Morning comes too early and nighttime falls too late » tech

Fineco 2 QIF

Filippo — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:07:18 +0000

Today I released the first version of the application Fineco2QIF!

If you have a Fineco account and you normally use an application like GnuCash or Microsoft Money to manage your finance, you will find Fineco2QIF very helpful to convert the CrediCard and Bank statements you download from the Fineco web pages to the very common QIF format.

Try it: fineco2qif-1.0.jar.

(It’s opensource and released under Apache License)

Nebuchadneeear, this is Zion Control

Filippo — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:11:47 +0000

Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology (Step 1 of 3)

Filippo — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:50:46 +0000

This morning I cleared the part I of the architect certification with 93%!!!

Functional testing

Filippo — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:28:21 +0000

I normally use Selenium to test the functionality of the projects with a web interface. For every testcase you need to write a html table within an html file and (unfortually) those files are slightly different each other.
Here’s the plan:

Does it sound good?

phase I: JSP implementation
phase II: servlet + DDSteps

Photography and Software architecture

Filippo — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:34:10 +0000

Today at lunchtime I read an article about Java 7. As conclusion the author draw a comparision between photography and software architecture that I really agree:

Photography is an art, isn’t it? Yes, as software architecture is. To be more precise, both the software architect and the photographer, even though in different proportions, use a mixture of science and art. You will hardly do good things with very bad tools, such as lenses made of cheap plastic or a poor programming language, but the key factor to success is still you, with your experience, knowledge and creativity. As a famous photographer says, â€œThere’s no such a thing as a lens that takes pictures by itself.â€

Undoubtedly, digital cameras and sophisticated embedded image processors today make it easier to have a keeper shot, and the cost of each photo has lowered since the old times when you had to develop film in the wet darkroom. So better tools have indeed decreased costs and shortened the time of delivery. But the average quality hasn’t increased. On the contrary, places such as Flickr are mostly filled with photos with no value, the typical â€œpoint-and-shootâ€ stuff made by â€œholiday photographersâ€, while professionals, even though they are very happy with their new tools, always pay more attention to â€œthe processâ€ (yes, they use this word too).

Just a good Java developer

Filippo — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:15:05 +0000

Why it’s so difficult to find a developer that really understand and has worked with what’s written on his CV? Thomas and myself we spent couple of months looking for a new guy for our team and at today we found: a competent spanish girl but too junior, a very good Irish guy who accepted another offer and a group of “software architect” that can *talk* about every JEE related technology or design pattern but if you ask something about their involvement on the past projects you find out that 1/3 of the experience claimed on the CV belongs to other member of the past team… unreal.

Deja vu

Filippo — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:38:06 +0000

Yesterday I went to the advanced showing of Deja vu and unfortunately it’s under my expectation. Like every movie produced by Jerry Bruckheimer Films Deja vu has a good pace and great FX so you can’t get bored even with an obvious story. I think 7.1/10 is definitely too much.

Lean software development

Filippo — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:50:09 +0000

This evening I start reading the book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers and I learn about a the management philosophy of Lean manufacturing focused on the reduction of the wastes. When I got this book I only knew about the word lean but I didn’t know that the Lean software development is a translation of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the software development domain.

Interesting…

Developer skills outlook 2007

Filippo — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 23:11:37 +0000

I was talking with Piero about moving from Ireland to Canada and he sent me this link: Developer skills outlook 2007.

“Programming is very much a communications skill in some ways, it’s the skill of being able to craft and construct a simple piece of code to solve a complicated problem. Good programmers are also able to explain things well to other people.”

I experience every day that communication is a crucial point for a team.

“I’ve been hiring people since the mid-90s, and it doesn’t change over time: it’s always hard to hire good people. Skilled people are always in demand, and they’re always hard to get. There’s just a bit more chaff that gets in the way at the moment.”

How companies can get real developers if who decides the candidates for the first interview simply checks if a bunch of keywords match the cv?

Piratenpartei: the German Pirate Party

Filippo — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:34:25 +0000

Today I read on PuntoInformatico about the new German Pirate Party and their 4 objectives:

Open access: every invention coming from a research financed by the state can’t be patented by private companies
Rewrite the concept of copyright with the citizen in mind
Leave more privacy to the citizen by reducing the monitoring and the control. Full transparency of the decision made by the Public Administration.
Cut down the profit due predominant position in the Telecommunication sector and realize low cost global connectivity

I think the first and last objectives are obvious but (at least) in Italy it’s quite common practice.

The second objective can’t be commented, too generic.

“Leave more privacy to the citizen” doesn’t sound very good for me but about the full transparency of the administration I absolutely agree. Now we have the technology to easly do that.