Nick Lewis: The Blog

Stumbled on a really awesome overview of object oriented programming for PHP 5. If you're looking to get out of the php 4 mindset, this is a good place to start.

PHP Design Patterns

From the man who brought us Wikipedia, comes Wikia: an open source search engine, backed by a reported $14 million dollars of venture funding.

Wikia, more or less, is attempting to wrangle the same forces that chiseled Wikiapedia into future world history books, and apply them to a for-profit search engine. A really unsexy way to describe Wikia's idea in reality is this:

Wikia will use a traditional search algorithms to produce a (primitive) "first draft" of any given search result. This first draft's rankings will be open to the public for re-ranking (and moderation). At first, the results will suck, but after the project reaches a critical mass, and has an active user base comparable to Wikipedia's -- guarding and improving the quality of results -- the search engine will blast off into the galaxy, leaving Google orbiting the moon.  

By Carl Poland (guest contributor) -- CEO, Compubiztech Solutions, LLC, and Professor of Computer Science

The other day, I stumbled on a post by some "blogger" named Kathy Sierra. Her post advised that code "...cannot be merely functional, it must be beautiful, as well. " This idea is not only stupid, but dangerous, and even stupid, as I'll show. Code is supposed to be ugly. If it weren't ugly, than it wouldn't be code! People who claim otherwise merely reveal their inexperience.

Some whippersnapper programmers, (those I've noticed, I'll merely number 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 [i really hate these guys...]) think their "metrosexual" code makes them smart.  I'll get to them later: these smarty-farties are naive, idealist amateurs. I should know.

I've been programming enterprise grade applications since 1971, and haven't learned a new thing in 30 years. There is no "silver bullet", as I've always said[see editors note #1]. 

Now, I consider my code my personal property, so you're not allowed to see it. However, I can tell you that its the work of an expert, and I want to share a few of my tricks. As a computer science professor [see editor's note #2, #3], I realize that the youth could benefit from my experience.

Lesson 1: Good code is Manly Code

1. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID --  I'm not impressed by APIs, they only confuse matters. Long ago, I've learned that every situation is unique, and therefore, no code is ever reusable. Attempting to allow other code to interact with your code is just going to lead to trouble. I rest my case.

Over the past three weeks, Web 3.0's stock has quadrupled on the BWAH* index. I feel a bit out of character as I'm not particularly cynical about the Web, version 3.0 . Actually, the more this buzzword has developed, the more madly I fall in love with it.

(*Note: BWAH is the acronym for the  Buzzword, and Hype's index -- a key indicator of the overall health of market-driven buzzwords)

As far as I know, Dan Gillmor was the first to seriously use the term -- and in April of 2005, no less. Dan writes:

I've decided to keep my copy of windows XP. And that will be my last windows operating system. 

Since I want to be riding the wave of the future, I shall be installing linux on my laptop's other partition. The windows XP installation will die, but not until its time has come.

Since linux admittedly, is not the best platform for entertainment, I'll be picking up a Mac sooner rather than later.

As a consumer, I'd like to thank Microsoft for helping me make an informed decison.

Thanks to Microsoft, I now know that if my hardware crashes twice, I need to buy a new copy of VISTA. (In contrast, my 2001 copy of Windows XP Pro has made it through four motherboards, and will never die on account of my hardware... not to mention XP has finally made it to the 'mature' point in its software lifecycle.)

Here's a quote to hang up on your wall:

Functional specs force you to make the most important decisions when you have the least information. You know the least about something when you begin to build it. The more you build it, the more you use it, the more you know it. That’s when you should be making decisions – when you have more information, not less.

-from Getting Real 

Every so often, I find a web service that actually returns something semi-valuable in exchange for my dollar. This may sound outlandish -- a valuable subscription based web-service -- but I insist they do exist. And Safari is definately one of them.

Recently, I stumbled on to O'Reilly's Safari. Safari is a subscription based service which offers thousands of books, from programming references to business guides. I think I'm paying 20 something dollars a month for access to every programming reference I could possibly need. 20 dollars may sound like a lot -- but, given that the books I'm reading average somewhere's between 35.00 to 70.00 a pop, I'm alright with a monthly fee.

Wow, these thoughts are pure gold. No really, I hate the word "wow", and yet here I am saying "wow". 77 houris to the author Jared Spool. A teaser:

The VP leaned forward and asked me, "How do we orchestrate a re-launch on a site this big without upsetting our customers? Any change is going to be so dramatic that people are definitely going to complain. How do we do this?"

I leaned back in my chair, paused for a second, then dropped the bomb. "You don't, " I responded. "A re-launch is a very bad idea. I highly recommend against it."

Group intelligence is multiplicative when idiots are involved - combining a half-wit with another half-wit does not result in a full-witted person, it results in a quarter-witted person (1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4). Combining a full-witted individual with a half-wit still only yields a half-wit. The more of these "wrong kinds of people" you have involved in the process, the worse things get.

- Matt Inman, SEOMoz Blog

For a long time I've been using dreamweaver to do the majority of my coding. However, I've found a better code editor. And unlike Dreamweaver, which runs for close to $400.00, this one is free, and released under GPL.

As you can see from the screenshots, this editor was clearly designed for, and by hardcore codemonkeys. It features all sorts of useful stuff like zooming in and out, tons of visual guides to help you see where your loops are starting and ending. Really clear color coding, and so much more.

Notepad++ represents everything an application should be. It solves problems I didn't even know I had when I was programming; and it does so without bloat, or any kind of learning curve. Not to mention, it doesn't have hardcore memory leaks (its so sad that this truly sets it apart from other apps I've been using). So friends, give it a spin. You won't be disappointed. It will make you a better programmer.

Download Notepad++ (Windows, sorry Mac people)