Often, as I’m reading articles discussing the rollout of new mobile phone networks, or next-generation access to the Internet, I’m frustrated by the punditry that accompanies them. Frequently statements are made about how the U.S. “lags behind” Europe and Japan in terms next-gen network deployments, and very rarely are these statements given proper qualifiers, which leaves the average U.S. citizen wondering why we are so far behind the curve. Let me explain why the problem is one of profitability, not one of technology.
Read the rest of this post
No, I don't work in NYC, DC, or the valley, and I'm cool with that.
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Why U.S. Networks “Lag Behind”
0 Comments
Filed under Uncategorized
Mar 31, 2008
The Joy of User-Driven Development
0 Comments
One of the reasons I’ve been such a proponent of people at my current job reading Getting Real is that it describes the way I’ve approached development ever since I got started in the field. Now, mind you, I’m not a “classically trained” developer. As such, I just went with the way of doing things that made the most sense. Silly me. While the number of programmers doing things in a manner that makes sense is growing every day, we, members of the so-called agile development crowd, are still decidedly counterculture in the corporate world.
Anyway, some events occurred this week that made me feel a retrospective of one such development project was in order.
Read the rest of this post
Filed under Blog
Mar 28, 2008
When Less is More
0 Comments
What’s this? A blog that is oriented toward managers which actually has useful information for a developer, too? I know, it surprised me as well. Check out the post entitled The 37th Button On Your Remote Control, over at BNET which offers a refreshing perspective for managers tasked with overseeing people who design applications – or really, anything intended to be used by humans.
Read the rest of this post
Filed under Uncategorized
Mar 26, 2008
Of Badgers and XML: Custom XML Serialization in Rails
3 Comments
At the company where I work, we use billing software called ICOMS that has been around for ages. This is, of course, because of the commonly-held belief that only old software can possibly be enterprise-class. Well, that, and the fact that once you get yourself tied to a billing vendor it is extremely expensive to migrate to another one. Anyway, this particular billing software does have an API. Well, that’s what they call it anyway. I’d call it something between a trip to the dentist’s office and having a live badger loosed in my pants. Oh, right. The title said something about customizing your XML serialization in Rails. Click the link.
Read the rest of this post
Filed under Uncategorized
Mar 18, 2008
Recursive Hash#fetch
0 Comments
Recently, I found myself wishing for a recursive version of Hash#fetch that would get all values from a nested hash structure. I looked around for a while, and couldn’t find one, so I made a little mixin called Hash#fetch_all. It returns an array containing all values matching a given key from any level within such a structure. It definitely still feels like it could be improved on, but it works.
Read the rest of this post
Filed under Uncategorized
Mar 11, 2008
About
I'm Ernie Miller. But then, you probably knew that by looking at the page title, or the URL. I'm a Ruby programmer in Louisville, Kentucky. This blog used to be called "metautonomo.us", which I thought was kind of clever, but nobody, including me, could type it. Lesson learned.