Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Software Engineering Proverbs

“Software Engineering Proverbs” collected by Tom Van Vleck is an excellent place to pick up a smart thought or two. Many of these are good for email signatures and stuff like that. Another point to note is that these do often apply to people other than software engineers too.

On wireless inputs

My brother has a post in his blog about how he is happy with his wireless keyboard and mouse. Originally I wanted to write a comment there with my reasons against wireless inputs, but than I thought that it would be handy to have it here (makes referring to it later kind of easier).

I don’t like wireless keyboards/mice at all. Here are my reasons:

  • Slow and inaccurate. Try playing an intensive game of Quake3 and you’ll see for yourself.
  • More work without much gain. Charging and replacing batteries is boring. Battery life sucks for those who spend a lot of time on the computer. Meanwhile, the distance you can move the devices is not that great. Not even a medium room diagonal.
  • Space saving is a myth. All of these keyboards that I’ve seen come with stupid multimedia functions which there is no good use for. They are always there to hide the size expansion that is needed to fill in the batteries. Keyboard cable takes much less space and is much more flexible (you can bend it).
  • Weight. Because of the batteries wireless devices are havy. That is not so noticable with the keyboard, but mouse will provide for some extra body shaping. If you can stand it that is.
  • Price. These things are more expensive than there cord counterparts. Plus you have to buy the batteries once in a while.

Don’t Be Afraid to Drop the SOAP

Ok, I know that linking to two articles from the same source in a row is bad, but I don’t do it so often, so here it goes…

Perl.com has this article called “Don’t Be Afraid to Drop the SOAP” where Sam Tregar (the guy from about.com, the author of HTML::Template, HTML:: Pager, Inline::Guile, Devel:: Profiler and few others) explains why he had to drop SOAP from the application and go for something handmade. That is an interesting story that shows a number of goods and bads of SOAP as a part of solution to one specific problem.

FMTYEWTK About Mass Edits In Perl

There is a very usefule article on Perl.com – “FMTYEWTK About Mass Edits In Perl“. It is about making changes in a bunch of files using a simple Perl script, or a one-liner, or even straight from command line. All the information is old, but it is nicely collected in one single article, which can come handy pretty often.

FMTYEWTK stands for Fare More Than You Ever Wanted To Know, by the way.