Tension in the workplace.

In one corner, a developer that believes Separation of Concerns ends with packages. He does believe in having more than one project, but only because we have two products with code in common. So he’d have one project for product 1, another for product 2, and another for the code they have in common. (OK, he’s not that draconian, but I’m stating this stylistically).

In the other corner, me. I take it to the other extreme. I see every service (of which we supply a couple dozen) being in its own project.

His argument is that he doesn’t want an explosion of projects from what we currently have. He wants every extracted project to be well justified.

My argument is that an increase in modularity in bundles brings design to a higher level of abstraction and has a number of benefits, including slower degradation of quality and improved software comprehension.

The question is this: what is the best philosophy to have? Few large projects? Many small projects? Or is there always a balancing act that makes this inseparable from art? I am dying for your opinions! (And relevant reading (such as articles) if you know any.)

I’ve often day-dreamed about a nice-to-have in the EMF editor: the icons for EReferences showing containment.

(Ignore my choice to not center-justify the text in the icon as is done in the original, I could go either way on that.)

The five properties I change the most often on EReferences are: Name, EType, Lower Bound, Upper Bound and Containment. The first two are shown in the text of the EReference item, the next two in the icon, and containment… nowhere.

Am I alone in thinking it would be nice to have this information be conveyed in the icon?

Edit: Hallvard wrote in this post’s comments that perhaps the arrow I created should be for the non-containment. I’ll let others have the debate about what the icons should be. I simply wanted to put out there the idea of different icons for containment and non-containment. I could probably get used to whatever the choice might be.

It was a long shot. I posted on the Eclipse Jobs and Employment Forum, with very specific goals. I’m doing my thesis, so I wanted a part-time job, in Montreal, in Eclipse development, with the possibility of moving to full-time.

As anyone who lives in Montreal and has tried as hard as I have knows, Eclipse jobs are very hard to come by in Montreal. If moving to Ottawa is an option, piece of cake! But there’s maybe a good posting every six months in the Montreal area.

So I knew it was a long shot. But I also knew that a job would bring a great deal of help to financing the remainder of my studies, especially with this economy really hitting hard (really cliché of me to say, I know).

So I went for it. You can look at my post yourself. You’ll see, it’s really nothing special, but out of it, I got two, arguably three e-mails over two months. I’ll admit, it isn’t high traffic, but what I got out of it was great. Not only did one of those who contacted me meet my conditions, but their topic of expertise happened to be in the specific domain I am doing my thesis in! It was really lucky, but still something that would have never happened had I not used the forums.

My advice to anyone out there looking for something better (employment or otherwise) is this: if the options are either do nothing and get nothing, or try and maybe get something, then do it, even if “maybe” means half of one percent. Even a glimmer of hope might help keep your head high in tough times, and in all likelihood, what seems to you to be an incredibly minute chance could be more sizable than you realize.

The select few to whom I’ve mentioned my blog know that it will mainly be a blog about my passion of the last few years, Eclipse. I’ve been developing in Eclipse for quite a long time and so I’m aiming for a job at a company that does Eclipse development by the time I graduate (if you work at such a company, please contact me!)

But this post in particular is about how I got some Eclipse swag that will help me promote myself as a user/developer/fan of Eclipse. I’m talking, of course, of this pretty sweet jacket.

Don’t get me wrong. I have tons of swag for different things. And the idea isn’t that I’m wearing it to show off that I’m a fanboy (which, depending on your definition, I may very well not be). But being that my career is going in an Eclipse-centric direction, I like the idea of having a jacket that conveys it.

Yes, I know I am making this out to be a big deal. I’m sure there are hundreds or thousands of Eclipse jackets around the world. But to me, it has meaning.

Background

I wish I could say that I got my jacket by winning an Eclipse contributor’s contest, where I was deemed to be one of the most useful developers. Nope. Instead, I drew the 3rd prettiest picture in a drawing contest!

Honestly, when I created this logo (I submitted a few others too), I did it as a fun exercise with no expectations of it going anywhere. It is similar to how I submit a logo every year for CUSEC. I encourage others to take my ideas, but use actual artistic skills to make it look nice. So that my logo made it past the first round (with 232 entries!), second round, and even lived on to the third and final round was to me quite something.

Maybe I’m getting better at this logo designing thing, even though it is in no way on my radar as far as a career is concerned. My hope is that I can leverage this as much as possible to work my way inside of the Eclipse community. This has actually given me an opportunity to talk to two big names of the Eclipse Foundation: Lynn Gayowski and Ian Skerrett. I even had a nice 10-15 minute phone conversation with Ian, in part talking about how I can get a job developing for Eclipse.

In the end, all good things, resulting in me getting closer to the Eclipse community and getting a nice jacket along the way.

Oh, and as for the winner of the logo contest? Well, though there was a first place finisher (who got a $650 reward!), the Eclipse Foundation decided to keep their original logo. I am quite happy, because despite respecting the submissions of my artistic peers, none of them (including my own submission) spoke to me as the fresh and modern face of Eclipse moving forward. Oh well, no rush. Hopefully they’ll have better luck next time. I recommend using one of the artists already in the community who has created some nice logos already. You just need to go to the eclipse website to see in some of their icons and product logos that they have some artistic talent right under their noses.

The following smoothie has consisted of 50% of my diet for well over a year now. I just got a new blender because I worked my last one too hard and it shattered. Don’t worry, it was made of plastic, but it was a pain to clean up 2 litres of goop and chunks. This new blender is way better, and made of glass… I sure hope it doesn’t meet the same fate, because glass fragments are a little bit less forgiving…

This drink is delicious IMO, but it was constructed entirely for its health benefits, so it is perhaps not the most delicious thing you ever did drink. I have recently decided to start tinkering with it, because it sends me quickly in a mid-day coma, and that is no good (meme). I believe this is due to the amount of nuts (I reduced them in this version) and calories. I once measured the calories in 3 tall glasses of my smoothie, and it surpassed 2000. This version might still be up there. For fun, I’ll say 1800 (or 600 calories per tall glass).

• 325g (half tub) of yogurt
• 3x60ml (ie. using measuring cup at top of blender) of walnuts
• 2x60ml of nut mix (less air, so not the same as 180ml walnuts)
• an apple! (without the core)
• a banana! (without the part you slip and fall on)
• 1 tablespoon (very generous) of peanut butter
• 30g dark chocolate (anti-oxidelicious!)
• 3x60ml frozen blueberries
• 3x60ml frozen berry mix
• 7 seconds of red wine pored from a wine box
• fill halfway (of existing smoothie, ie. filling air pockets) with Five Alive (citrus)
• fill remainder (of existing smoothie) with cranberry juice

Steps:

1. Put ingredients in blender (in the order above).
2. Blend until smooth.
3. Consume.

(Yes, I was tempted to make an underpants gnomes joke.)

In practice I don’t actually care about exact measurements. The more juice and berries, the better the flavour. You can omit the nuts, though it decreases the calories and health benefits. Most of my friends can’t stand nuts in their drinks.

Ingredients for health benefits (anti-oxidants, etc.): everything, actually.
Ingredients for calories: nuts, peanut butter, cranberry juice.
Ingredients for flavour: berries, cranberry juice.