Living Every Developer's Wet Dream

Back in June I wrote about new technologies I had started working with and my experiences learning those technologies. Having continued working with most of those since then, I've become incredibly comfortable and proficient with them. It's pretty normal to have a week where I write a bunch of PHP, a few SQL queries, some fancy Javascript, learn new CSS tricks, hack up features in client software using Win32/Cocoa, debug some corner-case issue using logs and a mini-dump and also write some straight up C/C++ server side code with unit tests. Initially, jumping languages and client/server boundaries came with large context-switch penalties but it's become almost second nature now, which feels very empowering and has had a dramatic impact on productivity.

Then, there are the one-offs - new technologies that need to be learnt, integrated into the product/service (in a way that's easy to understand/change in the future) and then 'forgotten' before moving on to the next one. These tend to be client-side technologies usually - server side stuff is much more on-going and stable. Some of the 'bigger' things I've done in the last 6-9 months that would fall into this one-off category are:

• Fiddling around with HTML5 <audio> and <video> before giving up
  For all the promise of new HTML5 multimedia standards, the sad reality is that we are far from any consensus. Different stakeholders have different motivations, which leaves the issue of a single standard codec up in the air. The proprietary nature of Flash, licensing issues surrounding H.264, Apple's opposition to including Ogg Theora in Quicktime and Microsoft's silence have resulted in the current stalemate. And this shows when you experiment with the different browsers. Development for web/mobile-web is poised to become radically easier once/if this is sorted out, but there is a lot of pain to be endured before then - pain that wasn't worth it to me presently.
  
  
• Flash audio support
  Having decided to not want to build a flash media plugin myself, I first played around with this MP3 Player and later switched to the much more powerful SoundManager2. With a few tweaks, I was able to make it do exactly what I wanted.
  
  
• Facebook Connect
  For single sign-on and any sort of social media integration, Facebook Connect is a must have. Having implemented Facebook Connect for my website and for iPhone, I must say that I am very pleased with the facilities offered by the platform and the consistency across client/server applications. XFBML and FQL are nice touches. My only gripe is that, for a mature and widely adopted platform, documentation seems disproportionately poor as compared to the richness of the Platform APIs.
  
  
• Online Payments
  There's a lot you learn about how safe online transactions really are (they're not) when you dive into how payments really work. I developed a quick payment portal using Payflow Pro by PayPal. Can't really vouch for Payflow Pro yet, though. A few weeks after I finished working with Payflow Pro, PayPal X was announced. I'll eventually get around to migrating to it, I guess.
  
  
• Identicons
  Simple, cute, pretty. I use the ones provided by Gravatar.
  
  
• Javascript Craziness
  One of the crazier things I've done, among others, with Javascript is to try and emulate a desktop-software like user experience in a website. Dragging, dropping, keyboard navigation, sorting, multi-select with Ctrl/Shift/Meta... oh boy! It look a while, but with some help from jQuery UI (the different components work great individually, but try to also make a sortable a draggable and a selectable, and you're in a world of hurt) and a lot of long nights, I finally got a lot of this done. For Forefox. Then I spent some time making it work for Chrome. And then a whole bunch of more time making it work for IE8. It sorta works in IE7, and not at all in IE6, but honestly if you're still using those browsers you should be chastised. Someday, I want to wrap all this into my own little plugin that others can use. If you told me a year ago that I would be some kind of JS nut, I would have laughed. Ha!
  
  
• iPhone web-app (before I ditched it for a full blown iPhone app)
  Not wanting to deal with Apple and their strange AppStore practices, I decided to try and be really creative with native Quicktime support built into Safari on the iPhone. I almost got all the way to hacking up really neat functionality, complete with callback from Quicktime into my website, background playback and an rich interactive experience. With Flash coming soon to other mobile platforms, this would have been ideal for providing mobile experiences without needing multiple platform-specific applications. However, the iPhone web app felt clumsy and not polished, so I ditched it and went the iPhone app route. I reserve comment on my experiences with development for the iPhone - my app hasn't been submitted/approved yet. ;)
  I also foresee myself playing with other mobile development platforms in the very near future. I think a blog post comparing my experiences with the different platforms might make for good reading.

In addition to these one-offs, there are the perpetual how-will-it-scale and how-will-it-perform issues that need to be considered for every little feature. One of the harder lessons for me was to change my default mindset about how I approached design. While I wouldn't say I optimized prematurely, my design was heavily influenced by potential for optimization. (segue: This, I now realize, is a result of my years at Microsoft. At companies like Microsoft, you do things once and you do them right - rapid iteration is often not possible or not practical. So, while this approach has its merits it's not ideal for agility in startup environments). The new approach that's imbued into me now is to build it quick and make it simple first. Simplicity is the bedrock of agility. Simpler code is easier to revisit and to scale. Complexity is technical debt that you don't really need or want.

What's the biggest thing I've learnt in the last year? I learnt how to learn efficiently.

You can spend hours studying/learning about something and barely scratch the surface. Or you can study to retain information for very short periods of time. Exceptional developers are able to identify when they need to deep-dive vs when they need to simply skim the surface. They can instinctively answer the "How do you learn enough to make well informed decisions and yet don't spend a disproportionate amount of time learning without producing?" question. Transient learning is only good when you never need to revisit a decision - such cases are rare. Otherwise, learning to execute quickly and leaving a trail behind you is a crucial skill. I believe I'm well on my way down this path.

So yes, in many ways I am living a developer's wet-dream. And fortunately, I am able to do a little more than just development stuff. But I know this probably won't last forever. This series of blog posts is my attempt to capture my memories for when I'm not doing this everyday anymore.

New Technology (for me) Roundup

Over the last almost 2 months, I've messed with several new technologies - some extensively, some briefly - that I hadn't used previously. This post is primarily a journal entry documenting my impressions of and experience with these, so far:

• PHP - Exposure : Medium
  I think I really like PHP. It seems like it's a good blend of a traditional programming language and a scripting language. I like that it allows for well designed software with OO constructs being first class citizens. I also like the flexibility that the scripting language aspect of PHP provides. I wish there were some kind of PHP compiler which helped catch silly typo-like issues before runtime, but I guess that's the price you pay for having the conveniences of PHP. I also think I would like having a good PHP debugger - currently I use code review and tracing as debugging aids. They've worked so far but I hope I never have to chase down something really nasty or subtle using these techniques.


• Objective-C/Carbon/Cocoa - Exposure: Medium High
  I previously wrote about my experience with programming for the Mac. For someone familiar with C and working with a runtime framework, this shouldn't be hard to grasp. I think I'm pretty comfortable with these technologies, but in many ways these are forced down your throat if you want to write software that runs on a Mac, and looks half decent. I dove deep into a few things related to these technologies (debugging crashes, file system events, application run loops, network support, deployment) and it was kinda fun and fulfilling to accomplish complex tasks with these technologies.


• Bash Scripting - Exposure: Medium Low
  To be productive in a Linux development environment, mastery of scripting is key. I know just enough to get me by, and I'm sure there's so much more I could do to improve. The rule of three seems to work well... if you do the same task three times, script it. And most times, you'll discover it's already been scripted by someone else or simpler still, exists as a built in set of commands. This seems like one of those endless holes of expertise that never ends. My goal is to deal with this as needed instead of being overly enthusiastic about becoming a crazy script monkey.


• Javascript - Exposure: Low
  I'm actually not too bummed about not having had to mess with more Javascript. I know people who just do the craziest things with Javascript and AJAX, but I'm not creative enough (or perhaps not motivated enough) to do anything more than the minimal. Unfortunately, a minimal website only works if you're Google or Craigslist. I haven't messed with Javascript for more than just a few hours, so I don't really have any strong opinions except that for someone who isn't familiar with scripting it takes some getting used to. Something like Script# might be an ideal transitionary tool though (I haven't played with it at all).


• MySQL - Exposure: Medium Low
  MySQL seems really slick. It feels great for simple database functionality (haven't really done anything too fancy with it) and supports some SQL syntax that comes in handy versus Microsoft SQL Server (insert ... on duplicate key update, create table if not exists, etc). PHP support for MySQL seems like a great integration win for both technologies. I haven't really dealt too much with administration and performance issues though, two areas which are super important to a great database solution, so I can't comment on those.


• Python - Exposure: Low
  I wrote a couple of python scripts to get some pretty powerful tasks done. I like that it has a bunch of libraries that enable you to write pretty fancy applications if you're so inclined (I'm not, and likely never will be). Like most scripting languages I'm amazed at how much can be accomplished in a few lines of code. Generally though, I don't like too much magic being done for me when I don't really understand what's happening and my experience with Python certainly made it seem very magical. Which is great for getting small tasks done, I guess.


• Vim - Exposure: Medium High
  This is a big once - even after almost two months of using this daily, I'm not nearly as comfortable with it as I was with the Visual Studio IDE, which makes me feel like I'm not being as productive as I can be. I think I learn one or two new tricks every day that make me wonder if there's anything Vim can't do. It's another one of those 'rabbit hole' technologies where experts can tune it to crazy levels. My approach is more along the lines of 'fix it when it annoys you' which seems to be working (slower than I would like, I admit). It certainly has the potentially to make me super productive once I get better with it, and that's making me stick with it.


• Others - Exposure: Low to High
  Technologies that aren't really 'new' for me but I was out of touch with for the last few years and have reconneced with recently:
  - C
  - Linux
  - Win32
  - Batch file scripting
  - Makefiles
  - gdb

So yea, as you might be able to tell, the last couple months have been insanely fun. I feel like an intern again (in more than one way ;-) )!