Author: Matthew

  • Excerpts from NFJS Anthology

    No Fluff, Just Stuff (NFJS for short) is a symposium / conference / geekfest that began touring a few years ago. This year, an NFJS Anthology containing articles from many of the top speakers is being published by the Prag Prog guys. A couple of sample articles have been published as free PDFs.

    The first article is by Stuart Halloway and covers how Spring uses Dependency Injection and Aspect Oriented Programming in a delightful marriage of DRY-bashing goodness.

    The second article is by Glenn Vanderburg and is called “Buried Treasure.” Why is the software development field going backwards? Glenn explains why in this excellent treatise on why old is not bad.

    I highly recommend reading both of these samplers because they contain a lot of useful information in their own right. Not having reviewed the entire Anthology yet I can’t vouch for the other articles, but given some of the names listed here (Eitan Suez, Venkat Subramaniam, Neal Ford, Jared Richardson) there probably isn’t much of a question over whether it’s good material or not!

  • Quote of the Week: Leo Tolstoy

    “There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.” — Leo Tolstoy

  • The Dreyfus Model

    I’ve been reviewing an old PowerPoint slide deck I have from Andy Hunt’s “Refactoring Your Wetware” talk. One of the slides covers the Dreyfus Model of Skill Aquisition, something that Andy and Dave Thomas also discuss in their “Herding Racehorses, Racing Sheep” talk (which you can see when the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference comes to your town, by the way).

    The whole concept is just fascinating to me. The model is made up of several “layers” or levels of proficiency in a given skill:

    1. Beginner
    2. Advanced Beginner
    3. Competent
    4. Proficient
    5. Expert

    Each level represents a different pattern of behavior, a different way of thinking. A learner will perceive the world differently at each level. For example, at the “Beginner” level, the learner is preoccupied not necessarily with learning something, but with simply accomplishing a task. Compare that to an “Expect” learner, who relies on intuition, not reason, to accomplish his goals.

    Forcing an expert to fit into a rules-based structure designed for a beginner ultimately makes the expert less productive and even downright miserable. On the flip side, placing a beginner in the intuitive environment that an expert thrives in can render the beginner incapable of doing anything. Yet both of these actions occur continually in the corporate world. Why is that?

    I don’t have any good answers yet, but Dreyfus surfaces some fascinating ideas. For a more thorough explanation of the model, read this entry from Dave’s blog or Google for “dreyfus model.”

  • Distance education posts moved to new blog

    In preparation for my NCHE workshop next week, I decided to move my distance education posts to a separate blog. Distance education is such a compelling new option for high school graduates that I felt it deserved its own dedicated space for posts. I’ll be making all of my new entries there so I encourage you to bookmark the page or add the feed to your RSS reader if you’d like to keep up with my future thoughts on this subject. I’d also love to hear your own thoughts about this unique method of earning a college degree.

  • Auto-completion of paths in Windows 2000

    I’m still using Windows 2000 on my desktop system at home (yeah, call me a dinosaur, I don’t care). One thing I’ve found annoying when switching between my desktop and my laptop that runs Windows XP is auto-completion of paths and filenames on the command line. In short, Win2K just doesn’t do it by default! A simple registry edit can magically change this, though. Just follow the instructions in this article and start tabbing.

  • Quote of the Week: Laurence J. Peter

    “The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.” — Laurence J. Peter (1919 – 1988)

  • Quote of the Week: Mother Teresa

    “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” — Mother Teresa (1910 – 1997)

  • Introducing Radiant, a Rails-based CMS

    An old friend from a project I briefly worked on during my days at RoleModel Software just released a Rails-based open source Content Management System called Radiant this week. It looks pretty snappy! Add to that the fact that the Ruby-Lang web site will soon be using it and you’ve got a free package that’s very attractive.

    Check out John’s announcement on his blog for more information about the CMS, including some nice screen captures. It’s quite pretty looking. I’m very tempted to convert one of my existing sites to it just to see how it works.

  • Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary

    A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released on Wednesday.

    Mine sure deserves this much, and a lot more besides!

    Read the article

  • Quote of the Week: Napoleon Hill

    “It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists, not so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and persistently applied. Men are paid, not merely for what they know, but more particularly for what they do with that which they know.” — Napoleon Hill