Raible Designs

OS X on Intel Chips

There's a lot of rumors flying around now about Apple switching to Intel chips. Somewhat credible sources: Scoble, Gizmodo and CNET. The rumor I like even better is the (less credible) PowerBook G5s. IMO, Apple should switch to Intel, but stay in the hardware business. I'm still willing to pay for a kick-ass aluminum PowerBook - but I'd love it to be twice as fast as my current one (this is where Intel comes in).

Speaking of PowerBooks, it looks like I've got a buyer for the one I bought in Norway. I'm going to lose about $500 on the deal, but it's better than having two PowerBooks when I only need one.

Pictures from Norway

I didn't see many of the sites in Norway, but I have a feeling I'll be back again. I think Julie would love Norway, so I'm going to try to bring her with me next time. Click on the images below to see more pictures.

Norway Rocks!

Norway has to be one of the coolest places on Earth. I've been here for a week now, and I'm definitely impressed. I didn't know what to expect when I left the U.S. - mostly because my last trip to a non-English speaking country was to Russia in the mid-90s. When I went to Russia, I thought it'd be a lot like the U.S. What I found was a beautiful country that was struggling to survive. I wasn't expecting a whole lot from Norway.

I'd heard it was modern, but I wasn't going to get my hopes up. When my laptop died on the way over, I thought I was in for it. I figured they probably didn't sell PowerBook cords over here, so I was screwed. Luckily, I was wrong. Unfortunately, I had to buy a whole new laptop - but it has been quite nice using a faster machine (1.67 MHz / 1.5 GB RAM) this week, with Tiger and all that jazz.

This week has definitely been tiring. I've given a fair amount of presentations in my life, and even done a few week-long training course. However, I've never talked as much as I did this week. I did a total of 7 sessions on Spring this week, at 3 different companies and 2 different JUGs. It was a lot of work, but it was also fun to meet so many enthusiastic Java Developers. Preaching the Spring gospel is pretty easy since it's such a kick-ass framework.

So what about Norway? It's very modern. In many ways, it's more modern than the U.S. It seems cleaner, the people are nicer, and apparently there's little crime and/or poverty. This is readily apparent from the moment you get off the plane. There's a "bullet train" from the modern/cool-looking airport into downtown Oslo. It takes about 20 minutes, and then you're wisked away into a historic city by the sea. I dig the train.

I've been staying at the Hotel Stefan in downtown Norway Oslo, which is about 5 blocks from the main courthouse and lots of historic buildings. I'm a block away from a castle too! The funny thing is all the westernization - there's a TGI Fridays down the street and Star Wars is playing at the local theater. Taxis are very cool - most of which are new Mercedes. The only downside I've seen so far is the beer is pretty expensive ($10/each).

I've taken a few pictures and hope to take several more while sipping on seome cold ones with the locals tonight. I'll try to upload the whole batch later this evening or tomorrow morning. My flight leaves at 11 a.m. and I'll be back in the Denver tomorrow night. The 16-hour flight home is going to be rough - good thing it's in first class. ;-)

A CSS Framework

Mike Stenhouse's CSS Framework seems like it might be a good candidate for inclusion in AppFuse. In his article about this framework, he basically says that there are 6 basic layouts that "cover most of the blogs out there and most of the corporate sites as well". He shows you how it's possible to use a single XHTML page, and use CSS to achieve all of these layouts w/o changing your HTML. This is huge IMO because you can accomplish all the different layouts w/o changing your markup. Very cool. Hat tip to CSS Beauty.

Java Jobs: broken down by web framework

I updated my Web Framework Comparison presentation today. Rather than updating the graph that shows today's job availability, I did one that compares today to 6 months ago. Struts is still the clear winner (and growing). Spring is definitely growing. Tapestry has about the same amount of jobs (9 vs. 8). WebWork lost 10 opening (down to 4) and the demand for JSF skills has grown as well.

Is WebWork a dying framework? I've heard folks complain about its small community, and there still aren't any books is only one book about it. Is that a jab at Patrick, Jason and Kris - or a jab at Manning? I'm not sure. The good news is WebWork in Action and WebWork Live should both be out this summer.

My search criteria for all of these was "framework and java" from the front page on dice.com. I did filter a bunch out for WebWork b/c there's some product called "WebWorks" that folks want to hire for.

In my own experience, these numbers are not as accurate as you might think. Since I gave my original presentation, I've been contacted a number of times to work on projects. It's about even between Struts, Spring MVC, WebWork and JSF. I haven't had a single inquiry to do Tapestry development. The bad part about Struts jobs is there's so many of them, that rates are likely pretty low (i.e. 35-45/hour), whereas the others can get you upwards of 80-90/hour.

So what do these numbers mean? Do they mean you should tailor your learnings and skills to the most popular frameworks? In a sense, it's important to do so. If nothing else, Struts skills are import so you can migrate all the Struts applications to your favorite framework. However, I don't think these numbers are that important when choosing a framework to start your project with. I think the most important thing in choosing a framework is passion. Which one do you want to work with the most? It's likely that your productivity will be higher if you're enthusiastic about the framework, rather than bored with all the skills you've accumulated using it. Then again, if you're motivated by productivity more than enthusiasm - using your skills to crank out applications quickly is probably a good idea.

You might think that the number of skilled developers for framework X is important too. I don't think it is. I think the most important thing is to hire smart developers. A good developer can come up to speed on any framework in 2 weeks and be highly productive in 4 weeks. If not, the developer isn't that smart or the framework isn't that good.

Just for kicks, I did some searching for other web frameworks as well:

• Rife: 0
• Wicket: 0
• Echo: 3
• Ruby on Rails: 1
• ASP .NET: 2876

Now the question is - what kind of rates are these skills getting? I'd like to know what the average Rails and ASP .NET developers make. In Denver, Java developers seem to make between 65-85/hour when they're experienced contractors.

TechTalk on TheServerSide

TheServerSide has posted an interview I did with Dion at ApachCon last November. If you want to hear me ramble on about AppFuse, Spring Live and web frameworks - check it out!

In other news, I have some big (professional) changes to announce, but I'm going to wait a day or two and compose a good entry for it. Let's just say I'll have a lot of time to work on AppFuse and Spring Live in the near future (and get paid for it!).

See you in Norway

My flight leaves Denver at 1:00 this afternoon and I arrive in Oslo at 9:45 tomorrow morning. Riding first class on the way to New Jersey should be quite a treat. There's no outlets on the flight (I called and asked Continental), so I won't be able to get much work done. I might as well sit back, watch a movie or two, and have a couple cocktails.

A friend of mine (hey Frenchie) told me the best strategy for overcoming jet lag is to stay up all day until the local time's evening - and go to bed at the same time as everyone else. So I arrive around midnight Denver time, and if I stay up until bed-time Oslo time, it'll be like staying up until noon tomorrow. Should be interesting for sure.

I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow, as well as blog about my experience getting over there. Stay tuned!

Am I forgetting anything?

I'm wondering if I'm forgetting anything for my trip tomorrow? I picked up a book on Norway and bought a World Travel Adapter Kit so my PowerBook will work. Is there anything I'm forgetting? I'm assuming Norway is a pretty modern country where I can buy anything I need - but you never know. The last time I went on a trip like this was to Russia - where there weren't a whole lot of options for re-purchasing forgotten goods.

Passport Expired

It figures. I'm supposed to leave on Friday for Norway and I waited until today to check the expiration date on my Passport. It expired in January of this year. That gives me 3 days to try to get it renewed before my flight takes off. This site makes it look like it ain't gonna happen, but I'm hopeful. There's a fair amount of walk-in places in Denver that do on-site photos.

Let me know if you have any tips or have been through this process yourself.

Update: Thanks to David Carter's suggestion, I found American Passport and should have a new passport on my doorstep Thursday morning.

Update 2: Passport has arrived!

[OSCON] AppFuse Tutorial and Spring MVC vs. WebWork

Now that the OSCON 2005 site is up, I might as well advertise the two things I'm doing: an AppFuse Tutorial and a session titled WebWork vs. Spring MVC Smackdown with Matthew Porter. I wasn't planning on doing the AppFuse Tutorial, but I was asked to do it - so what the heck. The title has "Struts" in it, but I'm willing to do whichever one (JSF, Struts, Spring MVC, Tapestry or WebWork) the audience chooses. If we're good, maybe we'll have an Eclipse Plugin done by this conference to simplify the new project and code generation process.