Last couple of weekends, I started work on an Open Source Timesheet Entry System using .NET 3.5, C# 3.0 and ASP.NET, which, for no particular reason, was named TacticSheet.

In the coming months (depending on the number of free weekends I get :)) TacticSheet will have its own domain domain name, a full blown website and a steady open source life cycle but for now that I seemed to have reached a logical point where I can at-least see the basic functionality of the application taking shape. I could hardly resist the temptation of sharing TacticSheet with fellow developers and my blog readers.

If you care, here’s a quick FAQ of TacticSheet (or a list of few questions that might be going through your head right now as you read this :)):

What is TacticSheet?

It’s a Free and Open Source Timesheet Entry System which in the long run is supposed to provide the the ability to do Timesheets and Expense-sheets within an enterprise.

Can I Use TacticSheet in My Organization Today?

No. It’s far from being production ready yet. It has the basic framework which will allow people to file timesheets and project managers and line managers to approve or reject timesheets. As of Today TacticSheet is not fully stable, not fully tested and may have a lot of breaking changes in the next months as it moves towards a Release 1. Some of the very important features that most organizations would need e.g. Audit trails, email notifications etc. are currently missing. To make things worse, even our database isn’t scripted yet. :)

In the coming couple of months we’ll be working to get these issues ironed out so that you can start using TacticSheet in your organization and upgrade safely to a new version every time a new version comes out. Till then, feel free to play around with TacticSheet Development builds, but please don’t deploy them to production environments.

If it’s not fully ready why are you announcing it live?

Because good software is never complete. :) On a serious note, I’m interested in getting some feedback and contributions from the community, fellow developers and above all - you dear reader! Go to our Source-Forge Home Page, grab the source code from our SVN (or Browse our online SVN), try it out, drop a comment or email and let me know what you think about the application!

We don’t have a lot of documentation on setting up the development environment but we're hoping most folks will find it very straight forward. If you want help setting it up, please drop question(s) in the Product Forum and we’ll be happy to answer them.

If you think you’ve found a bug, please file it here.

Feel like contributing? Read on!

How Can I Contribute?

We’re looking for a few one-man-armies who are thick skinned developers and people who are into shipping good software (not just writing documents and following crazy process!). We really think the world could use one more Timesheet entry system built on .NET, especially if it’s free and open source! Do you?

Besides kick ass developers, we are also looking for UI folks and people who can test the application inside out! Interested?

If you fall in any of the above categories, are fortunate enough to find some free time during weekends and crazy enough to write code during that free time, Email me using the “mail” icon on the left panel of this page and we can discuss how you can contribute.

You can also contribute by Submitting SVN Patches, filing bugs or just participating in the forums.

What’s the Technology Stack?

We’re starting out with .NET 3.5 and Beta 2 Release of Orcas. Of course whenever Orcas RTMs, (end of this year / next year), we will be working to ensure that TacticSheet migrates over to and works with the RTM version. For the enthusiastic and passionate .NET developers here’s the technology stack TacticSheet uses:

1. Orcas Beta 2.
2. .NET 3.5.
3. C# 3.0.
4. LINQ to SQL.
5. XLINQ.
6. ASP.NET Ajax and ASP.NET Ajax Toolkit.
7. SQL Server 2005. (But there’s no Reason why you couldn’t make TacticSheet work in SQL Express!)

How Can I Stay Informed about the Project?

We have 2 different mailing lists – depending on the kind of involvement you want to have to the kind of information you want to stay updated with feel free to join any one of our mailing lists.

1. The General TacticSheet Mailing group – Users who are interested in staying informed about the new features of TacticSheet can sign up for this mailing group.
2. The TacticSheet Technology Mailing Group – We will be discussing most new technologies we use in TacticSheet here whenever we decide to use a new technology. We will also be discussing the design and technical changes that TacticSheet undergoes in the future in this mailing group.

When will TacticSheet Development Complete?

As of now, I don’t think I’ll ever be ‘done’ with this project, which is the whole point! I’m a firm believer of supporting everything I write. I intend on extending and supporting TacticSheet for years to come. Watch out for a lot of new features and version, year after year!

Why are we writing TacticSheet?

This calls for a long post, but for now let’s just say - Because, we can. (You can expect another detailed post on this topic in the near future :))

What’s the TacticSheet License?

The product is currently under GPL. Also, we do not allow or encourage forks of TacticSheet for the time being. I personally feel that the product is too premature for now and forking will add to confusion. As the product grows we plan on moving to a much more liberal license like FreeBSD.

Even though the license is strictly GPL we are fairly liberal towards the use of TacticSheet – it’s primarily written for a hobby and not with an intent of making money – so if you want to do something crazy with the code-base please email me and we’ll see to it that you can do whatever you are trying to do without being charged or sued :).

So, now that TacticSheet has finally been born, wish us luck and growth! Stay tuned for more posts, features and goodness.

In one of my older posts I announced out loud and shamelessly that I find it really difficult to code without intellisense. Besides Intellisense, I’ve always been for tools which increase developer productivity. A couple of months ago I played around with a Resharper 3.0 Trial to see what the interesting new features were. I have all good things to say about Resharper 3.0 but this post is not about any of those good things. It’s about one tiny little complaint I have towards Resharper Trial.

It killed my Visual Studio Intellisense.

After I had installed it and played around with it for around a week I lost intellisense from my Visual Studio – suddenly and completely. I could use the Intellisense Resharper offered me but Visual Studio Intellisense wouldn’t work while the trial was working. Soon the Resharper trial was over and the Resharper Intellisense died as well. Another colleague had a similar problem. She had tried out Resharper, and had lost her intellisense as well. Google and you'll see a few others running into similar problems.

As soon as I lost intellisense, I hit Resharper Options and told it not to use Resharper Intellisense and to use Visual Studio Intellisense instead – restarted my Visual Studio - didn’t help.

Turns out, whatever Resharper had done to turn Visual Studio Intellisense off is very easy to undo. Turning intellisense on or off in Visual Studio is a simple option I didn’t know about. In-fact, it is a part of those thousands of IDE options that a lot of us don’t even know exist.

If your Visual Studio Intellisense does not work, because you installed resharper and it killed your Visual Studio intellisense (or if your Intellisense doesn’t work for any other reasons) here’s a process to get back your Intellisense:

The picture pretty much sums up all you need to do to get your intellisense back in Visual Studio but if you’re a “Follow-the-instructions” kind of guy here are the instructions:

1. Hit Tools / Options in your Visual Studio.
2. On The Left Tree click Text Editor / All Languages.
3. Under Statement completion ensure that “Auto list members” is checked with a tick mark. (Make sure that this option is fully selected and not partly selected)
4. Under Statement completion ensure that “Parameter information” is also checked with a tick mark. (Make sure that this option is fully selected and not partly selected)

If you’ve downloaded Visual Studio 2008 / Orcas Beta Releases and have observed that you do not get intellisense (for whatever mysterious reasons) the above procedure works with Oracas too and will help you get your intellisense back. And if you're like me, hopefully with your intellisense back, the world will seem like a slightly better place to live in. :)

I’ve always been a Microsoft Developer. Besides the productivity that Microsoft Tools offer me, here’s a little dark secret on why I’ve always been a Microsoft developer:

Intellisense.

Yes, it’s the single feature that got me away from C, C++ and GW-Basic and made me take a jump towards Visual Basic years ago.

Intellisense might be the single best gimmick that Microsoft pulled in the history of computers but it sure did wonders - for thousands of developers around the world. It helped thousands of folks move to Microsoft Development Environments.

It’s obvious that today no one does Intellisense like Microsoft does. With Visual Studio 2008 – they’re getting even better. In fact Microsoft does it so well, that even Wikipedia acknowledges it:

Ok, so where does Ruby on Rails come in all this discussion about Intellisense and Microsoft?

As Billy Hollis describes in his rather funny video on code addiction, our goal as software developers is not to write code. Our goal as developers is to provide the maximum value to the client and users for lesser pain, lesser risk and lesser cost. One of my mentors at work is often heard saying – “We need to build systems that are - Cheaper, Better, Faster”.

With the amount of buzz that has been going on the Ruby on Rails Side and how it can bump up Developer Productivity, I couldn’t help but investigate. Last weekend, I wandered a little distance away from .NET and took a casual stroll into the uncharted territory of Ruby on Rails.

<Aside> Before you drop an email, message or ask, No I’m not leaving Microsoft Development – it’ll continue to be my bread, butter, hobby and passion going ahead :) – but I like knowing what the other smart folks around the world are up to and I must admit, that the Rails community is definitely up to something!</Aside>

I even borrowed a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails and browsed through parts of it. I would highly recommend this to anyone who’s interested in doing some serious work with Ruby on Rails.

One of my primary concerns as I worked on downloading and installing Ruby on Rails was getting intellisense to work with Ruby on Rails. I’ve been spoilt my Microsoft. Now I demand intellisense in every single IDE that I am expected to double click and open; leave aside programming in it.

Move away from Microsoft and Visual Studio.NET and you are bound to be faced with choices about which IDE you’ll use. With Ruby on Rails I was faced with a few choices:

1. Sapphire Steel – If you're a Microsoft Developer, this thing let’s you code with Ruby on Rails from within the homely environment of Visual Studio.NET. But shelling out money? Naah! It's a little bit too much to ask from me :) Not for a casual hobby! Not until I have other options.  
2. Text-Mate on Mac – even though my machine looks like a Mac it’s hardly a Mac, so this option was pretty much ruled out. 
3. Aptana RadRails on Windows / Windows Vista – Free and open source (Yeah! Now we’re talking!)

Of course, I settled for Aptana RadRails. Needless to say, I downloaded it using the big fat “Download Aptana RadRails (Win)” button on the website.

After I had it installed, I “railed” (created) my first few “Hello World” Ruby on Rails projects using the command prompt and started running them on WebRick (for those who have never tried out Ruby on Rails, which I assume will be around 99%+ of the people reading this line of this post :), WebRick, is supposed to be much like the Cassini in the .NET World).

So, by now I was generating my controllers and scaffolding my screens and code. Basically I was loving it, but I wasn’t getting Intellisense and that was making me feel a little - frustrated.

Turns out that Intellisense support is pretty much present in Aptana. However, it’s not very easy to find.

Now this could be either be because of usability issues on the website, given the fact that this instruction button is hidden here (link updated as of 03/14/08) or because I was a little asleep (I was trying this out at 2:00 in the morning) but I couldn’t figure out how to get intellisense on Ruby installed for a couple of hours.

Anyway, the instructions for getting Ruby on Rails intellisense with Aptana are available here and once you click that link – the instructions have been listed under – “Aptana M8a/Eclipse 3.2/Rails plug-in Instructions”. The instructions of-course, are a little deceptive – they state: “To add Rails Support to Eclipse 3.2” and then the section provides detailed instructions on setting up intellisense with Ruby on Rails.

Now, there'll be folks like me who don’t know much about Eclipse and who will say – “Eclipse!? What Eclipse? I just downloaded Aptana. How do I get Ruby on Rails Intellisense with Aptana?” - If you’re like me and don't like reading the manual or in general, don’t know much about Eclipse (because you come from a Microsoft world or for any other reason) don’t worry – these are the same instructions you want to follow for Aptana and you’ll have intellisense working for Ruby on Rails.

Once you’ve followed the instructions you can even go – File / New / Project and pick “Rails Project” instead of “Railing” your projects through the command prompt!

That’s it for the day dear reader. You have a link to the book, you have a Free Ruby on Rails IDE for you Windows box and you have Intellisense with Ruby on Rails. What else do you want? Free Ruby Lessons!? :)

Seriously! Go play around with Ruby on Rails.

Malcolm Gladwell toys with the idea of “snap judgements” and how our brain makes snap judgements in his book - blink. He describes how one can learn the art of “thinking without thinking”. He calls this the art of blinking.

Some refer to this as “listening to your heart” or “gut feeling”. Others refer to this as “going by your instincts”; Malcolm, calls this “blinking” and presents the whole concept using a simple yet distinctly elegant and factual examples.

The book is full of tons of examples of snap judgements and a number of experiments which are eye-openers. I’ll never be able to do justice to them by wrapping them up in three lines but here's my attempt to tease you to go read the book. Some examples the book illustrates rather articulately:

1. An individual realizing in the first minute of watching a statue purchased by a museum for 10 million dollars, that it’s fake, when a team of scientists takes 14 months of study and calculations to come to a completely wrong conclusion before buying it.
2. Psychiatrics using the ability to blink and techniques for predicting how long a marriage will last just by listening to two people talk for less than 3 minutes about a topic which has nothing to do with their marriage.
3. The ability to find out if a candidate is a right candidate for an the job, during an interview in less than a couple of minutes; sometimes even without talking to him.

Too much thinking is dangerous. Malcolm questions our traditional knowledge of how a lot of us take decisions:

And what do we tell our children? Haste Makes Waste. Look before you leap. Stop and Think. Don’t judge a book by its cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible in deliberation. We really only trust conscious decision making.

He warns:

But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgements and first impressions can offer much better means of making sense of the world.

He explains why we, as human beings, lean towards basing our decisions on calculations and data and then goes on to explain why this approach is fundamentally flawed and why too much deliberation, data and particularly calculations before taking decisions can be devastating at times.

The book starts with the same lines as Steve Job’s video on Life and Connecting the Dots (using a  follow-your-heart-and-intuition kind-of approach) and then this book goes beyond with Practical and eye opening examples. A must read that I would highly recommend for anyone who has ever hesitated about trusting his gut feeling. Even if you always go with snap judgements this book offers new insights and perspectives which are eye opening.

<Aside> Personally, my life has been full of snap judgements and this book offers support and reconfirms (in a different way), what I've always believed in. But this post, dear reader, is not about me or my life. It’s about snap judgements, so I shall try not to digress. Let's move on with the topic. </Aside>

As programmers we are supposed to blink all the time and yet there's only a really small group of programmers in our profession capable of blinking well. I see countless developers debugging through their code - line by line and working for hours when a 3 second blink, instinct, gut feeling (whatever you call it) would have told them exactly where the bug lies and maybe even given them major hints on how to fix it.

According to Malcolm, this power of blinking is not a special gift that only a few have. He believes it’s something all of us have.

But, as Malcolm puts it we often “override” our blinks with so-called logical thinking, facts and figures and take completely wrong decisions.

I see developers once in a while thinking too hard, wasting hours, to fix that nested if-else complication which has resulted in a nasty logical bug when all they need to do it go out grab a cup of hot chocolate, come back and blink!

Almost Ninety Percent of all performance related issues that I’ve fixed in my development career have been a result of blinking. A hunch about what is causing the system to slow down. All the research, data and figures have just been add-ons; at times, even a waste of time. A lot of times, the data and figures have also driven me in the completely wrong direction.

The concept of blinking seems to work in all aspects of life starting from taking the most complex of decisions, recruiting folks, to fixing bugs and logical errors in code.

Fellow developers and dear readers, when in doubt, Don’t Think - Blink!

(Now go get your own copy of the book! :))

Word has it that developers on the Mac team at one point were spending more than 90 hours a week on Mac development. In fact, Apple had T-shirts to commemorate the Team for their efforts:

Andy Hertzfeld describes the work culture at apple back in the days in First-Person:

In multiple cities of this planet, in every office I’ve worked at, every once in a while, I come across one or two Nine-to-Five-Folks who are awesome individuals; they not bad programmers at all and this post is not about criticizing them. This post is about asking the million dollar question:

“Are 8 Hours a Day Enough?”

In a slightly old survey Dan Malachowski from Salary.com suggests that employees aren’t even spending 8 hours a day at work. In his article where he publishes the results of a survey, He explains:

As per the survey surfing the Internet for personal reasons is the top time wasting activity. “Don’t have enough work to do” is the top Time-Wasting excuse. It was sheer co-incidence that I always believed that this is the same excuse people use for wasting precious hours of their life when they are on bench. Anyway, I digress. So basically, Dan doesn’t believe that employees work 8 hours a day. They are in-fact doing multiple other things which cannot be classified as work.

On a serious note, the survey just makes me wonder if it makes sense to measure hours wasted in office by employees? Given the fact that engineers working remotely from home, at times even during insane hours, is a part of the culture in almost all software development shops.

John Wesley has a slightly different take on this. In my personal opinion, John is completely correct in claiming that the 9 to 5 office worker will become a thing of the past for the information worker. He explains why 9 to 5 is not such a good working model:

If you clicked on the link, John suggests that we do away with the 9 to 5 work culture with Information Workers. Instead, John is all about introducing agility into work schedules:

The Mac team’s example, the survey on wasted time and John’s post might seem contradicting at first but give them some thought and they fall in line pretty well. In fact, add them up and they answer the million dollar question we set out to find an answer to. Take data and observations from all these three sources and some commonalities evolve:

1. We as humans, are not very good at working 8 hours at a stretch on PCs. 
2. We as humans, need a re-charge and motivation from time to time, in order to keep us hooked. 
3. We as humans, often multi-task between multiple things! (Multi-tasking is bad for human beings, but it has its own Pluses. It has a “feel good factor” which gives us a high. This is why alt-tabbing in windows feels so much better than working in Tubro-C IDE of Ms-Dos! :))

Know these basic limitations and the next time you take a break between work, don’t feel guilty about it. Having said that, wasting time can be a highly productive activity which can benefit you, your organization and even your clients!

Some ways of productively wasting time and getting recharged include reading about a new technology you are passionate about and seeing how that fits in your current project, talking about code with your colleges, conducting a training, discussing your work related problems with fellow developers, having quick meetings to show off what you are doing or what you are excited about, writing a quick article on something new you learned, answering some questions in a forum etc. (the list can be endless!) - Pick your ways to waste time, depending on which “productive time wasting techniques” re-charge you the most! 

Software Development is like walking on a Treadmill. Stop and you are bound to fall – flat on your face. Keep running and you keep getting fitter and stronger. The fitness and the strength you acquire by running continuously helps you in running faster and harder. It’s a cycle! While it’s important to spend 8 hours a day working, find out productive ways to waste time so that you can put in more and keep your talents razor sharp. Keep running and make it interesting so that you don’t burn out! Who knows, it might give you the motivation and excitement to put in more than 8 hours of work a day.

Patricia Fripp gives a tip on how you can fall in love with your job all over again:

Learn how to maintain personal and professional To-Do Lists for life. There is no better sense of achievement than striking off items from these lists!

Coming back to the million dollar question – Are 8 hours a day enough?

Eight hours a day might be good enough for a job but they may not be good enough for a profession. And they are absolutely no good for keeping a passion alive. If you can’t love what you do, maybe you need to stop right now.  Look harder for profession you can love. Seriously, if you are going to be an unknown-programmer who writes depressing programmer poetry - it’s best that you chase your dreams in a profession you love.

But chances are that if you are reading this, you already enjoy building software and you don't really need the advice on the above paragraph. Spend more time with what you enjoy doing and love it just like you love your lover! Go Ahead, hack your life so that you can spend more time with what you love doing without giving up on other personal commitments. 

To wrap things up, the next time you take a quick-break or engage in an activity for a while, which is technically a waste of time, don't feel guilty! And by the way, the next time you end up spending 16 hours a day with a computer, don't feel guilty either! :)

Ever felt the “need” to go grab all those files you are seeing linked to the current page? Deep-copy type downloading of a website to your box for offline viewing isn’t new. Wget did quite a good job at it back in the days. In fact, even today it does a pretty good job. You give it a URL, you specify the recursion level of “N” and then it goes and fetches all the URL’s which are connected to the specified URL and are “N” levels deep.

Recently however, I was faced with a slightly complicated problem. What I really wanted to do, was to download a set of 500+ word documents from our work intranet (which runs on SharePoint 2003). The word documents were a part of a SharePoint Document Repository that has a gazillion other Word documents. I was faced with the default SharePoint Document Repository View that has Filter options. After I had set the appropriate filters and was able to see some 500 odd documents that I wanted to download on screen, the million dollar question surfaced in my little mind:

“Ok, now I can see the documents I want. How do I click on all these 500 document links and get them to download at-once, in a single shot, without having to go through the download / save / open dialog box for each and every one of those documents?”

I’m pretty much an Internet Explorer guy because I think it starts up faster than Firefox (and for the Firefox lovers, that’s just a personal feeling so no hate mail please :)) – but there are exactly the scenarios where the power of community plug-ins in Firefox leaves Internet Explorer cold.

FlashGot is a cool little Firefox plug-in that can do some serious damage when it comes to downloading multiple files!

Let’s try and juggle around with some hypothetical situations to see where you would need this tool:

1. You’re looking at a SharePoint document repository and you want all 100 documents you see on screen downloaded to your box, right now!
2. You’re looking at a SharePoint document repository, you’ve filtered your view and you want all those documents that you see on your screen downloaded to your box, right now!
3. You are looking at any screen with X number of downloads and you want all those X downloads on your box, right now! (Ok, I think you get the idea :))

The bottom line is that if you often stare at your browser window, look at a web-page and tell yourself – “wow, this page has so many useful links - I wish I could download all of them in a single click” this tool is the Holy Grail you’ve been looking for!

Besides letting you get all those links, FlashGot lets you filter based on File-Types. So if you are in a page which has hyperlinks to 100 documents, 100 MP3s, 50 GIFs, 20 other HTML pages and 12 Text files and you just want to download just the 100 documents in a single click the FlashGot “More Options…” menu comes to the rescue. The "General" Tab in this is the same dialog also lets you pick your favorite download manager.

You just pick the type of files you want to download, click [Tools / FlashGot / FlashGot All…] menu, and pick a folder. That’s it. FlashGot Rips the URLs and adds them to your favorite download manager. Which means, you can now let the Download manager slog away at saving each download as you give yourself a well deserved nap. :)

Initially, when I was told we needed a set of 500+ word files from a SharePoint List, My first reaction was that I would have to use the SharePoint web-services and throw out some custom code to do this. But then, why write code when you can get the same results much faster using a tool? :)

I downloaded some 500+ word attachments from a SharePoint 2003 filtered view using FlashGot and I’m a FlashGot Fan already! Give it a shot, it’s free.

There were a couple of folks who asked me what happened after the one-man-army post? Why did I stop writing? I didn’t. In fact, I’m back! And I feel light and awesome!

The Past couple of weeks were exciting, depressing, motivating and sofa king (to be read loud and very fast, repeatedly) educational that I felt like a baby who was taking his first baby-steps at learning how to walk.

Past couple of weeks was my first time at a lot of different things or for that matter, the first time where I did a lot of things, “differently” (depending on how I see it). A lot of things happened and that changed both my personal and professional life – faster than I could cope up.

So what were these few weeks all about?

1. These weeks have been about watching near and dear ones sort out their problems and knowing completely, that there is nothing I can say or do to help them other than praying for them and standing by them - “if” they need me. 
2. These weeks has been about realizing that at times I can do a people much more help by moving away rather than by being there during the most vulnerable and embarrassing moments of their life.
3. These weeks have been about getting to know a few new people and a lot of people I already knew, newly.
4. These weeks included having a long conversation which lasted for hours in the middle of a busy road and making a promise to myself that I would try to change parts of myself completely, after that conversation. 
5. These weeks have been about seeking help from family and friends by waking them up in the middle on the night, night after night, and then keeping them awake all night in discussions. 
6. These weeks have been about having my friends and family stand by me in all decisions and letting me know that what mattered most to them was my happiness. Everything else was secondary.
7. These weeks have been about getting some very sound, timely and spontaneous advice, which came straight from the heart of friends and family. Advice that has always given me the hope and courage to make the crazy decisions I often make in life.
8. On professional side, these weeks have been about having discussions with mentors and realizing that I can completely trust them to represent me, exactly as I would represent myself, without having any fear of being misquoted, misinterpreted or misunderstood.
9. These weeks have been about dumping the excess baggage and developing stronger roots! These weeks have been about making difficult decisions about what is important to me and what is not and then letting the things that don’t mean much to me, go. It has then been about watching those things come back, all of a sudden. 
10. These weeks have been about trying to become a better human-being on the professional side and trying to become a better person on the personal side.

I wish I could write more about the turn of events rather than just talk in riddles. But then, that would mean writing a very long post involving mundane details of my personal life. :) Rather than writing down and then remembering each and every incident, I would rather remember these few weeks by what they taught me and how they changed me.

I have a habit of versioning myself. After my last version (0.2.0) - this weekend has made me feel like a new me! I feel like the version 0.3.0 of myself was developed and taken to production in the past few  weeks. These past few weeks, as difficult as they were, will be very special to me because they taught me so much on both personal and professional sides that I feel like a baby again.

<Aside> For everyone who can make any sense what-so-ever out of this post, for everyone who talked to me these past couple of week (be it for my personal problems or be it for my minor problems on the professional side), I thank you from deep corners of my heart. Thank you! Thank you for being there. Thank you for discussing. Thank you for teaching me things I will cherish for the rest of my life. Thank you for making me a better person. Thank you for helping me become “Me 0.3.0” :)  </Aside>

These past few weeks have been about realizing that no matter how much I grow, I would always find myself on the road of life long learning where there'll always be something fundamentally new to learn. I will cherish every single lesson learnt in these past few weeks for life. Dear Reader, meet - "Me 0.3.0"! Hopefully, many more versions to come in future as I walk down this road of life long learning. :)

So, you are a kickass programmer? You can write coherent code, tweak it to the last line for performance and spend hours refactoring it? Perfect! Btw, can you write well formed HTML? Or maybe a decently formatted Word Document with amazing content? Oh and yes, are you also good at a Drawing / Design tool?

Every few months I scan through countless resumes without a spell check or grammar check. With very little or no formatting in the resume, the applicant is making a statement: I’m a coder; I’m not supposed to know or care about Microsoft Word!

In a consultant’s life this statement doesn’t sell. Of course, you can’t play all the roles all the time but learning multiple aspects of software development helps you respect and appreciate “the bigger picture”. In special situations it allows you to be a one-man-army!

My Fifteen+ certifications are often discussed in casual conversations with clients, friends and colleagues. At times people wonder why I did certifications ranging from MCSE to OCP when I always was a Programmer at heart. I think Scott Ambler’s idea on Generalizing Specialist answers the question for me:

He describes the whole idea of being a generalizing specialist:

But what are these "other areas" that Scott talks about? The areas vary from individual to individual. If you are a developer who are starting out on his / her career or are a specialized .NET programmer who is submerging himself / herself in code or just one specialization, may I suggest that you also start -

1. Learning Microsoft Word – Learning how to write formatted, presentable and good looking document with awesome content in an Art which takes time to master. Like all things it is practice that will make you perfect. Don’t shun documentation. Start learning the art!
2. Learning a little bit of IT – Folks fumble when asked to configure IIS. Developers who are clueless about how to install active directory on a Windows 2003 box are not difficult to find. If you try really hard you might also find a developer who doesn’t know how to backup his data, format his machine, install Vista and then recover his data back. Learning the art of configuration will make you a better developer who is cognizant of the whole picture, including security. Rolling your sleeves, getting under your desk and tightening your own network cable instead of calling IT helpdesk will go a long way in making you confident in client offices! Setting up your own SVN and Continuous Integration Server will help directly in projects. I spent a few months of my career when I would switch as an IT administrator when Administrators were on leave or not available. Skills I picked up then and during my MCSE days help me every-day.
3. Learn a Drawing / Design tool – I’m a Photoshop guy! The design of this blog isn’t perfect, but it’s self made. I don’t do the UI myself at work – we have specialized folks who do that – but then not giving the design folks a chance to complain about your messing up their formatting or well formed XHTML when you add your server side code to that ASPX file is a good feeling to have. :) Besides, being able to build your uncle’s website’s vision, your cousins marriage invitation card or the new wall of your room in Photoshop, is always fun!
4. Learn Database – Table A has 3 rows 3 columns, Table B has 2 rows 3 columns – how many rows and columns does “select * from A, B” returns? I see countless folks fumble at basics like Cartesian Products or Normalization, look at me blankly when told to write fundamental SQL queries. Tweaking your databases will go a long way in making you write applications which run with blazing fast speed!
5. Learn to write, speak and communicate – basically, learn how to be a thick skinned shameless developer. At the end of the day, every developer does some level of Business Analysis!
6. Learn the language of your end users – If you are making an accounting application, start by reading the three golden rules of accounts. If possible go write a few journal entries! Following the specs a business analyst wrote works, but knowing the domain helps connect to the end users and clients much better.

Besides doing things like learning a new language each year, the first step to becoming a generalizing specialist is to look around you. Take a long hard look at all the other work that goes on around you besides the code that you write. You don’t have to be an expert in all that work, but every now and then, try to pick up a thing or two from all of it.

Can you do the IIS Setup and UI and Database Design and HTML and ASPX for your uncle’s website? Can you talk to him and build for him what he wants? How does your uncle’s website look after you’re done? Decent enough? Usable? Feature-Rich? Secured Enough? :) Start on your road to becoming a one-man-army who is a generalizing specialist today! I wish you luck!