I’m probably setting myself up for a nice big fall - straight onto my ass - but why is it that supposed programmers/web developers have a seemingly limitless ability to abuse the english language. I don’t want this to be another “the internet is ruining spelling” post, and that’s not what I’m saying; what I am saying is that the internet allows you access to a whole lot of written work that you usually wouldn’t see. I might be friends with x and y, but 10 years ago I wouldn’t see much of their writing outside of school. Suddenly introduce the internet and weblogs, and it becomes disturbingly apparent that a lot of people can’t spell a lot of words. I’m not trying to be a grammar/spelling nazi; I mean I am quite the comma abuser, but I like to think my sentences and paragraphs generally leave little room for ambiguity or downright confusion.

On top of this, some of the worst offenders are programmers, and this really annoys me. Programmers are supposedly meant to have a logical mind - sure you can go on about the creativity of coding and letting your raw brain waves shape some sort of master program, or some other crap - but facts are facts, a compiler/interpreter has to parse your code at some point, and it can only parse something that follows the right conventions and uses the correct symbols. I know some people whose spelling is predictably terrible, so at least (or unfortunately) when they misspell a variable name, they consistently misspell it, and thus the compiler never knows the difference. And let us not delve into the abuses exclamation marks suffer.

Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of someone who wears their underwear on their head.

Furthermore, Firefox 2 comes with a built-in spell checker that underlines any errors that you may have made when filling in a text area on a web page… and if you’re in the web development business and not using Firefox, perhaps it’s time you left the web development business, preferably via way of suicide.

I shall leave you with a list of correct spellings for common errors that really make me go, “Grrr… “:

weird, dependent, guarantee, government, definite.

World, this is a press release. Press release, say hi to the world…

Does JavaFX Spell The End Of AJAX?

You know all that AJAX code you’ve been writing and tearing your hair out over as you attempt to get the JavaScript working in both Internet Explorer and Firefox? Yeah, that AJAX code.

Oh, that thing I use JQuery for (or some another reasonable library)? No, I’ve never really had javascript compatibility issues - I’m more scared of the inconsistencies in HTML and CSS between the two browsers.

It’s all going to be useless real soon.

Sure, I’m sure there are more people with the Java Runtime installed with a vaguely decent internet browser than people with just a vaguely decent internet browser.

JavaFX will also trigger desktop integration of over-the-wire applications with Java, rather than relying on a constant connection for the JavaScript used in AJAX.

There are more perks with JavaFX, Sun officials claim. One of the knocks on AJAX applications, aside from browser compatibility, is that it requires a large amount of JavaScript to be sent over the wire; that script could have something malicious embedded in it.

Constant connection? Large amount of javascript? 3kb of cacheable javascript versus a 50mb JRE download? Ok, so javascript code that is plainly visible for anyone to read via their view source option in the browser, is worse than some proprietary module that sits on my machine and has potential access to my HDD?

So instead of relying on the browser to sandbox off JavaScript code, the applications use the security features in Java SE to control an application’s hard drive access. Because it runs on the client and is not dependent on code sent over the wire, it also means applications written in AJAX, such as Google Apps, can be used offline.

Where exactly are you going to get the information to return via JavaFX if you’re offline? Wait, unless all you’re talking about is fancy special effects… which AJAX can also do whilst disconnected…

I think someone has gotten very confused and is comparing JavaFX to the nearest big thing she/he could think of. JavaFX is obviously some kind of competitor to Silverlight and Adobe’s Flex or whatever it’s called, and hence is catering to a different kind of development problem that AJAX caters for.

I’ve been meaning to post about a variety of things that have been irritating me lately, but unfortunately something big came up that made me forget all of them. Well that and the passage of time generally lets me calm down a bit and start ignoring whatever it was that was annoying me.

I quit from a certain company in December, and have since been helping out with a couple hours of work every week, with emergency changes and such. On Tuesday, I was informed that a certain bug “was back” and that I basically should have fixed it properly first time. Ok, let’s do the time warp… 2 or 3 weeks earlier I was sitting in the office holding a piece of paper with the bug written on it; now when I say written I really mean “random words pertaining to feature written haphazardly down in pen”. Asking for clarification from the 3 other people who knew about it (project leader, client who saw the bug, and team manager), not a single one of them can reproduce it in front of me, nor can any remember how it occurred the first place. Now, ever since I got defeated by Lord Doomevil in 2005, I have lost my ESP (that is, telepathic) powers and hence cannot solve problems which I have never seen and have supposedly vanished. Notwithstanding any of this, I am currently very busy and have to be quite careful with my time, so I requested that my regular contract hourly rate be paid… it isn’t even outrageous, it’s quite reasonable; it just happened to be a lot more than I was currently receiving. Cue the “you have to understand about commitment” conversation - sure, commitment… commitment to a project I left in December, commitment to being made to feel that I “owe” the company my time, commitment to sarcastic comments about how precious my time is. Naturally I sent off a very polite, formal letter indicating my inability to continue working on the project - polite and formal, because that’s how you do business, anything casual looks like you don’t really mean it.

The email I received back was nothing short of childish; we’re talking threats about crossing people in the same industry, about the trail of destruction I left (for the record, it’s pretty hard to leave a trail of destruction in what can best be described as code I could’ve written when I was 15; any changes I made were instantly constructive) and how I need to travel to learn about how to conduct myself in a full-time situation. Thank you very much, perhaps I do need to learn how to bang a keyboard when frustrated, how to mouth off clients the second I hang up the phone, and most importantly, how to hit my LCD monitor when I have irreversibly destroyed code that was once working. Never mind all of that though, the job I entered into in November was in fact a 1 month (that’s a single month) contract, which was then upgraded to a 1 week notice/6 month contract because everyone understood that I wasn’t a permanent employee, and might be traveling overseas relatively soon. I really fail to see the bit where I signed up to be responsible for any code I wrote forevermore.

All of this smack talk was left out’ve my emails, don’t worry - I honestly am not bothered by the whole situation, they have some very polite emails from me voicing my displeasure, and that is how I feel. The complete disregard for a friendly relationship, the laying of blame, the whole thing makes it abundantly clear that the company is no longer worth any of my time. A simple polite word would’ve laid this entire thing to rest, the money doesn’t bother me (it’s only money) - I could have happily fixed the bug in 15 minutes and still be on good terms with them, but it seems it was not meant to be.

Re-reading the above, let me just clear up that the disappearing bug was actually observable on Tuesday, it was just the bit about how I should’ve fixed it the first time that irritated me. I was also blamed for the site’s sluggish performance, despite not being in charge of the server, nor being the one who chose which libraries and backend to use (apparently moo.fx was a bad choice, you know, that whole 3kb of cacheable javascript code really broke the server’s back).

Be careful who you work for, being a young contract IT worker seems to instantly paint a big “abuse me” target on your back.