Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
-- Steve Jobs

Monday, October 10, 2011

Ask Slashdot: Does Being 'Loyal' Pay As a Developer? - Slashdot

Ask Slashdot: Does Being 'Loyal' Pay As a Developer? - Slashdot
An anonymous reader writes "As a senior developer for a small IT company based in the UK that is about to release their flagship project, I know that if I were to leave the company now, it would cause them some very big problems. I'm currently training the other two 'junior' developers, trying to bring them up to speed with our products. Unfortunately, they are still a long way from grasping the technologies used – not to mention the 'interesting' job the outsourced developers managed to make of the code. Usually, I would never have considered leaving at such a crucial time; I've been at the company for several years and consider many of my colleagues, including higher management, to be friends. However, I have been approached by another company that is much bigger, and they have offered me a pay rise of £7k to do the same job, plus their office is practically outside my front door (as opposed to my current 45 minute commute each way). This would make a massive difference to my life. That said, I can't help but feel that to leave now would be betraying my friends and colleagues. Some friends have told me that I'm just being 'soft' – however I think I'm being loyal. Any advice?"

Countdown to Grails 2.0: Unit testing | SpringSource Team Blog

Countdown to Grails 2.0: Unit testing | SpringSource Team Blog
The first milestone of Grails 1.4 (now 2.0) has now been released and we are on the last stages of the journey towards 1.4 2.0 final. As we approach that point, I will be writing a series of blog posts that cover the various new features and changes that the 1.4 2.0 version brings. I'll be starting with the new testing support.
Since the beginning, Grails has provided three levels of testing support for developers: unit, integration, and functional. Unit tests had and still have the benefit of running independently of Grails, but they typically required a fair bit of extra work in the form of mocking. The unit test framework introduced with Grails 1.1 helped with that mocking, but it still didn't cover all use cases and so developers needed to resort to integration tests, which run inside a bootstrapped Grails instance, earlier than was desirable.
Grails 2.0 introduces significant changes that improve the situation considerably:
  • the unit test support can be integrated into any test framework (no more base classes);
  • it has a full in-memory GORM implementation; and
  • it better supports testing REST actions, file uploads, and more.
So what do these changes look like to you as a user?

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Using Cloud Foundry from STS | SpringSource Team Blog

Using Cloud Foundry from STS | SpringSource Team Blog
By now you probably heard about Cloud Foundry, the open PaaS from VMware that was announced yesterday; if not make sure to check out the recording of the webcast. Eventually you have already read earlier blog posts introducing the Spring support for Cloud Foundry, the add-on for Spring Roo and the Grails plug-in.
With this post I’d like to introduce the Eclipse-based support for Cloud Foundry that lets you manage your cloud deployments, including configuration of Services and service bindings, application scaling, access to file resources and much more.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Steve Jobs: A Few Memories | Stephen Wolfram Blog

Stephen Wolfram Blog : Steve Jobs: A Few Memories
When I first met Steve Jobs nearly 25 years ago I was struck by him explaining to me that NeXT was what he “wanted to do with his thirties”. At the time, I thought it was a bold thing to plan one’s life in decades like that. And—particularly for those of us who spend their lives doing large projects—it’s incredibly inspiring to see what Steve Jobs was able to achieve in his small number of decades, so tragically cut short today.
Thank you, Steve, for everything.

Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot | Daring Fireball

Daring Fireball: Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot
I like to think that in the run-up to his final keynote, Steve made time for a long, peaceful walk. Somewhere beautiful, where there are no footpaths and the grass grows thick. Hand-in-hand with his wife and family, the sun warm on their backs, smiles on their faces, love in their hearts, at peace with their fate.

Remembering Steve Jobs | kottke

Remembering Steve Jobs
I am incredibly sad this morning. Why am I, why are we, feeling this so intensely? I have some thoughts about that but not for now. For now, I'm just going to share some of the things I've been reading and watching about Jobs.

Steve Jobs Dead At 56 - Slashdot

Steve Jobs Dead At 56 - Slashdot
SoCalChris writes "Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead in his Cupertino home this morning. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him — even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."