The Web Gambit - Latest Comments

Re: Choosing between Dogmatism or Denial

Karthik Hariharan — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:14:32 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Jim! I agree with everything you've said and I've been very impressed with the Rubyists attitude regarding unit testing. Let me know what you think of my follow up post here: http://webgambit.com/2009/1...

Re: Choosing between Dogmatism or Denial

Jim Holmes — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:57:49 -0000

I'm late coming across your post, but I'd be interested in what you find in the Rails community. Having been around a number of very accomplished Rubyists for some time, I can tell you their reaction to this silly angst we folks in the .NET domain have: they shake their heads and go back to doing TDD/BDD/context-driven development.

Neal Ford, Jim Weirich, Glenn Vanderburg, and less renowned but still highly accomplished Rubyists all have the same mindset. *NONE* of these folks put up with the attitude that it's OK to not test.

There's no arguing about the value of tests because they understand it already. There's no heated debates about why one should test because they grok the benefits. Best of all there's no religious wars about it because, for the most part, the attitudes of Rubyists just don't shake out like that.

It's just how it is, and it's awfully refreshing -- because that mindset and approach to craftsmanship is simply just a part of how that community does its work.

(Of course there are segments of the Ruby community that don't work that way, but those segments are much smaller and much less vocal.)

Re: 5 Deadly Sins of the Software Developer

caseywatson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:56:55 -0000

Thank you for this post. It rang true.

Re: The Value of Complexity

Karthik Hariharan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:16:16 -0000

I definitely think there is value in providing options for the hobbyists so that we continue to attract great minds to the field. Most of the great developers I know today didn't go to school for it. And I know many people are thinking "I was just a hobbyist, would I have gotten into this industry had I been 10 years late?"

I don't think the options for the hobbyist have diminished, in fact I think they have increased. But I think having a filter for the hobbyists is not a bad thing.

Re: The Value of Complexity

Steve Bohlen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:01:39 -0000

I am in general agreement with the thrust of your point; software development as a profession still struggles with reconciling its roots as the domain of hobbyists and part-time fiddlers and there is significant 'professional debt' that the industry carries around that hearkens back to those days where any old member of a department could write a useful software program with little formal training.

The sooner we jettison this baggage and recognize that as the expectations for what software "should" be able to do and the reliability with which it "should" be expected to do it preclude the amateur doing the development work, the better off we will all be.

After all, you don't see the neurosurgeons complaining that "my mom cannot perform brain surgery any more, so clearly neurosurgery has become too complex" :)

Re: Moving off Graffiti CMS and on to Wordpress

Karthik Hariharan — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:00:20 -0000

I had used Wordpress a lot and when I was at Telligent, I was very excited at the prospect of having a Wordpress like CMS on the .NET platform. It wasn't meant to be, but Wordpress has always gone strong and Graffiti was never a serious competitor to it.

I agree Wordpress has some great plugins. I've utilized a few on my comments and contacts form and I've been very pleased thus far.

Re: Moving off Graffiti CMS and on to Wordpress

Jef — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:58:22 -0000

So how do you like Wordpress, after coming from GCMS? For me, the plugin/widget community is the driving force that really makes it a god platform.

Re: My last day at Telligent

Italian Translation — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:37:48 -0000

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear about the layoffs at Telligent.Please keep your spirits high.

Re: Top 5 things I learned during my time at Telligent

Brian Browning — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:22:22 -0000

Good points,#5 really hit me.

Sad to see that telligent had to lay people off, I always though that was one of the best .net companies in Dallas. Best of luck.

Re: Top 5 things I learned during my time at Telligent

Jim Gross — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:49:21 -0000

Good stuff, Karthik. As simple and common sense as a lot of these things seem, it's amazing how many large, ostensibly successful corporations don't do anything to incentivise this sort of thinking.

Re: Top 5 things I learned during my time at Telligent

Caleb Jenkins — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:03:33 -0000

Great list Karthik. I especialy like number 2. It's amazing how the right people make all the difference in the world!

Re: My last day at Telligent

Ryan Howard — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:16:07 -0000

Karthik,

You're truly not just a first class developer, but a first class person. Best of luck to you, keep in touch!

Re: My last day at Telligent

Terri Morton — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:35:37 -0000

Karthik, I had been looking forward to working together on Graffiti. Alas, it was never meant to be. You're a class act and I wish you all the best. I think you will have your choice of new positions. The hard part will be deciding which. :-)

Re: My last day at Telligent

Rob Howard — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:25:51 -0000

I would be happy to be a reference for you, Karthik.

Re: My last day at Telligent

Michael Sevilla — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:21:00 -0000

Karthik,

I'm sorry to hear about the layoffs at Telligent. Please keep your spirits high; their is still a high demand for those with your background and experience in this space.

Re: Taking Telligent to the next level

Larry Marburger — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:14:10 -0000

I hate to leave an irrelevant comment, but you have an unsavory link in the comments section of http://webgambit.com/blog/c.... I sent you a reply on Twitter, but you probably didn't see it. The comment itself doesn't look like spam, so maybe the original owner of the domain let it lapse and it got picked up because it's definitely not on topic.

Re: Google releases Calendar Sync

lower bills — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 07:41:25 -0000

Great find...thanks !

On the "beta" bit, everything from Google seems to be "in beta", including Gmail.

Re: Google releases Calendar Sync

Dave — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:19:37 -0000

I found your blog for an alternative to Google's Calendar Sync. Myself, and others have found this sync to be inconsistent, missing some sync of appointments from Outlook to Google. It's still in BETA, so what do you expect? But, I'm going to give Plaxo a try as an alternative, to see what it's like. Once the bugs have been worked out of Google's Calendar Sync, I'm sure it will be a better lightweight alternative, if your just wanting to sync between Outlook/Google Calendar.

Re: Converting a Wordpress theme to Grafffiti

Tom Edwards — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:42:52 -0000

Great post Karthik!

Re: Google releases Calendar Sync

Tom — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:41:21 -0000

Very cool, will have to give it a try!

Re: Synchronizing Google Calendar and Outlook via Plaxo

Joakim Westin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:56:45 -0000

It may not apply to you but if you have a Sony Ericsson cell phone you can synch that with both Outlook/Exchange and with Google Calendar with a wonderful piece of software called "My Phone Explorer".

Anyone using a Sony Ericsson phone and Google services should check this piece of software out:

http://www.fjsoft.at/en/

Cheers,

Joakim

p.s. No, I have no affiliation with the pepople behind MyPhone Explorer, I'm just a keen user. d.s.

Re: Mastering the Hand-off

Karthik — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:43:06 -0000

Great point, Tom. I think deployment can definitely vary from company to company. Often I've worked in situations where the client had a separate build team all together that we worked with all the way through the dev cycle. In this company developers only had to worry about making sure the solutions were checked into source control.

But in cases where the devs handle deployment as well, it is definitely crucial to get the hand off resource involved early on, perhaps transitioning that piece prior to even the first production push.

Re: Mastering the Hand-off

Tom Opgenorth — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:22:49 -0000

Well said at lot of points. I'd suggest that perhaps it's better, instead of tackling bugs, to first get the client up to speed on the build & deployment procedures you have in place, and then with lower priority bugs. It gives them a feel for what is where in the code base.

Re: Thoughts on Headspring’s Agile/XP boot camp

Jeffrey Palermo — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:16:43 -0000

Glad you enjoyed the course, and thanks for the link!

Re: Converting a Wordpress theme to Grafffiti

Karthik Hariharan — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:25:41 -0000

Thanks Mike! I went ahead and changed the language to be more GPL friendly. I appreciate you sharing such a fantastic theme with the community.