Links to Some Useful Resources

I've been a fan of Joel on Software for some time. Recently Joel (Spolsky) started a new enterprise, stackoverflow.com, with Jeff Atwood. They've been releasing some entertaining and informative podcasts as part of this new endeavor.

Good Stuff. Who knew you could wash your electronics??

*****

Joel has written a few books. One I haven't read yet is titled Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent. While I'm sure this book is helpful, what I really need is a book that can help locate progressive companies which allow employees to work smartly and get things done.

I don't know if it's endemic to the region I live or it's more widespread than I imagine, but none of the companies I encounter here are doing anything close to Agile development, few are working with Ruby, most are afraid of open source, none have heard of REST web services, and most are reactive problem solvers rather than proactive.

They all look first to OTS software solutions, rather than empowering their people to be creative and take ownership of the company's business problems. They're looking for application babysitters rather than application developers.

I've noticed that many of these companies use Lotus Notes for their email. Does anyone outside of western New York use this horrible system? This has become a litmus test for me to gauge the companies I speak with. The way I look at it is: if you can't even get email right, how can you be expected to make good technical decisions in other areas?

*****

It's been a while since I've done some hard core database programming, but I listened to a podcast from WebDevRadio yesterday that blew me away. Brian Moon talked about MySQL scaling and many performance enhancements. This was a great conversation.

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