Ben Northrop -

Ben Northrop

10101110? -
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What's new

May 1st, 2009: Wrote a new article for this site on what good architecture is. Should it be judged from the users perspective, or the creators? Can an unmaintainable, unreliable system have a "good" architecture?

April 21st, 2009: Just published a blog post for Summa about managing property files with Spring. A bit bland, and not my best work, but check it out anyway! :)

February 26th, 2009: A friend of mine, and MSA compatriot, just created a blog for his Java-based UI framework: Pure Faces. Similar to GWT, it's a way to create web-based UIs without mucking with HTML or Javascript.

February 23rd, 2009: My brother-in-law, Ben Giovengo, just launched a web site for his company, Raintree Landscaping. They do great work - give them a call if you're in Pittsburgh!

February 17th, 2009: I just wrote a blog on SOA and the N + 1 Selects Problem for Summa. Please don't think I'm drunk off of the SOA kool-aid! I'm still very skeptical, but trying at least to frame the problems of this approach. BTW - there are also good posts on version control tips and Summa's approach to projects. Check 'em out!

February 4th, 2009: Trying to navigate through the muddy waters of SOA, I've put together a list of the best soa referencesI've come across so far. Stuff (as opposed to fluff!) is hard to come by, I've found.

January 24th, 2009: My son Wyatt just updated his blog with some Christmas pics and stuff.

January 13th, 2009: My company, Summa, just recently entered the blogosphere. I'm lucky to work with a ton of really smart people, so I expect great things! Already there are good posts on flex application frameworks, making the case for clean code, and logging exceptions. Check it out!

January 8th, 2009: CodersCV got front page status on delicious this morning for a good 3 hours. With a consistent 200+ concurrent users Tomcat didn't even stutter. Open source rocks.

December 30th, 2008: Got 50 pages through a book I just bought: "Service Oriented Architecture: A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology" and felt thoroughly ripped off so decided to write a review on Amazon. One of the worst books ever. Insult to injury, looks like the authors rigged the rating, setting up fake reviewers. So sketchy.

December 20th, 2008: Got up on Saturday at 4:30am to feed the baby, put him back down at 5:30am, was still up so figured I'd finish off the PDF view on my new site, codersCV, and then post it to reddit and see what happened. Jeez! I got swamped with hits - 6000+ visits for the weekend alone. If I mention codersCV one more time to my wife, it might be over:) I'm pumped though.

December 15th, 2008: Finished up reading Collapse by the Guns, Germs, and Steel guy about environmental catastrophes, and now on to The Forgotten Man about the Great Depression. Holy crap I need some lighter reading.

December 14th, 2008: Wrapped up on my PNC Bank project and started at CMU on revamping their student information system. Can't beat a 10 minute commute...

December 12th, 2008: Just launched codersCV and actually got a ton of traffic initially...and a bunch of registrations! Check it out.

November 15th, 2008: My 4 month old son has his own blog. He'll be programming any day now.

Links

May 21, 2009 - You might be an incompetent programmer if...
May 11, 2009 - If Chuck Norris was a coder.
May 05, 2009 - An ethical hacker admits to Jeff Attwood - "I just logged in as you".
April 30, 2009 - Coding the Wheel asks if there's there ever a good reason to use Oracle or SQL Server when most of the internet is running on MySQL and PostgreSQL?
April 27, 2009 - Your codebase is like a kitchen.
April 15, 2009 - Need front-end web development? Hire this guy.
April 08, 2009 - Sometimes "moving on" isn't necessarily "moving up". There's nothing wrong with being stuck in code.
March 30, 2009 - Unitils - the coolest open source framework that you've probably never heard of. For unit testing.
March 02, 2009 - As the saying goes, one bad apple can spoil the bunch. Jeff Attwood points to the data that proves it. Pretty interesting.
February 26, 2009 - How adding the words "low price guarantee" took a web site on beach towels from $220 a month to $2100. For real?
February 18, 2009 - For all but the privileged few, programming is tedious, dull, boring. We try our best to spice things up, but usually not for the good of the project or company.
February 16, 2009 - How do you make money on the web, when everything is free?
February 10, 2009 - Sleep. We all have our rituals for getting into it: maybe we read, or watch TV, or count sheep. Whatever. The point is, we all know it takes a little time to settle in...and once we there, we try to stay there - the deeper the better. Well, it's the exact same for programming. To get to any useful state takes time, and every interruption puts us back to square zero.
February 04, 2009 - 5 secrets to writing a blog when you have nothing to say. Hint: lots of quotes and pretty pictures!
January 25, 2009 - As technology helps us stay ever-connected, have we met the end of solitude.
January 20, 2009 - The top 10 software engineering books of all time. No shock at #1: Code Complete.
January 13, 2009 - Finally! A study showing what any cube dweller has known for years - the open office model doesn't work. It makes people more stressed and less productive. When do we get our offices back?
January 09, 2009 - Managers and executives are continuously supporting new methods, techniques, and approaches that serve to eliminate the programmer. BPM, MDA, CASE tools to name a few. These approaches never work says Scott Westfall.
January 08, 2009 - Although the word “SOA” is dead, the requirement for service-oriented architecture is stronger than ever.
December 30, 2008 - O'Reilly's latest book. Kinda funny.
December 29, 2008 - Flames on the Joel message board between the idealists and the realists - a little professional introspection on how programming compare to other professions? Way too much talk in absolutes, or near absolutes: "99.9% of jobs are XYZ".
December 23, 2008 - The way we present our ideas affects their appeal, but not in the way you'd expect. The more concrete, the less appealing.
December 22, 2008 - For some, SOA seems to be the hammer to every nail. It can work, but there are pitfalls.
December 19, 2008 - By far the best overview of SOA I've read. It's not a decoupling of everything, just the things that shouldn't be coupled.
April 30, 2008 - Not only is attrition something we should expect in software shops, it's something we should embrace. Or so says Alex Papadimoulis.
April 29, 2008 - Are programming books going the way of the Dodo? Jeff Attwood thinks so, and it's something to lament.
April 28, 2008 - Is there life after Maven? Groovy plus Ant (or Gant) harnesses all the power of Ant without the hell that is programming in XML. Klaus Berg gives a good intro.
April 25, 2008 - Using the theory of evolution to better understand the process of developing software. Is evolution preferrable to revolution?
April 24, 2008 - Usability is usually thought of in terms of the relationship between user and application, but it could also apply to developer and development process.
April 23, 2008 - ORM tools have made life better for us programmers. Here are a few good patterns from IBM developerWorks.
April 21, 2008 - Using game theory to explain the "Eligible Bachelor" paradox.
April 18, 2008 - The stand-off between science and religion just grows more incendiary: here, here, and here. We love the benefits of science, but not the implications.
April 17, 2008 - The human brain may be the biggest kluge of a system ever designed. Very functional, but ridden with little quirks - like our memory...
April 16, 2008 - Is there any way to objectively pick out the good programmers from the not-as-good programmers? Martin Fowler thinks about certifications and programming schools.
April 16, 2008 - Is there any way to objectively pick out the good programmers from the not-as-good programmers? Martin Fowler thinks about certifications and programming schools.
April 15, 2008 - Steve McConnell discusses the methods and pitfalls of measuring developer productivity. Is it worth it?
April 10, 2008 - Getting things done as a programmer in the corporate world isn't easy. John Cowan had a few nice words back in 2005 on Flow, Stuckness, and Interruptions that I just came across.
April 09, 2008 - Martin Fowler's distillation of the debate over unit testing with mocks, stubs, fakes, and dummies - and no, they're not all the same.
April 07, 2008 - A fan of multi-tasking? Not me. Istvan Banyai explains why "to do two things at once is to do neither".
April 02, 2008 - Craftsmanship is alive and well in the new economy, or so says Richard Sennett in his new book, The Craftsman. The programmer is the new carpenter.
April 01, 2008 - All good web programmer's need to know something about CSS, right? Here are a few good tips from Trevor Davis.
March 31, 2008 - A lot can be learned about software engineering, believe it or not, from philosopher John Stuart Mill's thoughts on individualism.
March 28, 2008 - An excellent guide to interspersing some agile practices into your waterfall development process. ShriKant Vashishtha explains that agile isn't all or nothing.
March 27, 2008 - Steve Yegge's tell-all on how to get that coveted job at Google. Good content on tech interviewing, a topic that's peculiarly so popular in the tech blogosphere.
March 26, 2008 - Paul Graham argues that programmers at a big company are like animals in a zoo. He explains why startups are their natural habitat.


I am currently living in Pittsburgh, PA, working as a Senior Technical Consultant for Summa, and studying as a part-time graduate student in Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. My thoughts here are mostly on software development, but trying to take a few insights from philosophy, psychology, economics, and decision sciences to help us understand better why we do what we do...and how to do it better. I maintain two pet projects: codersCV and PMDReports. Check 'em out!