Sean Corfield is Frustrated

Last night, Sean Corfield indicated that he's a little frustrated because he's not blogging as frequently as he'd like.  That's largely because we're working on a few projects at Broadchoice that we really can't talk about, but I can say that I've been working a little bit of overtime because the subject matter is just so darn cool.

So, while Sean's frustrated, we've got a triad of SaaS products under development that are chock full of interesting technologies keeping us busy.  Hopefully we'll be able to blog about the technology soon, maybe even on a new official Broadchoice Engineering blog.

4 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 11:54 AM - Categories: Broadchoice

Broadchoice is a meme!

John Whish has posted a blog entry entitled "How to get a job at Broadchoice" - apparantly we're a meme now! His blog entry is both insightful and nakedly honest, talking about some of the hurdles to be overcome when you're a lone developer without a development team or mentor.

Apparantly I work with a bunch of trendsetters...

1 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 11:59 AM - Categories: Broadchoice

Want Spring and Hibernate? Buy these books.

I've been messing around with Hibernate for the past year or so, and have used Spring to manage it whenever possible.  Last Summer, I spent a full weekend Googling and piecing together information from blogs to learn how to "properly" integrate the two (along with ColdFusion) - there's a ton of information out there (some wrong, much outdated).  Spring 2.x, in particular, simplified a good deal of stuff when you move beyond simple wiring up of beans and into concepts like transaction management.  Many of the blog entries and articles I could find contained pretty stale information.

Luckily, there's a book that I've recently read that shows you the "right" way with a minimum of fussing about:  Spring in Action.  Its second edition covers Spring 2.x and the many simplifications (esp. for AOP) it's introduced into the Spring framework.  It begins as a great introduction to Dependency Injection (DI / IoC) and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) then covers the major spring modules (DAO / ORM, remoting, security, MVC, and so on...) in order.  I'm likely to skip some sections, such as AOP or SOAP-based remoting, but they're there if I need them.

If you're shopping for Java books, I'd also recommend Java Persistence with Hibernate if you've any interest in Hibernate.  It covers (sometime in a more academic depth than necessary) just about every imaginable case for using Hibernate.  What I really enjoy with this book is that it often talks about the theory and underpinnings of ORM, showing you why things are the way they are in Hibernate, even if sometimes counterintuitive.

Last but not least, make sure you check out Amazon's used book prices - I picked up Spring in Action along with O'Reilly's Java Message Service for a combined total of $31.49.

0 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 8:12 AM - Categories: Joe Drinks Java

Remembering my Grandmother's Roto-Edger

My neighbors think I'm crazy because I use an ancient tool to edge our lawn where it meets our driveway and sidewalk.  It's a manual edger called a "Roto-Edger" that's hard to use in our thick, tangled Bermuda grass.  It works great, but it's a very manual process that's a lot harder to use than a gas or electric edger.  It's a weirdly sentimental tool for me - it's the only "thing" owned by my paternal grandmother I've ever seen.  (She passed away years before I was born, but I'd like to think that her hard-working spirit has been passed down.)

At work, as we move more and more into using tools that automate our development lives (ORMs in particular), I have to remind myself constantly to think in terms of the Roto-Edger from time to time.  This morning I was working with a bunch of the transactional and TDD support classes in Spring for Hibernate and TestNG (respectively), and realized I getting to the point where things were so automated I had lost track of what was happening at a lower level, and it was this loss of perspective that was causing a problem that took me a little while to figure out (specifically transactional conflicts between AbstractTransactionalTestNGSpringContextTests and annotations-based transaction demarcation in a DAO).  When I set aside all the automation and remembered what each piece of the puzzle was doing, the problem became very clear, and resolved itself quickly.  Even though all the cool tools definitely speed up my development life, the problem never would've existed if I was working manually.

Moral of the story:  I need to remember what all the tools are doing under the hood, and even though I'm not doing the work manually, it can help to think manually.

1 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 12:55 PM - Categories:

North Carolina: pwning East Coast ColdFusion

When I moved to North Carolina two and a half years ago, I wasn't really aware of its ColdFusion community. Being used to DC, where ColdFusion has a strong federal presence, I'd grown used to a large quantity of ColdFusion developers.

While us North Carolinians may lack in quantity, I think we're making up for it in quality. If you're looking for a concentration of ColdFusion brain power, it's hard to find a small area that packs a larger punch than the Raleigh / Durham ("Triangle") region (go TACFUG!).

Here's who we've got, in a randomish order (please comment if I missed you!)

1. Dan Wilson - Fearless TACFUG leader and contributor to Model-Glue.
2. Brian Kotek - ColdSpring contributor, MVC framework master (he can speak Fusebox, Model-Glue, and Mach-ii fluently, knowing the ins and outs of each)
3. Doug Hughes - Alagad founder and owner of Reactor
4. Qasim Rasheed - The quiet Java-focused voice of reason in Tacfug
5. Myself - Model-Glue author
6. Beth Bowden - SQL guru responsible for helping to bring Reactor to Oracle
7. Jim Priest - Process and tooling expert
   

3 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 2:30 PM - Categories: ColdFusion MX

Joe Rinehart joins Broadchoice, Inc.

I'm proud to announce that I am now a Systems Architect for Broadchoice, Inc. I'm a direct report to Sean Corfield, and the (impressive) list of technical coworkers includes names like Raymond Camden and Nicolas Lierman. At CFUnited 2008, Sean and Ray took a group of us out to lunch - little did I know that the three hours there would pale in comparison to the duration of the full interview, which consisted of attending the Broadchoice Global Developer Meetup '08. Ending my independent consultancy through Firemoss was a hard decision to make, but Broadchoice made an offer I couldn't refuse, offering my a position where I'll be:

1. Working with an engineering team that's second to none in the ColdFusion community
   
2. Working for a management team and board of directors including the likes of Sergio Zyman and Larry Blair
3. Designing and implementing a game-changing product in the world of marketing
4. Exploring new integrations of ColdFusion with Java and open-source Java frameworks
5. Having a ton of fun.

My initial project will be working with Nicolas to produce a behavior analytics and modelling RIA. It's going to be a challenge, as I'll have to tool the existing Transfer / ColdSpring / Model-Glue applications to record user events while simultaneously providing a high-performance service tier that will feed the (destined to be beautifully designed) RIA that Nicolas will be implementing.

34 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 9:59 AM - Categories: Broadchoice

Firemoss: Goodbye, farewell, amen.

This is the first of two blog entries about a major change in my professional life. Originally, I was going to make one entry, but I felt Firemoss deserved its own.

In November 2006, I left Booz Allen Hamilton with the intent of launching an independent consultancy. It's been successful, I've never regretted the decision, and Firemoss has been one of the most enjoyable ventures of my life. I have, however, decided to move on (more on that later). Firemoss, LLC will continue to exist as a legal entity, but I will no longer be doing freelance work on an active basis.

For Firemoss Customers

First, thank you. I've worked with great people and teams over the past two years on some amazing projects.

However, I'll no longer be available for project work.

For Those Seeking ColdFusion / Flex Consulting

I'll still be doing a bit of architectural consulting from time to time, but I'm not actively seeking engagements that aren't reviews or short-term high-level architectural engagements.

For Model-Glue

The new path I'm taking promises to mean good things for Model-Glue.

0 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 9:48 AM - Categories: Firemoss