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Justin and Jason discuss the cancellation of Justin’s trip to Europe, Justin’s satirical post about Microsoft banning iTunes from Windows, Jason’s idea for a crowdsourced book, the technical challenge of processing the new Twitter search stream, TechZing as a mastermind group, the effect of releasing AppIgnite early, the risk/reward of building a platform, Justin’s transition from Windows to the Mac, the possibillity of organizing a TechZing meetup, the technical underpinnings of dragging and dropping attachements in Gmail, the scientific limits to multitasking, Justin’s about face on frameworks and Jason’s idea for summarizing web articles.
For anyone interested you can check out Swarm here – http://pluggio.com/swarm/ – all feedback welcome!
Justin,
For a switch to Mac (and a great text/programming editor), have a look at Notepad++ and WineBottler:
http://lifehacker.com/5440703/winebottler-turns-windows-programs-into-standalone-os-x-applications
Charlie
Justin, you are truly evil. “I’m going to ask you every week about the book.” LOL!
You may want to ping Twitter and ask them if they can let you know ahead of time so you can make adjustments. It’s just common courtesy to ask them before publicly airing issues. You can’t make demands of Twitter.
Reusing code: I write my own frameworks too! Much faster than using OPC (Other Peoples Crap). My clients mostly like me doing this too so whatever! Productivity is much improved. My own event loops, my own ORM, my own bugs. It’s awesome. Good on Jason for calling out Justin on his switch 🙂
I carry around a notepad whenever I leave the house… I feel “special” now.
As for keeping focus, I’m youngish but I dedicate 1-2 days/week to my own projects. I spend a couple of hours every night fooling around with my wife and kids. I think having kids really makes you focus. Time tracking software helps too but you have to be careful not to use software loaded with features otherwise you spend forever trying to make use of them.
Good luck finding contract work, great show.
Hey JV, long time listener first time caller.
Wanted to respond to you talking about frameworks. Personally I think you’ve not chosen a particularly good one: I found CakePHP to be tricky to use and surprisingly poor in places. I use the Zend Framework which I like but it has a steep learning curve. I highly recommend Symfony which has better RAD tools and if you are familiar with ZF you can use it as a library and simply pull the bits you want in from it. Symfony supports ORM – originally using Propel but now using the increasingly impressive Doctrine which I would never want to be without!
I understand you may have a framework you’ve developed over a long time and so you know it inside out. You’re right, you should probably use that! But if you work with a team then I recommend using a wider standard that the frameworks I mention before offer 🙂
Only halfway through your podcast now! Just wanted to respond to that while it was fresh in my mind. Don’t want to start a framework flame-war, so to nip it in the bud: I’m right and if anyone disagrees with me then you’re obviously wrong.
😉
@Big Al – The frameworks I’m currently using have not been my choice. I’m working on projects that have already been established. I’m not actually anti-cake I quite like it. I’m just anti-needing-to-look-stuff-up!
I know Yahoo uses symfony, but I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one! 😉
The problem I have with zend is that it has a case of super inheritance ie by the time you use anything at application level it has about 10 levels of inheritance. From my personal perspective it just feels a bit bloated – but like I say that’s just my opinion. 🙂
My contribution to the cognitive bias book, the key feature over importance bias
http://www.samonsoftware.com/?p=11
Is it just me or did the sound quality just get way better because of being on the mac…?
@Justin Nah, you’re wrong about ZF (“10 levels / super-inheritance”) – it’s not THAT bad! It’s actually very flexible and you can even program procedurally if you like (which you talk about in the podcast), instantiating objects as you go along and using their functions. Not a very good use of the ZF library but totally possible. ZF is more of a library afterall although it is moving towards a better MVC framework. That’s why I like Symfony because it’s already doing what ZF is trying to do.
To be honest, I find ZF a bit TOO flexible! You can do SO much it actually slows me down because the “engineer” inside me wants to perfectly solve a problem. ZF gives me so much choice that it can be stifling at times.
That’s why I prefer Symfony. There’s more structure and you can still include the ZF libraries anyway – oh and the documentation is WAY better so learning is easier. Best of both worlds.
Sadly CakePHP was also imposed upon me by a client. I hated it. Especially having been spoilt by Symfony and ZF!
I enjoyed CodeIgniter and how small, simple and flexible it was but I started doing projects that were too big for it and required me to learn other frameworks. I hear Kohana is a nice, more up-to-date version of CI.
Has anyone tried Yii? I hear that’s an interesting “new” (to me!) way of doing things. Event-driven! More like Django I believe? Anyhoo, I digress…
You’re right that these frameworks are a different way of thinking. They rely on you knowing OO concepts. This isn’t a BAD thing but also it might not be the RIGHT thing for a particular project. If you’re a bit flaky on the OO concepts these frameworks use then you need to either learn them (which requires time and effort as you know!) or use what you already know.
Seeing as you are a VERY accomplished developer I can see why you don’t see the value in learning these frameworks. Completely understandable! If using your own framework for your own projects means you work faster and enjoy it then that’s it, game over! Don’t bother with anything else.
But if you get a team together then use a standards driven framework. For all the reasons that make frameworks good (based on long established programming concepts, large community help, etc). If your team has to learn how your framework then they are learning how YOUR brain works, which may be a little tricky… 😉
Wow – big comment. Maybe you should have me on your show to discuss? 😛
Oh, and BTW, I’m one of those people who carries a little pocket notebook around with me. With 2 pens.
:S
I really enjoy techzing podcast (and i wait for it), so thank you for doing it. and I am very interested to test Jason’s Appignite.
What a coincidence !!! almost the same concept, different platforms
http://radicalbreeze.com/?page_id=102
As far as focus and will power diminishing as you get older, I have to agree with Jason that I think we come to realize that we need balance in our lives. We tend to take a step back and think about what is really important to us.
I also believe that having a good mix of interests/activities can actually help out the other areas in our lives. There have been numerous times when I spend hours and hours working at the computer on a problem and I just can’t get it figured out. Then I take a break, go for a jog, and in the middle of my run – BAM – solution presents itself.
By the way – great job on the shows guys. I downloaded the last few to my ipod so that I could listen to them on a trip. I left at 2am to drive my family 12 hours to Disneyland. While they all slept, I listened to Techzing and I am happy to report that the shows not only kept me awake until the sun came up, but made the drive easy too!
GL;KMA – Good length; Kept Me Alive
Thanks for the mention. For the record, Clayton Christensen (author of Innovator’s Dilemma, etc) is my 1st cousin, once removed (my father’s cousin).
+1 on interviewing an HTML 5 expert – I’d be very interested in hearing that
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh OPC (Other Peoples Crap) is now my favorite new acronym! 😉
@Peter Christensen Wow, that’s really cool.
@HabitMix That’s awesome – a Techzing marathon! Man, you’re probably totally burned out on us now. 😉
Hi guys, thanks for mentioning and you did a great job saying my name.
You’re absolutely right, some people have to build the platforms, the frameworks, reinvent the wheels and so on. I imagine the general wisdom that says “don’t” is more of a warning sign mostly for the eager & unsuspecting noobs who are unaware or in denial of their noobness than an attempt to stop anyone and everyone who want to go down such paths. Both of you certainly sound like you can pull off such feats.
The “risk” I was referring to is the one on your customers’ end actually. Since they’re going to be locked into AppIgnite’s API, and given that it’s a high-level app-building tool, it may turn out to be insufficient for their needs, so they’ll be taking a certain amount of risk by choosing it.
Regardless, there is no question that AppIgnite type of solutions are great stuff to be involved with right now. IMHO, they are what cloud computing actually is all about, ie rethought, integrated, simplified yet more powerful APIs.
I’ll be curious to find out more about it once you release more information. Once I read the documentation and some tutorials, I imagine it’ll become clearer.
I’m with you regarding getting older and feeling the need to achieve balance. I more frequently get the urge to prioritize, pay more attention to what matters most and drop the rest whenever possible.
I try to carry a few small pieces of paper and a small folding pen with me when I leave my desk, but I’m not always successful.
@Jason Nope, in fact, I just came looking to see if you had another show up yet. Maybe it’s the side tangents, or the arguing, or the occasional soccer/fitness analogies, or maybe it’s because it sounds like two guys just shooting the breeze – but it makes the podcast easy and enjoyable to listen to (which is rare).