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And you didn't even have to ask
Few of us truly work alone.
Teamwork is common, if not required, in our industry for a variety of reasons, but an important one is knowledge transference. Gaining experience through the experience of working with others is an important way to apply new concepts, learn tips, and put into practice things you might not otherwise be exposed to, even in a formal classroom setting. Soliciting guidance from experienced colleagues, even those not directly involved in what we are working on, has tremendous value. That includes managers, peers, and even the guy in the next cubicle.
The point is that the biggest assets of the technology industry are the people who work within it, and it is through our interaction with those who are on our team, those on the sidelines, and those who have "been there" that we often learn the most.
But let's face it, sometimes it's difficult -- even intimidating -- to ask a genuine expert a remedial question, or impractical to take a couple of minutes and pick an expert's brain. When given the opportunity, sometimes you don't even know what to ask about. Wouldn't it just be a whole lot easier if you had a bunch of subject matter experts in the cubicle next door who popped their heads over the wall every so often and told you something you needed to know?
Well, that's what the Comment lines feature in the IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal is like. In each installment, a subject matter expert has something on his or her mind and wants to share that something -- whatever it is -- with you. Comment lines contributors are often anxious to share their experiences and opinions solely for the purpose of adding insight to a technical issue, to make your job a little bit easier, or to enlighten you from an educational perspective. These columns offer viewpoints that are different from other technical articles, with an editorial approach that embraces opinion, fact, concepts, musings, recommendations, and humor, with topics that, frankly, have run the gamut over the years.
For example, a Comment lines author might encourage a shift in development priorities, offer direction of a technology standard, explain better practices for achieving common or complicated objectives, initiate a dialog on important issues, preview up and coming technologies, or maybe even reprimand those of us who don't use a product in the smartest manner. It's a mixed bag, but it's a uniformly compelling one in which you are bound to find something useful and applicable in some way to what you're doing now.
New Comment lines essays resume in February, so I encourage you to get inspired by some of the pieces offered by contributors over the past year. Here is a sampling:
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Don't let the greatest benefits of SOA elude you
If you've been building project-based SOA solutions and aren't impressed with the bang you're getting for your buck, this article will explain why you shouldn't be surprised. Scott Simmons wants to make sure you know that SOA solutions designed with a business focus -- linking business requirements with the IT development process at the enterprise level -- are the ones that yield the biggest benefits (and show the value and relevancy of SOA) for the organization.
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Web 2.0 is a big deal and coming fast, and so you might really, really, really want to use Comet-style applications -- but is it really the best idea? The answer will be different for different environments, but it's a good chance that your infrastructure might not be ready for it. Erik Burckart explores the pros, cons, limitations, and cautions you should know before moving forward with any Comet plans.
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An interview with three key contributors to the Dojo Toolkit
Dojo being one of the hot things to happen recently, Scott Johnson rounded up and interviewed three Dojo contributors from IBM. The result is an enlightening look at Dojo's background, how it gets developed, and what will happen with it next.
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WebSphere MQ security heats up
When T.Rob Wyatt saw a session abstract for a hacker's convention that announced it was going to present methods for compromising a WebSphere MQ service, he registered for the Las Vegas event faster than you can lose at a slot machine. His report, along with his assessment of the security exposure described, and some words of wisdom about how you can prevent such things, makes for some entertaining and thoughtful reading.
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Are you ready for XML-Oriented Programming?
Is XOP OOP for SOA? Well, kind of. Applying object-orient programming to service-oriented architecture is a tricky thing, but Peter Xu explains a solution using XML as the basis for a first class programming model that can result in an elegant, consistent way to build a distributed SOA system.
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Are you an SOA expert?
and Developing skills for the SOA worldFrequent collaborators Andre Tost and Rachel Reinitz individually contributed different sides of the same issue: SOA education. Andre's column politely suggests that if you think you know all there to know about SOA, you should think again -- not to make you feel bad or anything, just to point out that there's a lot to know, and that there is a practical method for finding your way through it all. Rachel's column offers some hows, wheres, and whys to get your education plan underway, stressing that learning is a personal experience and that what's best for you is the way to go about it.
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JavaServer Pages for beginners
Cries of joy came through our feedback system in response to Scott Johnson's JavaServer Pages primer. Curious to find what kind of information was available for beginners on JSP containers, he didn't find much, so he wrote his own. I have to believe he didn't plan to get this detailed when he started, but lots of readers were thrilled that he did.
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Revisiting performance fundamentals
Performance optimization is a tricky thing, and there are tools that can help, but there are basics you need to understand before you get too deep into testing and tuning your system. From the point of view of a day-to-day practitioner (as opposed to a performance expert), Joey Bernal shares what he has learned about performance measurements, capacity planning, methodology, and performance problems to help you improve your projects overall.
Of course, there are more, and I encourage you to browse through all the Comment lines articles on the Tech Journal archive page, and take advantage of the experts sitting next door -- literally and figuratively. Your colleagues have a lot to offer.
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Comment lines article series
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WebSphere Education
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IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal
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IBM developerWorks WebSphere
Scott Shekerow is a Content Acquisition and Web Editor in IBM developerWorks, and is the editor of the IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal.
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