Every time you turn around there is a new programming language, a hot new technology, or some form of hype or buzz surrounding some particular methodology or another. Considering this flood of information to digest you can’t help but ask yourself, what is a busy programmer to do? If you are constantly working to learn the latest and “greatest” will you ever have time to get proficient, or will you endlessly be a hack in a new language?

Each time a new project rolls around it seems I am questioning my choice of technology, do I want to do this using J2EE, which I know, or maybe I should take this opportunity to learn Ruby and give Rails a try or how about ASP.NET? This train of thought, while helping to diversify my skill set, has left me wondering if maybe it is time for me to focus, to pick a language or technology stack and really immerse myself in it until I am satisfied that I know enough to tackle something new.

The other side of this coin is that as more and more languages and frameworks arrive on the scene, the scope of the problems that each is meant to tackle is becoming increasingly focused. This means that programmers are most effective when proficient with a number of “tools” rather than a single. You wouldn’t drive a screw with a hammer, so why force a project in a language that might not be best suited to solving the challenges the project entails? Then again if you are constantly language hopping will you ever truly recognize the “right” tool when you need it?

Much to learn; little time to learn it all.

I would be interested to hear how other programmers handle this delema.

With an ever increasing number of online shoppers browsing the web for products, that they may or may not have ever seen, touched, or inspected, the online review is becoming an increasingly important tool. Unbiased non commercial reviews, whether from experts or everyday consumers, enable shoppers to make informed decisions about their purchases.

This holiday season while you are busy shopping consider stopping by one of these 3 sites to help you decide if your purchase is worth the investment:

1. – if they sell it chances are customers have reviewed it. Many of the products I have found on Amazon contain anywhere from 10 to 1,000 reviews many of which are indispensable.
2.  – Buzzillions is a sort of review aggregator, that is to say it collects reviews from a multitude of other sites and organizes them into nice search-able categories. I have found their catalogue to be quite comprehensive and the site is very responsive and easy to navigate.
3.  – When in doubt consult the oracle. If you can’t find a review somewhere in the catacombs of the hive mind then congratulations because you may be the first person to ever purchase that product so do us all a favour and write a review after you buy it.

That is my quick list so please if you know of some other great sites for online reviews let me know.

If you are a freelance developer or designer of pretty much any flavour you have probably encountered this issue. You are working on a project at your day job and you come up with some wonderful design that you are really proud of.  After patting yourself on the back, you start to wish that you had come up with this design outside of work so you could add it to your portfolio and use it to advertise your amazing skills. This thought usually leads to a pondering of the ethics of listing a design on your site that despite being created by you, technically belongs to the company you work for.

There are several ways you could approach this but my suggestion on this one is simple, talk to your boss. Explain how you feel and indicate that you only wish to show on your site that you were indeed responsible for the design, but in no way wish to imply ownership. I would consider offering up some form of link from the work to the company and be clear that you will make no attempts to hide the fact that this work was produced by your employer.

This is just my opinion on this rather touchy subject, and I would love to hear how you feel about this issue.