Since When Did IT Reach Rockstar Status?

I’ve been seeing advertisements like this more and more recently. As if IT is more glam than the likes of Guns N’ Roses or your favorite 80’s hair metal band. Did I miss the tour bus or something? Last time I checked IT is by the geeks for the geeks.

ReadWriteWeb posted an article describing the Top 10 Traits of a Rockstar Software Engineer. WTF? You’re telling me using design patterns will get me chicks? If you’re sitting at your office desk right now please take a look around and spot any rockstars. You might catch a glimpse of a guy whose vision has deteriorated over years of monitor glare. The most street cred anyone has is probably the old COBOL programmer who somehow managed to survive the 60’s after a decade of bad acid trips.

Listen, IT is not cool. You don’t get to rock out with your cock out or anything close. You’ve got a bunch of business stiffs who give you money, and a handful of nerds who build hooziwhatsees with that money. No face melting guitar solos, no crazy parties (Maybe if you hang with me at JavaOne), just a fat paycheck at the end of the day to frivolously spend to your liking. Maybe IT folks can be rockstars after all?

Setting up LAMP in 5 Minutes or Less

I’ve explained in an earlier post what exactly the LAMP stack is, and how it is powering web applications on the internet. Setting it up is pretty quick and dirty if you’ve got a Linux system but what about the folks on Windows and OS X? Speak no more. XAMP is here to the rescue. It installs mySQL, Apache, and PHP on your machine with no fuss. You can even launch Apache/mySQL as a service so you don’t even have to worry about starting it up (or shutting it down for that matter). You’ll be setup in 5 mins flat.

Is Agile Development a Myth?

The answer is yes if you work for a large corporation. There is no way to release enterprise software quickly in the IT world. Everyone on the streets would like to speed, but you’re governed by speed limits enforced by the police. The same goes for software. You *could* release the software quickly but you’d have to break the rules governed by your Chief Technology Office. As much as I support XP and scrum-style methods, we must leave it to the small business world.

Hands on with Android: XML Parsing

This post is now available at my new blog The IT Report:

http://theitreport.com/entries/programming/hands-on-with-android-xml-parsing