spend it – what we’re doing and how we do it.The way we use our time is directly related to how we value it.

GrandFather Mountain Hike

2010-09-19T07:35:00.002-04:00

This in my opinion was one of the most sternous hikes . Started off at the Profile Trail categorised sternous 3.1 miles. One of John Muir's writing on the trail

Posing besides a huge rock.

Reached the Grandfather Trail categorized sternous 2.4 miles. This was more sternous than Profile Trail and had ropes and ladders.

On the Grandfather trail. Lots of rocks to climb.

Self Maintenance and Success

2010-09-17T18:58:00.003-04:00

Maintenance requires discipline, routine, and brutal self-honesty. The challenge of exercising regularly, adhering to core values, eating healthy, honoring commitments, and engaging in personal reflection and evaluations. “Maintenance” embodies a consistent commitment to the long-term. The only difference between “luck” and “skill" is consistency. So you will need discipline and consistency for any kind of success. Also remember that every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

Children

2010-09-11T08:26:00.002-04:00

Overprotectiveness of children will hurt them in the long run by making them less resilient. Also must teach them best practices early for example, on how to introduce themselves to adults if you want your child to become skilled in the activity.

FireFights at work

2010-09-03T10:49:00.002-04:00

Situations occur in which problems arise that require an immediate fix and very soon, we end up spending more time extinguishing fires than doing actual work.The fix is oftentimes a temporary patch that soon becomes permanent until another firefight alters it to become a double-patch, and so on. This is highly likely to increase technical debt. This is a main contributor of high levels of inefficiency and poor quality.

To avoid this, management must promote a culture of good-quality code that doesn't generate fires and for having good discipline, such as code-review, peer/SME guidance and sustainable work that doesn't require spikes of long hours and hard work.

Influence vs Control

2010-08-26T09:36:00.000-04:00

Focus more on influence than on control, steering people in a direction without telling them to do something specific. Steering helps others learn, telling doesn't. Constantly telling people what to do in detail (micro-management) keeps them from learning, and keeps them from being creative and innovative. Allowing people to make their own mistakes and learn from those mistakes takes confidence in the process and a trust in people -- especially when you know the best solution.

Software projects and Programmers

2010-08-21T09:04:00.003-04:00

Software projects cannot be accelerated by spending more time in the office or adding more people to projects.
Although most software is made by teams, it is not a democratic activity. Usually, just one person is responsible for the design, and the rest of the team fills in the details.
Continuous change leads to software rot, which erodes the conceptual integrity of the original design and could cause it become worthless before it is even completed..
Great programmers spend very little of their time writing code – at least code that ends up in the final product. Great programmers are masters at recognizing and reusing common patterns. Good programmers are not afraid to refactor (rewrite) their code constantly to reach the ideal design.
A bad programmer is not just unproductive – he will not only not get any work done, but create a lot of work and headaches for others to fix.
Bad programmers write code which lacks non-redundancy, hierarchy, and patterns, and so is very difficult to refactor. Programmers who spend much of their time writing code are too lazy, too ignorant, or too arrogant to find existing solutions to old problems.

Human Interaction and Learning to Adapt

2010-08-12T10:08:00.001-04:00

Importance of Human interaction: The exchange of experiences and ideas may give us a solution we could use, accelerate problem solving, give us an idea for something new, and provide us with some guidance. It may also inspire us to try something new.

Learning to Adapt: Sometimes someone else's solution may be tempting to use. Don't just go ahead and replicate it. Doing so may result in a marginal solution or the creation of new issues. Instead, adapt them to your own reality such that you end up with what is right based on your own, unique needs.

Questioning Ownership

2010-08-11T06:29:00.002-04:00

House: Owning a large house gives us more personal space and makes day-to-day living more pleasurable. At the same time, bigger houses cost more to upkeep, they take more time to keep clean and allow you to accumulate stuff without noticing. The house becomes so full of stuff you can’t park the cars in the garage.

Owning very nice things makes using them less pleasurable because you have to be extra careful not to damage them. Keeping your housing costs low and not accidentally accumulating stuff allows you to spend time and money on things that matter more.

Writing makes a better person

2010-08-01T07:52:00.001-04:00

Writing reveals holes in your thinking. When your ideas are written and looking back at you, they're a lot less convincing than when they're just in your head. Writing forces you to mature your ideas by thinking through counterarguments. Writing helps you organize your thoughts in a coherent way. Writing makes you smarter.

The dichotomy of being smart and Intelligent

2010-07-14T07:58:00.002-04:00

People who are born intelligent start off life with everything easy for them. They don’t have to work hard to get good grades, they never really have to do much to get ahead. The major challenge of early life is school – and school is designed for average people. So intelligent people just breeze through.

But there is a point where every intelligent person faces something that requires more than intelligence. It requires hard work, it requires the ability to fail, it requires being able to do tough tasks, boring tasks. For the first time in their life, in spite of their intelligence, these intelligent people are challenged.

The experience of being challenged has very different effects like “Oh boy, now I’m really gonna have to try hard” to “I”m not smart enough for this.”

Assuming you are below average

2010-07-03T07:39:00.003-04:00

Assume most people are smarter than you.

To assume you're below average is to admit you're a beginner. It puts you in student mind. It keeps your focus on present practice and future possibilities, and away from any past accomplishments.

Most people are so worried about looking good that they never do anything great. Most people are so worried about doing something great that they never do anything at all.

You destroy that thinking when you think of yourself as such a beginner that just doing anything is an accomplishment.

On the contrary it is also important to know you are (or at least have the potential to be) above average. It's an issue of confidence -- you can get a lot more done when you know that your ideas are good enough to be heard by others. This isn't arrogance, but rather a way to combat insecurity and low self-esteem.

Happiness

2010-05-30T21:13:00.001-04:00

The secret of happiness is to recognise that, wherever you are, whoever you are with, if you are having fun, then that is the best place to be. Over thousands of years, thinkers have exhorted us to live in the moment, be content with our lot, enjoy where we are. The secret of happiness is probably just getting out there and giving real life a whirl.

Complexity

2010-05-13T08:47:00.001-04:00

Situations are needlessly more complex than they need to be to get the job done, and that extra complexity imposes extra costs. It can result not just in every developer waiting an extra 15 minutes and it can lead to IT failures costing many hundreds of millions of dollars. We don't even know how to discuss complexity. We don't have a quantitative measurement for complexity that allows us to discuss it. The complexity can accelerate to the point where it consumes everything, at which point it becomes the complexity trap.

Way smart people communicate

2010-05-08T21:52:00.002-04:00

Please don't follow this pattern

Taking Notes

2010-02-22T09:13:00.003-05:00

Recording things is part of how you frame the design and understand the problem. It helps to break things down, and build up solutions. It enables to identify what the hard parts will be, and what is low-hanging fruit.

Having the original notes written down when you come back is key to making sure you don’t forget a bunch of details.

Another benefit is in the trail you leave behind. So take notes. Jot stuff down. Use any method that suits you (freemind, notepad, Onenote), but your great thoughts never really happened if you didn’t write them down.

Componets Contributing to the performance of Page load

2010-02-19T08:12:00.002-05:00

Network time represents how long a user is waiting while data is transmitted between their computer and your server. We can't completely control network time since some users are on slower connections than others, but we can reduce the number of bytes required to load a page; fewer bytes means less network time. The 5 main contributors to network time are bytes of cookies, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images.

Generation time captures how long it takes from when your webserver receives a request from the user to the time it sends back a response. This metric measures the efficiency of our code itself and also the webserver, caching, database, and network hardware. Reducing generation time is totally under our control and is accomplished through cleaner, faster code and constantly improving the backend architectures.

Render time measures how much time the user's web browser needs to process a response from the web server and display the resultant web page. Like network time, it is somewhat constrained here by the performance and behavior of the various browsers. The less we send back to the user, the faster the browser can display results, so minimizing bytes of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images also helps with render time. Another simple way to reduce render time is to execute as little JavaScript as possible before showing the page to the user.

Goals At Work

2010-02-18T18:12:00.001-05:00

Equity: To be respected and to be treated fairly in areas such as pay, benefits, and job security.
Achievement: To be proud of one's job, accomplishments, and employer.
Camaraderie: To have good, productive relationships with fellow employees.

From the CheckList manifesto

2010-02-11T08:55:00.004-05:00

Checklists are often between five and nine items and fit on one page. They don't try to spell out everything; rather, they provide reminders of the most critical and important steps. With a checklist, you "improve your outcomes with no increase in skill." the checklist gets the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines your brain shouldn't have to occupy itself with, and lets it rise above to focus on the hard stuff."

Nice Java 7 features

2009-11-24T17:10:00.001-05:00

Some upcoming nice new features in Java 7

Underscores in numeric literals : int one_billion = 1_000_000_000; // Comma would have been more natural

Binary Literals : int binary = 0b1001;

Strings in switch statements :
String s = ...
switch(s) {
case "asinine":
processAsinine(s);
break;

case "foo":
case "bar":
processFooOrBar(s);
break;
// fall-through

default:
processDefault(s);
break;
}

Not necessary to close resources like InputStream, Writers, Sockets, Sql classes explicitly

This:
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path));
try {
return br.readLine();
} finally {
br.close();
}

becomes

try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(path)) { //copied from C# ?
return br.readLine();
}

Collections ( List,Set and Map) can be created like in Ruby or Perl. Instead of:

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
list.add("myitem");
String item = list.get(0);

we can do:

List<String> list = ["myitem"];
String item = list[0];

Justifying Social Networking

2009-10-21T10:15:00.001-04:00

Tyler Cowan of George Mason University and author of "Create Your Own Economy" has an interesting way to justify usage of FB, Twitter, blogger et al. Transcribed from his podcast at:http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/09/cowen_on_cultur.html.
"It is not a waste of time. We are learning from it, becoming more productive, entertaining ourselves, very often giving to the world - people read you, listen to your podcast, giving and taking is extremely rewarding. Giving is the ultimate human activity which is not a waste of time. Social networking has enabled 100's and millions of people to become givers."
Next time when somebody says it is a waste of time, we all can use this tagline.

On governance in Java Organizations

2009-09-24T10:51:00.001-04:00

There are many ways and many options to perform the same task in Java based organizations. This means that Java organizations have to invest more in standards, guidance, architecture, and software infrastructure. Also, the technical management in these organizations requires more experience and should have more control to be able to reign in any bad practices.

Kinds of Meeting

2009-08-27T09:35:00.000-04:00

There are only three kinds of classic meetings:

Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it's primarily designed to inform.

Discussion. This is a meeting where the leader actually wants feedback or direction or connections. You can use this meeting to come up with an action plan, or develop a new idea, for example.

Permission. This is a meeting where the other side is supposed to say yes but has the power to say no.

Thread Safety defined

2009-08-21T09:36:00.001-04:00

A class is thread-safe if it behaves correctly when accessed from multiple threads, regardless of the scheduling or interleaving of the execution of those threads by the runtime environment, and with no additional synchronization or other coordination on the part of the calling code.
Thread-safe classes encapsulate any needed synchronization so that clients need not provide their own.

Ways to Stay smart

2009-08-17T16:16:00.001-04:00

1. Work and socialize with smart and talented people, particularly ones that are considered top people in your field, find a fantastic team and work with them, look for people whose careers rely on their sharp minds, people that are a bit older than you, and slightly different.

2. Become a better listener. Being able to clear your mind of extraneous thoughts will make you more open to developing the thinking you are looking for, it will bring you focus skills

3.Think about developing skills which can result in your making more valuable contributions to situations.Be curious about new things, hobbies, intellectual pursuits, also read incessantly, as over time you will accumulate much knowledge. Tell stories well and be funny and you'll find yourself invited to join companies and social groups that provide what you seek, as people will always be curious about what you have to say

Diversified portfolio allocation

2009-07-31T10:43:00.004-04:00

Yale Endowments money manager David Swenson's diversified portfolio allocation, charted through Google charts API.
Link

The tickers are all sample Vanguard funds with the exception of EFA and EEM.

In 2006, he was interviewed on NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6203264

Latest Update:

Link

What I like to see when banking online

2009-07-28T09:38:00.002-04:00

Functionality such as personalization (like igoogle, myyahoo) and personal financial management tools like budgeting, bill payment, retirement planning, and goods purchase. How I compare to or measure up to my peers financially in the amount of debt I carry, amount I spend at restaurants, department stores, and gas stations etc. in a private and secure fashion. Kind of like financial social networking. Concept of buckets for savings accounts. For ex.

Goal Bucket 1 Future house equals 60 Percent
Goal Bucket 2 New car equals 20 Percent
Goal Bucket 3 Vacation to Hawaii equals 10 Percent
Goal Bucket 4 Various unexpected needs equals 10 Percent

Deposit of 500
Goal Bucket 1 Future house 300 Dollars
Goal Bucket 2 New car 100 Dollars
Goal Bucket 3 Vacation to Hawaii 50 Dollars
Goal Bucket 4 Various unexpected needs 50 Dollars

Mastered Java EE Programming Truly with Passion!

2009-07-27T10:51:00.002-04:00

Completed the basic EE course. Mastered Java EE Programming Truly with Passion!
Link
Next up is the advanced course.

Fidelity Full View

2009-07-17T14:39:00.001-04:00

I have been a fidelity customer for the past 15 years and counting and periodically ( about twice a month) use the full view feature. The feature is essentially a on-line account aggregation tool and uses yodlee under the covers. But unfortunately once in a while the full view will not frequently update or is down or the portfolio analysis will not analyze on all accounts. Most recently, a FAQ on their website mentioned that it possible to download the full view data into csv or excel but I couldn't find any option in that view. When I contacted customer service, the person gave an interesting tidbit. A new version of full view was supposed to released by February, but it has been postponed to September. Fidelity public website has managed to advertise these new features as available now without considering that it has not been released yet. Appears like there is some mismanagement/ miscommunication/disconnect between various teams within fidelity. It is obvious that fidelity does not consider full view to be an important initiative. I would very much like to have a reliable, fast and efficient interface to all my accounts in one place. Full view could be it, but it is not.

Hike in South mountain state park

2009-07-11T17:52:00.003-04:00

Had a fanatastic expereince hiking in South Mountains State park. Covered the Chestnut Knob Trail (2.1 mi) and the High Shoals Waterfall trail (2.7 mi). The waterfall trail had some great scenic water fall views.

Plans for the next two Saturdays

2009-07-09T22:42:00.007-04:00

Hike to Morrow Mountain state park : 7/18.

Hike to South Mountain State park: 7/11.

Will upload pictures after hike.

4th hike to crowders

2009-07-05T17:01:00.001-04:00

More crowders mountain photos. The rocktop trail (1.8 mi) is our favorite

Scalability

2009-07-02T17:12:00.001-04:00

Scalability does not make sense without context.

When asked about the scalability of a system, the first thing that needs to be known is the ways in which its utilization is expected to grow. Will it be getting more users? Will the existing users be making heavier use of it? Will its feature set be growing? Will the mix of transactions that it's presently supporting change? Will the user experience need to change?

(OK, so the answer to all of those questions is usually "Yes"; then
prepend the word "How" to those questions.)

For example: a system currently supporting very few users, and whose user base is expected to grow
rapidly, has a serious scaling problem if the DBA has to spend two hours manually running queries from information picked out of email messages every time he has to set up a new account. That's not a problem that can be fixed by adding more resources, unless you're including DBAs in the list of resources you're going to add (and there
are a lot of reasons that's not going to scale well).

Or imagine a social-networking site that rolls out the exciting new feature that you can see if your friends are online and chat with them through a nice Ajax-y UI. Suddenly, with no increase in the user base, the number of HTTP requests your servers are handling per day jumps twenty-fold, and your worries about the scalability of your database
recede into the background. (Unless, of course, you've involved the database in your chat application. Good thinking!)

Sure, making your web apps stateless so that you can add web servers, making web pages idempotent so that you can add proxies, designing your application so that you can partition your database across servers, those are all going to make your application scalable in various dimensions. It's very much worth thinking about that stuff.

How to become a better developer

2009-06-28T07:08:00.002-04:00

Kato Link

Euler link

Command Respect

2009-06-27T20:04:00.000-04:00

Article on how to command respect. Link

2009-06-27T19:37:00.000-04:00

Good article on how to be a programmer. Link

Hiking

2009-06-27T09:22:00.001-04:00

Great hike at crowders mountain

Notes on Performance and scalability

2009-06-26T10:53:00.001-04:00

blog.dynatrace.com
blog.codecentric.com
highscalability.com

Scalability: Increased resources results in increased performance
- Werner Vogels

Scalability
- Can ensure performance with increasing load.

Performance
- characteristics like response time, processing volume..

Queuing Theory
- Modeling resource
- Resources and waiting requests are modeled as queues
- EX: CPU and current requests

Queuing Networks
- Modeling of app as network of resources
- Combing multiple queues
- EX: CPU, Network, Connections Pools, Servlet Threads

Scalability and Requirements
- Increasing number of parallel requests
- Increasing number of parallel users
- Increasing number of data
- Increasing availability with same performance

Types of Scalability
- Vertical (UP)
A physical node gets more resources (CPU or memory)
In virtual env "on demand"
- Horizontal (OUT)
A new physical node is added
Trends to more and more servers
Distributed system

If system is fast in single user mode but slow under heavy load then the problem is scalability, not performance
- Cameron Purdy

Scalability does not improve performance
- Increases complexity and degrades performance
- Slower in single user mode
- performance is still an issue

Scalability can improve availability
- Scale out introduces redundance
- Synchronize status/state

Scalability never comes for free
- Must be engineered into the application
- Introduces additional complexity
- Plan time for building scalability into app

Limiting factors
- CPU Time
scalability via hardware
- Memory consumption
scalability via hardware
- I/O and Network
limited and harder to scale
architectural changes
- shared resource access
limited and harder to scale
architectural changes

Major problems
- Database access
high number of database requests
Locks and concurrent access
- Remoting Behavior
Bad interaction design (communication patterns)
High data volume
(it's too easy to make remote calls)
- Locking
Configuration problems (Connections Pools)
Wrong synchronization patterns
Serial data access

Metrics
- Throughput
- Response times
vs CPU time
- System metrics
CPU and Garbage Collection
Memory pools (including generations)
- Application metrics
connections pools
component level
SQL
Transactional trace data

Problems:
- Complex interdependencies due to frameworks
- High serialization
- Full heap due to memory leak
- Inefficient or redundant remote calls
- Too many SQL calls

Database access
- Wrong use of O/R mappers
Configuration/Loading behavior
- Bad Transaction Design
Connection kept too long
Isolation level incorrectly defined (or not at all)
- Inefficient data loading logic

Distributed Systems/Remoting
- Bad interface design
Interfaces are too generic
Interactions not suitable for SOA
- Wrong communication protocols
SOAP services in homogeneous landscape
Sync instead of async interactions

Synchronization
- Locks kept too long
- wrong lock granularity
- Neglecting locking at DB level

Serial access
- Access MUST be handled in serial way
- Scalability logically limited

Too much synchronous program logic
- Developer think procedurally
- Sync interaction in distributed systems is problematic
- high resource usage
- typical indicator: low CPU while other resources saturated
- class ex: web apps

Memory management
- Bad GC Config
Generation size; collection strategy
- Unnecessary creation of objects
Serialization
O/R mapping frameworks
- Memory leaks
Bad reference clearing logic

Problems in development
- Don't understand dynamic program behavior
- Sacrifice functionality over scalability and performance
- Waiting for symptoms
- Real problems often only visible under high load

Questions
- tools: jimmi, selenium, sniffer, soapUI,
- check DB and/or remoting at continuous integration time

Redbooks finally published

2008-09-23T21:19:00.001-04:00

Ah finally, the book has been published:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247548.html?Open

New Quote

2008-05-29T18:00:00.003-04:00

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.

Http and Https

2008-03-07T10:39:00.002-05:00

For the following application requirements:: 1. SSL support 2. Reuse the SSLSession / HttpState while reconnecting to web server (Apache) 3. Restablishing Http(s) connection multiple times to web server 4. HttpClient should have same behaviour like a Browser (IE) 5. Asynchronous communication where Http client opens connection and should recieve data from server whenever server has some data for http client. 6. Other requirements are Performance, etc.. Http Client and javax.net.ssl are in no way comparable at all.SSL is a technique to secure connections on the transport layer. HTTP is a protocol for client/server communication, which runs on top of a transport layer. By combining HTTP and SSL, you get HTTPS. For example, you can use the HttpClient to communciate over an SSL connection from javax.net.ssl. The HttpURLConnection in the standard JDKs is flawed because it does not provide flexibility with respect to timeout handling, multithreading, connection pooling, streaming, HTTP protocol versions and server specific dialects, authentication, error handling, retry handling that you would expect in such a thing. The HttpsURLConnection from javax.net.ssl is the same as the HttpURLConnection, except that it uses SSL instead of plain sockets for the transport layer. HttpClient uses a generic interface to create SSL connections when needed for HTTPS connections. It is up to you to implement this interface, and you can support SSL session reuse if you want to. You can also implement your own HTTP connection pool, which can be aware of your SSL connection pool to optimize reuse.

new quote

2008-01-28T19:20:00.001-05:00

All Generalizations Are False, including this one. - Mark Twain

Red Books 10/1

2007-10-01T20:23:00.001-04:00

Started the Websphere Message Broker scenario... Illustrate routing,protocol transformation and message data transformation
Quotable Quote: Skill:-A knowledge of and the ability to properly execute the fundamentals. Be prepared. Cover every detail. - John R Wooden

Redbook 9/25

2007-09-25T21:59:00.000-04:00

Successfully exposed IMS transaction through the IMS SOAP gateway. Started doumenting the chapter.

Quotable Quote:Work is an expression of who you are. So who you are is what needs to be worked out- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Redbooks 9/24

2007-09-24T20:39:00.000-04:00

The IMS Transaction expose as Web service scenario. DB2 UDF consuming DB2 web service.

Quotable Quote: Never take seriously what people say they think, because people are never sure. Trust only action.

Redbooks 9/20

2007-09-20T21:25:00.000-04:00

Multiple updates to the DB2 chapter, based on feedback from the expert team.

Quotable Quote: No one can do everything .But every one can do something.

Hilarious snippet from a previously published redbook

2007-09-18T13:18:00.000-04:00

I was reading through an existing redbooks and found this funny snippet. Laughed the world out for 5 minutes...

At the time this book was written we were also able to uncover an unexpected error on this panel. When including the licensing jar we should receive a cryptic error if this jar did not appear first on the class location field. This error can be seen in Figure 2-15, and occurs when the db2jcc.jar is first in the path and the Connect to Database button is clicked.

Quotable Quote: "Most of the things in life are simple and only the wise understand them" - Paulo Coelho

NYC trip photos

2007-09-17T20:13:00.001-04:00

Quotable Quote: "Two roads diverged in the wood And I took the one less traveled by And that has made all the difference” - From a Poem by Robert Frost.

Redbooks residency:Day 15:Monday September 17

2007-09-17T19:49:00.000-04:00

Today is all documentation. Capturing all the information and tasks accomplished in the last 5 days. Created 20 pages of material for this new chapter.

Quotable Quote:If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Redbooks residency:Day 14:Sunday September 16

2007-09-17T08:21:00.000-04:00

Success. After all the hard work last week, we finally got the CICS Webservice requester working. The main issue that had bogged us down last week was the response data structure being too complex for the tooling to create a comparable COBOL data structure. Having accomplished this, feels really good. Taking the break to go to NYC yesterday had also helped. Plan for tomorrow, start the documentation and typing in the redbooks work.

Quotable Quote:“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration". Thomas Alva Edison

Redbooks residency:Day 12:Friday September 14

2007-09-17T08:17:00.000-04:00

Continued work on the CICS requester. It was late in the day, we discovered that the tooling to convert WSDL response object with two levels of complex types inside it, cannot create a working COBOL structure. Next plan : change WSDL to have only simple types and try. Scheduled this for Sunday. Tommorow is trip to NYC.

Quotable Quote: "Experience is not what happens to a person; it is what a person does with what has happened to him/her."

Redbooks residency:Day 11:Thursday September 13

2007-09-13T20:49:00.000-04:00

What a day in terms of legacy technology learning dump. While continuing on this CICS requester as a web service scenario, lets enumerate the new technologies I got exposed to:

COBOL requester program ( main entry point) to invoke the web service ( Generated by the web service tooling, but had to learn how to modify some key pieces of code to do error handling and populating the request)
Another COBOL program that works with BMS map ( a screen map), that would capture the input for the web service request and output values from Web service.
Comm area ( the communication area between these two programs).
How to create a JCL ( Job card language to compile and link these two programs)
Specify where to place these load libs, so CICS knows how to pick it up.
Define and install CICS programs that would reference artifacts created in steps 1 and 2.
Define and install CICS transaction, that references 1.
Define and install Web service pipeline for the requester

Are we there yet... no not yet, hopefully by End of Day tomorrow, we can get this going, but hey from knowing nothing to something, that feels good.

Quotable Quote:Ability is what you are capable of doing, motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. - Lou Holtz.

Redbooks residency:Day 9:Wednesday September 12

2007-09-13T20:46:00.000-04:00

The next scenario we have to work on is to make a Webservice call from CICS. The documentation is very sparse on this. There is heavy documentation on exposing a CICS transaction as a webservice, but not much on CICS transaction being a requester. Luckily, Ron has one through some presentations on this and so we have some leads to start with.

Quotable Quote: “Change before you have to” - Jack Welch, the chief architect of GE’s transformation (1980-99)

Ways to avoid risk in designing solutions

2007-09-12T09:40:00.000-04:00

Obviously, you can choose a solution that avoids risk altogether :-). Code the “hard” parts of the applications first so you can identify the areas of greatest risk when you still have time to re-design and avoid risky solutions.

Quotable Quote: "It is one of the beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely help another without helping himself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Put into other words "Reach out and touch some one. “Most important business relationships are personal ones.”

Redbooks residency:Day 8:Tuesday September 11

2007-09-12T06:38:00.000-04:00

Successfully deployed stored procedure and created a new operation in the webservice and executed it. Added materials for more pages to the chapter. Around 10 AM, we got this announcement on PA to observe a moment of silence for victims of 9/11. Don't recall hearing such an announcement at Wachovia PA anytime.

Quotable Quote: "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten"

Redbooks residency:Day 7:Monday September 10

2007-09-10T21:39:00.000-04:00

Still couldn't deploy the stored procedure. Authored 22 more pages for this 2nd chapter. It is amazing at the amount of time it takes to gather and write out these technical materials.

Quotable Quote: “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you become is your gift to God.” -Andre Agassi

Redbooks residency:Day 6:Sunday September 9

2007-09-09T14:23:00.000-04:00

Taking a weekend break. With recommendation from the hotel front desk, myself and Mario decided to hike in Locust grove, Samuel Morse Historic Website http://www.morsehistoricsite.org/. The Morse code founder lived in there. Nice trail with scenic views into the Hudson river which BTW is deep and wide enough to support ocean liners up to Albany in the north. Looking forward to watch the US open final between Federer and Djkovic this evening.

Scenic Hudson river with train tracks skirting it.Beautiful trail
Samuel Morse house.

Quotable Quote: Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm - Churchill.

Redbooks residency:Day 5:Saturday September 8

2007-09-09T14:17:00.000-04:00

Cleared out all Wachovia e-mails. Successfully created the stored procedure but couldn't deploy on DB2 z/os. Will have to wait till Monday to get support on this. Authored 3 pages of the chapter giving a sense of accomplishment.

Redbooks residency:Day 4:September 7

2007-09-09T14:10:00.000-04:00

Successfully used the BETA product (The next generation IBM data developer for Web services ) to expose a DB2 table sql as webservice. You can download at:
https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/reg/download.do?source=swg-vd95ob&S_PKG=swg-vd95ob&S_TACT=Developer
Tested the deployed webservices. (REST bindings with the web browser and SOAP bindings through the built in IBM Webservice Testing wizard).
Target for tomorrow:Build and deploy a stored procedure and expose it as webservice.

Quotable Quote: "When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.” - Paulo Coelho

Redbooks residency:Day 3:September 6

2007-09-09T14:05:00.000-04:00

Kept going in a direction leading to some dead ends. Realized that product supporting webservices between WAS and DB2 is really a beta product. Redbooks are not meant to illustrate beta products, but since this product is available in a public website, it is OK to document this in the Redbooks. The demo illustrating exposure of DB2 stored procedure and table data as Webservice with SOAP and REST bindings was really cool though.

Quotable Quote: Doing things right is always good, but what matters most is doing the right things right.

Redbooks residency:Day 2:September 5.

2007-09-09T13:56:00.000-04:00

The last redbooks resident "Ron Townsend" came on board today. He flew in from Indianapolis. He had given a proof of technology for Wachovia for the printing solutions replacement system, and worked with David Weddle and Jerry Sienkewiz (Coincidence or what).
Framemaker/Writing English class (9:30-12:30). The instructor gave some background on "Kill" names for places around here ( Fishkill/Catskill ). It is terminology for Streams. Asked us to be wary of black bears,deers,chipmunks and poison ivy when doing outdoor activity. The lunch at IBM cafeteria was not much different from yesterday, it is turning out to be more monotonous.
The redbook may be titled: Integrating back-end systems through websphere using webservices.
Finalised the scenarios for the redbook. Topics covered could include:
1. WAS to CICS inbound/outbound with MQ and HHTP transport.
2. DB2 V9 (Viper client) Webservices between WAS and DB2. (Stored procedure and dynamic SQL)
3. WAS to IMS ( MFS based webservices and SOAP IMS gateway)
4. WAS to WAS ( WMQ,SIB, ESB....)
I am teamed to work with Ronald on 2 and 3. Sergio and Mario to work on 3 and 4.
Alex mentioned that he will be out for 2 weeks giving seminars and workshops in B'lore and Chennai,India. Came to know that his India trip was planned 2 months in advance. Beats me as to why he would schedule himself as a residency lead with such a conflict ( Bad planning???)

Quotable Quote: "What you did yesterday is history. What you promise for tomorrow is mystery. What you can deliver today is reality." - Anand P. Shah.

Redbooks residency:Day 1:September 4.

2007-09-09T07:35:00.000-04:00

Checked into Residence Inn yesterday. Nice room with kitchen and seperated bedroom. Homely atmosphere and everything looked new ( probably newly remodelled room).
Morning breakfast ( Buffett) is free and had quite a good varietyof food. Drove to IBM site at which is behind the inn. Finished with Security and badging. Met two other residents from Sao Paulo, and Brazillia, Brazil ( Mario and Sergio ). It was a 11 hour flight for them from Brazil to US. Mario is IBM level 2 support for Banque De Brazil. Sergio was not really good in english.
Met with the residency leader Alex and Mike. Had lunch at the IBM cafeteria. The residency format is going to be fairly open and flexible which is nice that we are not really going to be constrained.
2 pm Orientation: Our residency leader Alex will be away for 2 weeks for some business trip. Mike will be taking over the residency project management. Tomorrow we are scheduled for 3 hour framemaker training. In the afternoon we will be finalising the scenarious for the redbook ( Hopefully we will have the 4th person checked in by then)

This site is where IBM makes its z/os machines. IBM System Z9 machine at the lobby. Not sure if it is a skeleton or working model though....
IBM System Z9 machine

The walls are decked with many many Redbooks published from this site on one side and many many redbook residency leaders on the other side.

The Redbooks library and current ITSO residents. ( See if you can spot me ...)

Quotable Quote: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." –- Aristotle

2007-09-03T09:56:00.000-04:00

Picture of the family at the entrance of our house.

The crocodile park heavily populated with one too many of these...

My daugther holding a python at the park.

At kovalam beach next to the park.

Quotable Quote: Never Rest on your laurels. Keep challenging yourself. Keep raising the bar and keep reaching new heights.

Accepted for IBM redbook residency

2007-08-29T09:56:00.001-04:00

I will be doing a 6 week IBM redbook residency in Poughkeepsie, NY for updating the existing Websphere for Z/OS Connectivity handbook from Sep 4th to Oct 5th. This will provide an excellent learning opportunity. IBM Redbooks are developed through a unique residency program that teams IBM technical professionals with Business Partners, clients, and IBM product development staff. Depending on the market needs of a product or solution, a team of residents is chosen through a competitive nomination process and works at one of the IBM centers for two to eight weeks, devoted to developing IBM Redbooks.

Quotable Quote: You'll never have all the information you need to make a decision. If you did, it would be a foregone conclusion, not a decision” - David Mahoney

2007-07-26T20:33:00.000-04:00

State championship Pinehurst Team picture

2007-07-09T06:49:00.000-04:00

In our initial round, we played against teams from Hickory, Durham and Winston Salem. Lost to Winston Salem in a close match ( 2-3). Here is article about our team: http://www.ncadultleaguetennis.com/pdffiles/DayThreeStory.pdf

Our location in Wikimapia

2007-06-29T01:22:00.000-04:00

http://wikimapia.org/#y=35387099&x=-80756700&z=17&l=0&m=a&v=2

Lake Norman USTA local league champion team

2007-06-29T00:52:00.000-04:00

Was proud to be part of the Lake Norman USTA local league champion team. Our team won with a record 12-0 played at state championships at Pinehurst scheduled for 7/4,7/5 and 7/6.
here is my record:

Match Date	Winning Player	Opponent	Score	Match Type
	NORTH CAROLINA	2007 Lake USTA League Adult
3/8/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	Kevin Fontana	6-1, 4-6, 1-0	#2 Singles
3/13/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	Chip Aprile	6-1, 6-1	#2 Singles
3/20/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	David W. Stewart	6-4, 6-0	#2 Singles
3/22/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	Paul M. Begley	6-3, 6-3	#2 Singles
4/12/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	Default	6-0, 6-0	#2 Singles
4/24/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	David J. Walton	6-1, 6-1	#1 Singles
4/26/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	Jacob Lee Henault	7-6, 7-6	#1 Singles
5/1/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	Default	6-0, 6-0	#2 Singles
5/10/2007	Karthik Shanmugam Sanjeev Dange	Michael Baldelli Dale Kiel	6-1, 6-3	#3 Doubles
5/24/2007	Karthik Shanmugam Sanjeev Dange	Bob Santoli Rusty Pittman	6-3, 6-0	#3 Doubles
5/31/2007	Karthik Shanmugam	Dominique Falewee	6-4, 4-6, 1-0	#2 Singles

Developer tasks

2007-05-20T20:56:00.000-04:00

Talk to customers and figure out requirements.
Define system architectures.
Create task estimates and help prioritize tasks.
Explore new technologies.
Brainstorm solutions when my team is stuck.
Make sure my team is running effectively.
Write code.

Few ways to gain leadership credibility:

2007-03-22T15:22:00.001-04:00

1. Do the things other people don't want to (that's a big one in software industry).
2. Change your default way of thinking so that you consider everything to be your responsibility until it is otherwise delegated. That doesn't mean you do everything. That means you don't ignore something because "it isn't your job". THIS IS KEY. Leadership = ownership.
3. Do what you can to remove roadblocks that are keeping others from progressing in their tasks.
4. Know your domain be it IT, software dev., networking, enterprise engineering, etc.
5. Complement or praise your peers. Giving praise is a sign of authority. It also makes people want you to be their leader.

On the other hand, leading does not mean:

1. You make all the decisions.
2. You force your opinion on the team.
3. You tell people what to do.

Good Traits

2007-02-11T19:46:00.000-05:00

Good Attitude,
Willingness To Seek Work
Ingrained desire to Help others
Ability to fill in for superior/subordinate at all times.
Be the “go to” person for something

Tid Bits

2007-01-09T15:46:00.000-05:00

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

You can't stay in one place and expect a logical "progression". It's your career, take control of it yourself or someone else will. Companies will always view you as the person they first hired. Start as an intern and 10 years later you'll still be seen as that intern. The solution is to move every time you upgrade your skills either by getting an advanced degree or some new special responsibilities and training.

Elegant Solutions and Learning

2006-12-26T18:29:00.000-05:00

An elegant solution is one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense. The bells and whistles in some of todays electronics can easily get out of control resulting in the danger of complexity and customer alienation. Real learning is a cycle of questioning, experimenting and reflecting. Its how we convert curiosity into and innovative solution, so learning must BE the work, not something seperate from it. Learning triggers creativity down the line. Software services require people who are good bridging the gap between the needs of the businesses and the technologies that can make them more efficient or increase their revenues

Todays technology

2006-12-19T15:57:00.000-05:00

Today’s technologies are so complicated, no one person can know everything there is to know about any one of them. Do you “know Java”? Yeah, right. Which “Java” is that? Whichever part of Java you know, it’s only a small slice of Java technology. You need to communicate with others in order to leverage their knowledge of the technologies you’re using. And you need to communicate to your teammates your knowledge of the technologies you know and create. And you need to explain to others how to use your code. You need to document your own API’s. When you write a program, what you’re really doing is communicating to another human what it is you want the computer to do. Programming is about communication, just like any other form of writing.The thing is, coding is also a communication skill.

Good Design and Coding

2006-12-19T11:07:00.000-05:00

Understanding is as important as coding. Spend as much time thinking about your design as you do coding it. Never code around a design flaw. If you get stuck, always go back to the drawing board. But then follow through with your conclusions.
Flow and design: Code is more than a series of statements. It is also a relationship of parts. Stepping through your code with a debugger is not how to understand what it does. You must understand the design as well. Don’t think like a debugger, or your code will be incomplete. Think abstractly as well as concretely.
Together belongs together; separate belongs apart. Good Design = High Cohesion + Loose Coupling. Parts that work closely together, keep close to each other. Parts that work separately, keep apart. The bad thing about global data is that it couples code in one part of the system to code in another part. Passing around a massive structure does the same thing. Even passing around a reference to a single variable does the same thing.
Only relevant coding standards are effective. Indentation, brace style, spacing, blank lines, these all communicate information. Use a consistent style that tells future programmers how the design works.
Maintaining unused code is more expensive than rewriting it. You need to maintain unused code, modify it, tweak it. But you cannot test it, because it is unused. You cannot know whether unused code still actually works. This is an unnecessary burden. Delete unused code, even if you may need to use it again someday. You can always write it again if you need to.
Comments tell why, not what or how. Add comments to explain why the code does what it does. Never add a comment to describe what the code does or how it does it. Instead, use descriptive function and variable names. If you need a comment to tell what or how, your design is flawed.

Mock Objects for Unit Testing

2006-09-16T07:32:00.000-04:00

Mock objects can give you a deceptive sense of confidence, and that's why you should avoid them unless there is really no alternative.

What makes one a Senior Developer?

2006-08-14T16:29:00.000-04:00

- Experience in interviewing candidates and making hiring recommendations.

- Experience in managing a team of intermediate/junior developers.

- Experience in estimating development time and bringing projects in within the given estimate.

- Experience in high-level architectural design.

- Solid knowledge of and experience in at least two different programming languages.

- Knowledge of the issues related to (but not necessarily experience with) all aspects of a software system including network, GUI, database, security.

- The ability to evaluate and offer recommendations on new languages/technologies/frameworks.

- The ability to think outside the box or go beyond existing solutions.

- The ability to coach/mentor new hires.

Qualified for the Summer ladder Tennis playoff

2006-08-07T21:10:00.000-04:00

Had a tough summer season. Missed out on playing Joe Montagnino and Geoff Sessa in the list. Playoffs starting on 8/11, is going to be a very steep hill. Most likely will be facing Taylor in the first round, who breezed past me 6-3 6-3 in the only game we faced off. Below are the results.

Rank	Points	Player	Win-Loss
1	331	Brian Cudney	14-1
2	319	Karthik Shanmugam	11-7
3	318	Alan James	9-4
4	303	Devang Shah	10-15
5	300	Joe Montagnino	11-4
6	297	Geoff Sessa	10-1
7	285	Taylor Busby	9-2
8	282	Adam Bernstein	7-5
9	281	Sameer Shaik	9-5

Law of Conservation of Time

2006-08-06T17:50:00.000-04:00

This is a new law as a corollary to the Newton's law of Conservation of Energy ( Every action as an equal and opposite reaction)

The amount of time you have, always remains constant.

My Name in a Website

2006-06-28T07:41:00.000-04:00

Finally, after playing tennis for almost close to 6 years, I have won a chamionship. This is the Charlotte Tennis association Spring singles challege ladder. My record in the initial rounds is 14-0 and won the playoffs and final. Moving on to 4.0 level for the summer season.

Developer requirements

2006-06-14T15:32:00.000-04:00

Learn to focus on the customer requirements rather than the technology. That might mean become a subject matter expert in the end user application. you must be able to focus on the business problem the client/customer wants to solve. If you can see the problem/need from the customer's perspective, be able to suggest process improvements, AND be able to recommend the appropriate technologies to assist in those improvements, you'll be in demand. Discussing requirements with a client, articulating issues to a higher up, or even just giving guidance to and managing jr. developers - all require consistent and concise communication skills that can make a great developer even more valuable. You have to understand the business of the customer enough to be able to talk to them, ask the right questions and finally develop the piece of software they expect.
Next to technical experience, business experience is becoming more and more important. If you have other non IT related skills like communication skills, coaching skills, ... then this also adds extra value to you as a software developer.However, the basis of a good software developer is and stays a solid (technical) knowledge and experience of software development. Additionally we have to pick up other skills and experience in business related areas, communication, planning, organization of a project, ... So, I think in the future we software developers will spend less time on coding while we have to keep up the effort to get the code quality better.
In the end, I think the job of a software developer will be "richer" because we are able to do more then just develop software.

z/os was Request process overview

2006-06-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

Request Process Overview

The following steps describe the J2EE application flow:

1. A client application sends a request to access the J2EE application.

2. The request is received by the Web server which immediately passes the request to the Web server plug-in.

3. The Web server plug-in chooses a server to handle the request based on the resource being requested, identified by its Universal Resource Locator (URL), and forwards the request.

4. The WebSphere for z/OS daemon routes the request to the application control region based on the context root in the URL. (i.e. ibi_html or ibi_apps)

5. The control region checks that the request is authorized and places it on the Workload Manager (WLM) queue. If necessary, WLM starts a procedure that is used to start a new servant region address space in response to the queued request. WLM then passes the request to the servant.

6. Servant is the J2EE app server containing a JVM

It locates and loads the J2EE components from the configuration HFS and starts the applications.

7. Request is handed to Web container within the server, routing it to the proper servlet, based on request’s URL

a. Servlet class is loaded by the dynamic class loader.

b. The Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) looks up data sources required by the servlet.

c. Data retrieved from one/many sources and returned to servlet.

d. Servlet sends output stream directly or sends data to JSPs.

o Response: HTML,XML, generated as a response
o Sent back through WebSphere plug-in to Web server.

8. If J2EE application component needs to access corporate data: uses connector (resource adapter) to communicate with the Enterprise Information System (EIS) such as CICS or IMS.

ForwardSourceID:NT000145DE

Setting Goals

2006-02-02T17:29:00.000-05:00

Learning should be a driving force. Most important goal is to never stop learning.
Take care of your health. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything.
Increasing the capability level of each individual on the team and help to sustain this growth.
Continue to progress in the carreer and increase visibility on the team.
Sometimes, it is not about setting goals but simply living in the moment.
Lastly but not the least, have fun.