Friday, March 11, 2011

Technologies as Girls

ASP.NET


She is quite easy to please. At her age it's no wonder. If you aren’t looking for anything special – she’s totally yours. A bit of dressing-up and tuning and voilĂ , you have a girlfriend! But if you're not the kind of guy who loves endless repetitive conversations, you ran into trouble… You’ve got to be a real genius to tell her what you really want to do or to understand what she is saying or can do every now and then. She won’t dance to your tune and she most often likes the things that her parents taught her – there are no ifs ands or buts about it, she affords something new with deep breath. And if, on top of that, you happen to be a man of fashion, then dressing her up will be a great strain on your nerves. So you’d better think before you mess up with her.

ASP.NET MVC

She is young and beautiful. Her mind is not burdened with conventionalities and complex rules, and she doesn’t expect her boyfriend to know all the social graces. She is willing to make all sorts of connections and she can maintain them so that her reputation is impeccable. She changes her opinion and behaviour to be a match for capable partners that stick around. Oh, and by the way, you can keep total control over her wardrobe :-)

WinForms


Sometimes you can look at her and take her for some other girl. They all look the same as if they were from incubator. And they bring an air of old times, of something long forgotten. People hardly ever call them beautiful. All right! She might become beautiful… but then she needs a celebrity make-up artist. But such high-flying professionals would rather court the next girl…

WPF


Wow! She would stop a running horse, and rush in a burning house. She can do nearly anything. More than that: she looks stunning… and wait till you see the way she moves… Yes, she may be weird or naughty at times, but if you manage and tame her, the effect will be astonishing. And the only thing you will have to fight with is the temptation to show your friends all you can do with her.

Silverlight


Rejoice, ye nymphet lovers! WPF's little sister has grown up and even come of age in some way, but she has retained her freshness and tiny frame together with the beauty and smoothness of her movements. Yet unlike WPF, she is far less fussy about rendezvous points, less demanding about your financial well-being and sometimes even willing to change her name. So if you have to leave her for ASP.NET (uh-oh! :-( ), you will keep thinking of that air of freedom you relished in communication with her every time you were unbuttoning her blouse and pondering over what you want her to be like this time.


P.S. Couldn't find photo copyrights. Tried to pick out the copiable ones. Offers welcome!
P.P.S. Huge thanks to Kate Melnikova who did a major work of the translation of this text from Russian.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Forums are evil?

Don't understand me wrong - I'm not against forums, blogs and other community related activities. I just want to consider one usual situation.
Junior developer faced with a problem. And of course as usual this problem has appeared out of the blue where none could expect and caused by not knowing basics of used technology. What does junior do? Start learning the elements - no! Start trying to dig the technology - no! Today everyone knows the magic word "google", "bing" (etc - insert your favourite search engine). Junior quickly hammer the question into the search box and voilĂ   - they could get answer on some forums!

And now let's look at forums' contingent and even assume that there are some expers in necessary sophere.

An expert open forum, sees junior's question and moaning "ohh, lamers have completely cowed me" and skips it.
Another junior opens forum, sees the complex (from their point of view) querstion and starts reasoning.

Results usually are regrettable. Answer could be obtained, but there is no guarantee that it would be right. And I repeat - it's not always! And yes, sometimes you can get an answer from the man who thinks in right direction. And sometimes questions are not lame. But all my many years experience of juniors upbringing cries: "Learn the basics!!!"

P.S. There are some communities like experts-exchange, in which it's much easier to find right answers and where much more experts. I was registered there and obtained the status of expert, but it's a pity, to support this status you need time but not all seniors have it :(

So, forums are not evil if you are ready and if it's a right forum :)

RUS: http://asliborsky-ru.blogspot.com/2011/02/blog-post.html