JavaOne 2006

I am going again. I have gone since 1998-2004. I missed last year as I did not want my brain to explode. The balance of marketing folks / technical folks was just getting so painful you didn't really want to talk to anyone anymore - you'd get a "Hi! Are you a Java Developer? We have the most exciting 3D Bar code software in the world. I am sure you could use it. Can I have your card?"

In 1998, most of the folks I met off the tradeshow floor were developers and architects. Most / all of them were interesting and working on really hard problems. Each year more marketing and sales folks seemed to find their way off the floor and into the crowds of developers, making random contacts less and less appealing. Finally in 2004, 90% of the conference attendees I met were non-technical (non-interesting). Could it be that most / all of the hard problems have been solved and a lot of the "developers" who attend are most vexed by the by the yawn inspiring difficulties of different tag libraries and nuances or markup languages? I am counting on some interesting BOF sessions.

It might be sad, but I am thinking that the Netbeans day might be the best part of the trip. I have heard some things about Jackpot and I have been using Matisse for a while. I have to say it is like the netbeans guys got a brain transplant. Their stuff looks great, the features are amazing, unique and very useful.

Getting Things Done

I read David Allen's Getting Things Done a while ago and was impressed by the clarity and simplicity of the system. In his book he talks about the first step - that sweep - of being a requirement to start. That was too much of a hurdle for me and I have languished in my unorganized state since then.

Today, I came across an interesting talk by a guy named Merlin Mann who spoke at a meeting of SF Chapter of ACM SIGCHI. If you have any interest at all in this subject I recommend the 40 minutes it takes to listen to this. It is entertaining and insightful. He talks about Getting Things Done in a really accessible way and has some great ideas on small nudges you can take in your life to make you more effective.

Merlin Mann also has a great website that focuses on "geek productivity" and has some fantastic ideas. One article I really like is the HipsterPDA. Poking around his site, 43 Folders, I also found links to David Allen's website and found a plugin for Outlook that is supposed help quite a lot for those that get tons of email. I think I'll try it out.

Rails in Corporate America

So, I have been using Ruby on Rails for a bit now on a project for a not-for-profit group and I have to say I am enamored with it. I can make huge progress on various bits of the web app each session. I know it is cliche, but development is fun again.

I am running Windows so I am a bit out in the cold as far as tools go. I don't get to use the nifty text editor that all of the Mac folks use. But I found and I like RadRails in the Windows environment and besides from the occasional crash and a few annoyances, it meets my needs just fine.

The questions one everyone's mind is how do you bring in Rails into a Fortune 100 company that is standardized on J2EE (BEA Weblogic), Struts, and the like?

I have looked at Trails and it is a good idea, but tapestry gives me a headache and I just don't see this as a 1:1 comparison with Rails.

It would be great if someone from a larger corporation had a case study of implementing an application with Rails. Maybe someone from the Pragmatic group would know...