Thursday, February 28, 2008

A discussion about creation

.. too early in the morning

Every now and then I am invited to a job interview to sit at the employers side of the table.'That is kind of fun as well. I do enjoy sitting on the other side, because I have the feeling that I am the one who is to make the decision whether to take the position or not. Once they have invited me for the interview I am pretty close to getting hired. At least that is the mood I try to get myself into on most of these occasions.

As I am a developer I mostly attend the interviews for developers. I am usually the ally of the prospect in that sense. The manager that sits there as well is most of the time a non-developer. Someone who knows we need someone with .NET and C# skills, but has no real idea what that means. I am there to see if he or she has any real developer's skills.

Questions to ask

A colleague of mine has very goo question to ask the candidate. He tells the candidate that we would like the manager start programming or at least understand some more what we are doing. One of the things the manager still can not understand is, what is Object Orientation? Can the candidate explain that so the manager can understand the concept. I have heard some hilarious answers to that question. One of the apparent advantages of Object Orientation is that you can spread the objects across multiple servers. The same candidate explained some of the aspects of OO with a dog as an example, one the methods could be Bark() or Sit(). When asked how one would distribute such behavior across multiple servers he fell silent.

Another good and slightly more tricky question to ask is about difference between the terms class, type and object. I must admit that I had to think about that one to come up with a good example. I propose the following example of a Person class, with as properties: first name, last name and birth date. Let's pass those along in the constructor and you get to the following code:

Person person = new Person(firstname, lastname, birth date);

The first word "Person" is the type of the object "person" being created. The class is Person in which a.o. the used constructed is found.

All right, purists, kill me in the comments, but it gently.

A question to ask

I then started to let my mind go wandering where it will go.

I thought about namespaces. I happened to have been in some discussion with namespaces and doing it better than it was in common practice at this job I was at.

The class Person would be in something called

  • Human

Then I started expanding:

  • Nature.Human
  • Earth.Nature.Human
  • Creation.Nature.Human
  • God.Creation.Nature.Human

Hmm, sounds like intelligent design. Note that I haven't named God, that would turn off some other Persons from the namespace Hardcore.Christian.God.Creation.Nature.Human.

Or for those rather having the Evolution Theory, it could be something like:

  • Darwin.Evolution.Mammal.Primate.Human

But working along these ideas, ultimately, all namespaces would be positioned below God or Darwin. That would be strange idea. And what about the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

The God Class

Then I found myself wondering about the God class. "You should never create a God class." It must be one of the ten Developer's Commandments. Which namespace would that God class be in? I became stuck at this point. I at least understand now why I should never create a God class, because there is no namespace to put it in.

On top of that does the God class derive from object? Or from a divine object? Or the other way around: does object derive from God?

Philosphical

So, there I was completely philosophical before 9 in the morning. Suffice to say, I didn't get much work done all day. Especially no Divine Work.

Please someone help! Define divine!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Calling all bananas

.. at least some of them

Just a simple link this time.

I think it's enough.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Trying out another Firefox extension

.. as if I needed yet another one

Today I installed the ScribeFire extension in Firefox. Former known as Performancing for Firefox.

The extension supposedly makes blogging a lot easier. And not just blogging on Blogger, but more than that. You can connect to multiple blog applications. You can keep notes. But it doesn't make you a cappucino.

Needs some getting used to

It sits snuggly in the bottom right corner of the status bar and it pops up at the bottom in a nice big size. It does seem to have quite a few options and I will need time to tweak these to my liking. As I am a source writer (I insert my own html tags) I may need more time to find out how I can make it produce the right type of html. I don't want <br/> for instance, I want the pure pleasure of the <p> tag.

I might get back on this extension.

This post was written the good old Blogger Editor, the previous post I initially fired off using ScribeFire, but then edited it in the Blogger Editor as I did not like the html.

What's all this then?

... have you gone completely gone bananas?

Well, to be honest, yes I think I am getting a bit too banana focussed. It's gotten out of hand and on the floor and that's dangerous as the peels are slippery. So better watch where place your feet.

Or better still, get a tricycle.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

A banana a day

.. keeps the ... away

Well, I don't know about this type of banana, but I do not think this is something I would show in public.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Blog traffic by Pippi Longstocking

.. weird numbers

I haven't been too active on this blog in the last few months and am only picking things up a bit again. But I always kept some traffic. And I had a liitle more detailed look at that traffic and I just had to laugh.

I noticed that a lot of people were coming to the blog from Images searches on Google. In particular I found that a photo that I linked to last year before I went on holiday to Sweden for the first time in my life. I had posted a picture of Pippi Longstocking and apparently that attracts people to my blog.

Pippi Longstocking, once again!
Pippi Longstocking

So here she is once again: Pippi Longstocking! This time a picture I made myself in the Astrid Lindgren park near Vimmerby. See if traffic picks up on this as well.

Bananas in pyjamas

.. cool?

I was hinted at these bananas.

Not really sure what to think of them, still bananas are bananas!

Monday, February 11, 2008

Bananas

.. just because

banana ooooom!

Every now and then a banana does one good. Here's one for the people who need them the most!

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Google Docs has an interesting new feature

.. and it came at the right moment

Today I discoverd on the Offical Google Docs blog that they have introduced a new feature. You can now share a spreadsheet through a customizable form. Or perhaps it is easier explained the other way round: you can now create a form (like a survey or something similar) that you can send out by email and have the entered data land in a Google Docs spreadsheet. You can then process that information further.

Well, what a coincidence

I am busy doing an internal project which I have hinted about in the past and have come to the point where I would like to get some feedback from my colleagues. Since they are spread out doing various projects at various companies, it is a bit time wasting to wait until the next monthly meeting. So, the online survey thingy from Google Docs comes in very handy!

So, I carefully pulled together the questions I have and created the online form. That is really simple. Type the question (with an optional explanatory paragraph), pick the type of question, for (multi-)select questions (radio buttons or checkboxes) enter the possible questions and continue to the next question. When all the questions are done, you just fill in the email addresses of the people who you want to ask the questions and send it away.

You can keep the spreadsheet open to see the entries coming in, or add a gadgets to your iGoogle page. And by George, it works!

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Just a test post

.. well that's what it is

Not really that much here in the sense of real content. I am just testing if I can publish a blog post from Google Docs. Just for testing, hence the bogus content that goes on and on and on.

And now you read it ...

.. and you know it works. It might be a bit weird to look at, but then I will probably jump in the Blogger editor and clean things up. If not I will just leave it at this. I will post an update anyhow.

That is all

Yep, that is all.

Update

Well, it sort of works. There seem to be some difference in presentation or it is me. Now I am updating the post from within the Blogger editor and I will see if that makes thing normal again.

Conclusion

Using Google Docs as the editor has some advantages over the Blogger editor. But nothing really shocking AFAICT.