I have always been interested in starting a Open Source project on Sourceforge. I had once tried to join an existing project and be a contributor, but my work and other commitments do not let me follow a tight schedule for this kind of work.
A few months back when I was actively using Jython in my work,I realized that I could use the help of a small console that let me run commands from an interactive shell and let me save that history as a script. Another thing that troubled me was that after years of using Eclipse I was addicted to the intellisense.
So I set out to build such a console for myself - I did not bother to check if such a think already existed because I wanted to use this as a chance to build an open source tool of my own. So with a few days of effort I had a tool - Console4Jython - that I promptly put on Sourceforge.
Over the last few months whenever I have nothing to do I code a bit for this and have just released the 1.0.6beta version of it. It provides
1. A interactive shell in a SWING console
2. A command history
3. Code completion - nothing like Eclipse but it can show you all the methods on a Jython object
3. You can clear the screen
4. You can save the command history as a script
5. You can load a script and it will be executed
6. A bare bones editor from which you can run the script
7. You can run a script file by saying "exec [filename]"
8. You can specify a bootstrap script file
9. You can generate a wrapper script for any Java class with "parseclass [classname]"
10. You can generate the wrapper scripts for classes in a jar file with "parsejar [jarfile name] [package filter]"
Have a look at it, and if you like it - please let me know!
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Work,deadlines,holidays and festivals
Indian Software professionals work long hours.
This is a fact, and the exact reason for this varies. It is definitely not because we get paid for overtime or that we have to work long hours to make enough money with our low billing rates. Generally newcomers work late to either learn stuff or because they are still learning how to manage their time. Some people also work late because they have the "manager-from-a-different-world" who thinks that you are good only if you work late. We work on weekends and holidays also - again the reasons vary.
I had a long argument with my fiancée today about this - why do you have to work on a holiday. We both are the kind of people who take responsibility for our work and the team. We work 9 to 8 everyday. But we try to keep our weekends free.5 days, 9 to 8 do your best, enjoy the weekend. Working on holidays is OK if needed.
The reason we had the argument was because she is working tomorrow - on a festival holiday. Dussehra is a big festival in India and especially in our families it is a big celebration. The 10 days of Durga pooja culminates on Vijaya Dasimi which is tomorrow. And she has to work to run a regression test pack tomorrow so that they can show the results to the client sitting in Tokyo.
My question is - why should you work on a festival day? Cant you just tell the client that you will give the results a day late?? It definitely is not a end-of-the-world deadline tomorrow.
I myself am a team lead who has has to handle teams. We always maintained a rule that we will not work after a certain time and will definitely not work on certain days. Even when sitting at the clients office I have told the client that the deliverable will be delayed because it is a holiday in India and I do not expect people to come and work. None of my client side guys work for Christmas or Easter and they agreed to what I said.
It is not wrong to put you foot down and tell that you need to take a certain day off - we are humans and we depend on family and other factors as support and driving mechanisms to move ahead in life. It is by spending quality time at home and enjoying few days a year with the family for festivals and things like that, we keep ourselves sane and in a position to work. If we lose that then we lose our drive to work and ultimately we will fail.
Work and life might be synonymous in this competitive world, but we have to maintain a balance between the two. If it is not possible to keep this balance daily, we can at least make sure that we do not miss these holidays and take time off on these days.
This is a fact, and the exact reason for this varies. It is definitely not because we get paid for overtime or that we have to work long hours to make enough money with our low billing rates. Generally newcomers work late to either learn stuff or because they are still learning how to manage their time. Some people also work late because they have the "manager-from-a-different-world" who thinks that you are good only if you work late. We work on weekends and holidays also - again the reasons vary.
I had a long argument with my fiancée today about this - why do you have to work on a holiday. We both are the kind of people who take responsibility for our work and the team. We work 9 to 8 everyday. But we try to keep our weekends free.5 days, 9 to 8 do your best, enjoy the weekend. Working on holidays is OK if needed.
The reason we had the argument was because she is working tomorrow - on a festival holiday. Dussehra is a big festival in India and especially in our families it is a big celebration. The 10 days of Durga pooja culminates on Vijaya Dasimi which is tomorrow. And she has to work to run a regression test pack tomorrow so that they can show the results to the client sitting in Tokyo.
My question is - why should you work on a festival day? Cant you just tell the client that you will give the results a day late?? It definitely is not a end-of-the-world deadline tomorrow.
I myself am a team lead who has has to handle teams. We always maintained a rule that we will not work after a certain time and will definitely not work on certain days. Even when sitting at the clients office I have told the client that the deliverable will be delayed because it is a holiday in India and I do not expect people to come and work. None of my client side guys work for Christmas or Easter and they agreed to what I said.
It is not wrong to put you foot down and tell that you need to take a certain day off - we are humans and we depend on family and other factors as support and driving mechanisms to move ahead in life. It is by spending quality time at home and enjoying few days a year with the family for festivals and things like that, we keep ourselves sane and in a position to work. If we lose that then we lose our drive to work and ultimately we will fail.
Work and life might be synonymous in this competitive world, but we have to maintain a balance between the two. If it is not possible to keep this balance daily, we can at least make sure that we do not miss these holidays and take time off on these days.
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Terracotta
Last week I attended a talk by Terracotta founder and CTO Ari Zilka at the London Wicket User Group.
I had gone there because my technical architect and Sanjay had said Wicket was a good thing to learn about. I did get some idea about Wicket, but I was floored by Terracotta (www.terracotta.org).
I had heard about Terracotta from the guys on my project team and had visited the website. But I could not generate enough interest to sit and write some code. But after the talk, and especially after seeing the demo application, I had better idea about things. Today I finally sat down and wrote a few sample programs to try out Terracotta. It was fun and it was easy to do things from the comfort of Eclipse.
It was fun to able to take simple applications and cluster them with minimal effort. I wanted to try something bigger, so I promptly tried to cluster a Jython console - I ran into some errors. It says it cannot share the InteractiveConsole object for some reason - I have a big stack trace that I need to navigate to figure out exactly why.
But I can definitely see some applications for Terracotta in my work. I just need to convince my folks that it can be applied.
I had gone there because my technical architect and Sanjay had said Wicket was a good thing to learn about. I did get some idea about Wicket, but I was floored by Terracotta (www.terracotta.org).
I had heard about Terracotta from the guys on my project team and had visited the website. But I could not generate enough interest to sit and write some code. But after the talk, and especially after seeing the demo application, I had better idea about things. Today I finally sat down and wrote a few sample programs to try out Terracotta. It was fun and it was easy to do things from the comfort of Eclipse.
It was fun to able to take simple applications and cluster them with minimal effort. I wanted to try something bigger, so I promptly tried to cluster a Jython console - I ran into some errors. It says it cannot share the InteractiveConsole object for some reason - I have a big stack trace that I need to navigate to figure out exactly why.
But I can definitely see some applications for Terracotta in my work. I just need to convince my folks that it can be applied.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
