SE News

Perhaps you have wondered how predictable machines like computers can generate randomness. In reality, most random numbers used in computer programs are pseudo-random, which means they are a generated in a predictable fashion using a mathematical formula. This is fine for many purposes, but it may not be random in the way you expect if you’re used to dice rolls and lottery draws.

RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs. People use RANDOM.ORG for holding draws, lotteries and sweepstakes, to drive games and gambling sites, for scientific applications and for art and music.

http://www.random.org/

Software architecture competence is the ability of an individual or organization to acquire, use, and sustain the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out software architecture-centric practices. Previous work in architecture has concentrated on its technical aspects: methods and tools for creating, analyzing, and using architecture. However, a different perspective recognizes that these activities are carried out by people working in organizations, and those people and organizations can use assistance towards consistently producing high-quality architectures.

This report lays out the basic concepts of software architecture competence and describes four models for explaining, measuring, and improving the architecture competence of an individual or a software-producing organization.

Len Bass
Paul Clements
Rick Kazman
Mark Klein

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/08.reports/08tr006.html

Wasting server resources can impact the performance of Ajax applications, resulting in excessive HTTP requests, high memory consumption, and the need for an unusual amount of polling to make applications work. This article suggests some open source tools and Firefox add-ons you can use to improve or solve problems with your Ajax applications.

Judith Myerson

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-aj-pertools.html

Nieuwe webtechnologieën veranderen het internet elke dag en bieden gebruikers steeds nieuwe mogelijkheden. Zo lijkt wikitechnologie een goed uitgangspunt om het semantische web praktisch toepasbaar te maken. Het Multi Level Trust Model geeft de leverancier van online diensten en producten een beeld van wie zijn klanten zijn en wie hij kan vertrouwen. En RSS overbrugt de kloof tussen lezer en schrijver.

http://informatie.nl/artikelen/2008/05/

There is much talk these days about building a product for a niche and making a lifestyle business out of it. Much of the online literature about starting up is focused on how to create some fantastic product which will gather millions of visitors and make you a billionaire, and the “new wave”, so to speak, proposes that rather than taking a 1 in 10.000 bet that you can make billions, it is better to take a 1 in 10 bet that you can make millions.

Since I have started two such businesses already, here are thirteen tips from my own experience.

Daniel Tenner

http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/05/07/13-tips-for-creating-a-successful-new-online-product/

It’s widely accepted in the software industry that some programmers are much more productive than others. Many experts cite an order-of-magnitude productivity difference between the “best” and “average” programmers. This “factor of 10″ difference is so commonly referenced that “10X Software Development” is the name of the blog by development productivity guru Steve McConnell.

But it’s not just that some programmers work faster; some programmers can do things that few other programmers can do. These are your visionaries and trailblazers. I call this sometimes-10X/sometimes-infinite advantage: The “Tenfinity Factor.”

Timm Martin

http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-factor/

Since Linus Torvalds presentation at Google about git in May 2007, the adoption and interest for Distributed Version Control Systems has been constantly rising. We will introduce the concept of Distributed Version Control, see when to use it, why it may be better than what you’re currently using, and have a look at three actors in the area: git, Mercurial and Bazaar.

Sebastien Auvray

http://www.infoq.com/articles/dvcs-guide

Scout is the latest in web application and server monitoring tools. You’ve probably experienced your share of technical problems—a dropped server, a blue screen, excruciatingly slow running apps or a mysterious little warning that pops up every other minute. Scout aims to help here. It takes the hard work and hassle out of solving server problems, and will even let you know immediately when things start to go wrong. Scout stores all your data, whether it be internal or analytics or server information, in one place. This way you can see graphs of trends and correlations. For instance, you’ll be able to compare web traffic with server load, or compare web request times across apps and servers. Everything is safe and it works in real time (no more worries about having to wait ages to see your data).

http://scoutapp.com/

I wasn’t always a software developer. The two years before I joined ThoughtWorks I lived primarily off playing poker. […] I’ve never regretted spending so much time playing poker. I believe it taught me quite a few lessons that apply widely to other topics. In fact the more I develop software the more I’m convinced that the two jobs are incredibly similar.

Jay Fields

http://www.infoq.com/articles/fields-it-depends

Recently, I was talking with the development team at one of my clients about introducing some open source libraries into their product suite, as we work on refactoring it and getting it modernised and the code base under control. As we talked about the various open source libraries available, including several of my own, the guys asked me why I do open source. […] I’d suggest the following reasons, in no particular order of importance, are why I do it.

Matthew Wilson

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=229570

Terracotta is Network Attached Memory (NAM), and provides Java applications with a runtime environment that allows developers to trust critical parts of heap as reliable and capable of scaling through shared access across multiple machines. The technology hinges on a clustering server that keeps a shared view of objects across JVMs.

http://www.terracotta.org

The WS-* stack was conceived and driven forward by IBM and Microsoft, with other vendors cooperating on specifications where they had relevant expertise (Verisign on Security, BEA Systems on transactions
and so on). The design philosophy was for a relatively simple and efficient basic mode of operation, with optional features added independently of each other.

More recently, though, something else has taken root among developers building distributed applications: Representational State Transfer (REST). As ever with technology, the debate over WS-* and REST has settled on the death of one technology and the rise of the other. The truth, though, lies somewhere in between.

Tom Welsh

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/02/25/ws_versus_rest/