land of choice == land with no highways

right. I generally do not speak about politics. This is however an exception.
Romania is a beautiful country. Below clip shows what I mean.



Most of you reaching this blog are from abroad, as shown by my google analytics. So, you must have heard about Nadia, Ilie and Hagi. But have you ever heard about a bunch of politicians which cannot make decisions so that highways can be build in 20 years ? Well, I have. These fellows lead Romania.

So, you'd better visit Romania only if you're willing to rent a helicopter to drop you here and there, to admire the beauties of this country.

To highlight above statement, I'll soon be driving 650km in this country. Instead of 5 to 6 hrs on a highway, I'll drive from 10 to 12 hrs. See what I mean ?

ldap browser

It's been a while since I highlighted free software to use. Now it's time for me to mention that I settled on the following:

JXplorer This used to be the world's finest LDAP browser for me, until 5 minutes ago, when I discovered LDAPAdmin.

Kudos to the developers of both LDAP browsers.

Domino to Exchange ? not again, this is proven. Useless way to migrate.

I think you'll find on this blog some posts already saying that Domino to Exchange/Sharepoint migration is useless from a ROI perspective. If you're running Domino, stick with it, invest in upgrade to 8.5 and skills around Domino, and better focus of delivering applications, solving your business problems and so on. Let Domino do its job because it does it better than any other MS technology.

Now, I'm posting this just to remind me to instruct MS enthusiasts on this subject, to Brian's post, highlighting some great points to pay attention to.

On the other hand, be aware that people counts to the project's success. No matter the technology, if not skilled, people can slam any technology against the thinnest wall, it will eventually break.

ibm's java troubleshooting blog

pass on the news. Via this Dave Hay's post, I found out about the new IBM's JVM related blog

Be it WebSphere or Tivoli line of products, all of them embeds WebSphere App Server, thus IBM's JVM. Do you work on something WebSphere or Tivoli ? You work on IBM's JVM.

For me, I'll follow the blog to see who to contact internally at the next big performance issue :) Finding expertise even when you're on IBM's internal network is no easy thing to do. With 400.000 people, go figure ...

programmer equals developer ?

I am starting this writing on a subject which has already been discussed over and over again. Younger fellows (not surprisingly) seems to not make a difference between "programmer" and "developer". Being in this industry for more than 10 years, I do.

For others as my fellow mates who cannot distinguish between the two, here are the links from the Sun's certification pages:

programmer vs. developer

From my point of view, I can summarize the following:

programmer: one writes lines of code which compiles, following a design.
developer: one understands what the lines of code means, creating the design.

I also think that above difference does not only apply to Java. It also applies to other languages. It's a matter of attitude towards your job. You need to aspire to understand your technology beyond the details of writing code.

This is not a rant. I'm trying to avoid arrogance in this post. Just that developer is not the same as programmer.