The Social Geek A never ending story of a never stopping idiot!

25Jun/092

Effective Software and Team Work

The following paragraph is a book excerpt taken from the really cool C++ in Action by Bartosz Milewski and I think I like what he says :-)

"There is a popular unflattering stereotype of a programmer as a socially challenged nerd. Somebody who would work alone at night, subsist on Twinkies, avoid direct eye contact and care very little about personal hygiene. I've known programmers like that, and I'm sure there are still some around. However most of the specimens of this old culture are becoming extinct, and for a good reason. Progress in hardware and software makes it impossible to produce any reasonably useful and reliable program while working in isolation. Teamwork is the essential part of software development."

I have to say, Milewski's book is one of the rare few books that are actually free from any marketing deep shit and feels very much like a friendly and common sense conversation between the author and the reader. Most books go through extensive editing I believe (to try and make it more sellable and pricey, which is rhetorical), but this one's not and I love it for that reason! Go read it and have a good doze of fun and knowledge! ;)

2Apr/080

YUI saved the day!

Yahoo User Interface (YUI) Library is really a wonderful package to have. It's free and amazingly useful and powerful. Today was one of those days when I was stuck at something, some spooky little thing that just wasn't coming up right. Here comes YUI, I scanned through the wonderful YUI developers site and found the right component for my use.

Yahoo has some excellent people working for it and tools like YUI are, well no surprise given the amount of talent this company has inside.

Thanks Yahoo, your awesome library made me happy today :)

18Feb/083

A new book in my shelf: PHP 5 Advanced

I went to Saddar on Saturday and on my way back, me and my friend Saadi decided to check out Urdu bazaar as we had to look for some books related to our respective courses.

We did not find the course books we were looking for, but I saw this book titled 'PHP 5 Advanced' by Larry Ullman at Bismillah Book Shop in Urdu Bazaar. I took up the book, scanned through its contents and I thought I should buy it, so I did ;)

I have my plans to take the Zend certification exam sometime soon so I thought this might just be the right kind of book to have for the preparation. Plus, I think even without the certification, this book is worth buying.

Larry Ullman is one of my favorite authors. I have read another of his books before and I loved it! Luckily for me, this book (that I just purchased) is an ideal match to complement Larry's previous book that I read before. It takes you from where you were left in the previous book.

You can find the table of contents here to whet your appetite. I just bought the book so I am on chapter 1 right now, hopefully will finish this up soon and become a pro =P

Cheers,
Kami

3Jan/080

EditArea – An open source syntax highlighting code editor in a textarea

I just found a really nice open source software: EditArea

I find it a must to save this URL in a blog entry. This way, I would use it whenever I want it, and at the same time, other people coming across this post on the web may find it very useful.

The URL is here: http://www.cdolivet.net/index.php?page=editArea

I really think people should be bookmarking in their blogs, as it gives enough description, and a safe place for the link.