Archive for September, 2010

So far all my code versioning needs has been covered by CVS and SVN, but recently I keep hearing about distributed version control. Git and Mercurial are very popular topics in certain parts of my social circle, so I decided that I need to look into the topic (some very painful personal experience with a large programming project on Subversion also had some motivational influence on that decision).

So where to start?

I decided to start looking into Git. This was not a deliberate deselection of Mercurial but motivated by my attendance at the IT-conference JAOO in a months time and at JAOO Scott Chacon from GitHub will host a Git 101 tutorial, which I am considering attending (oh, and one of the GitHub founders, Tom Preston-Werner, will do a presentation called “Mastering Git Basics”, which also could be interesting).

My starting point was wikipedia and as it mentions that Git is designed and originally developed by Linus Thorvalds, I googled Git together with his name to see what he had to say about the subject. The result was this Tech talk from Google, that I quite enjoyed:

Then I told my twitter friends that am looking into Git and as always they give great feedback. My favorite was from jlouis666, who pointed me to a page with the Pro Git book by aforementioned Scott Chacon (the guy hosting a Git tutorial at JAOO), which is available online. I’m hoping to look into it before his tutorial.

So far I have not had time to really play with Git. Because all my existing projects are in SVN and migrating between two such different systems would probably be unwise/a pain I am saving my practical experience with Git for my next project. I hope that these things I am looking into will prepare me for the practical experience, but any advise you have could really help too…

After JAOO I plan to look into Mercurial/hg – If you know of good sources of information for that I would love to hear about it. (I guess with all the Git-stuff at JAOO they didn’t have any time slots left for Mercurial or maybe they have just chosen their favorite…)

Sometimes you have to remember to do something good for your blog readers (and twitter followers) and because I have been behind the scenes at JAOO the last few years, I was able to negotiate a good discount for the JAOO IT-conference.

So if you want to go to JAOO in Aarhus and hear some great speakers like Tim Bray, Oren Eini (Ayende), Dan North, Erik Meijer, James Gosling, Mary Poppendieck, Michael Nygard, Dan Ingalls, Dave Thomas and many more, you can get a 20 % discount using the discount code “jaoovip2010” when signing up.

If you have questions about going to the conference, feel free to ask. You can leave a comment on this blog or write to me on twitter @qedtherese.

These days I’m hiding out at home at my parents house. I look like I have been beaten up with a swollen face, a broken nose and blue/black/red/yellow circles around my eyes, but this is all done on purpose and with my consent. Two days ago I underwent surgery on my nose to try to straighten it out after it broke in three places last January. This is my third surgery this year but in the last two they were not able to put all of the breaks back into place, so they had to do this last surgery after I had healed.

For months I have been waiting by the phone for them to call with a time for my surgery and last Monday they did. At first they offered me a time slot during my favorite IT-conference JAOO and I reluctantly took it, because I had to get this done before we leave the country November 1. Then they called me again Tuesday asking if I could do it this Thursday and even though I had to cancel a few things I jumped at the chance. This way I get to heal before JAOO and I can make a surgery followup appointment just before we leave the country. The timing couldn’t have been better.

So now I just have to get through the next few weeks with bruises and painkillers…

I’m so sorry, but I just have to rant about this: The last few years I have been part of organizing an IT-conference here in Aarhus called JAOO. Last year, when the world was in crisis mode, I could understand why people, when asked if they want to go to JAOO, said, that their boss wouldn’t let them and that the conference budget for the whole year was cancelled.

This year the economy is doing much better and still my friends are not going to JAOO even though they love the conference. Now the excuse is that they don’t have time. Fewer hands are doing the same amount of work as before the crisis, so now they are running around getting sick from stress. AND they just accept that their employer does not update their skill set because the business is too busy.

I can let you in on a little secret: The business is always busy when there is no economic crisis. Some IT-companies was even busy when the crisis was peaking. Such is IT. The diffence between now and then is that now the workers that did not get to go to the conference last year and probably wont get to go this year are outdated. They haven’t taken the time to get their qualifications updated the last few years and the tech world is moving terrible fast. Some don’t know what the whole NoSQL-thing is about, some haven’t heard much about HTML5 and some haven’t heard anything about the mobile phone development department. Now the crisis is over and companies are getting business deals that demands skills in that department and their current workforce can’t deliver. They should have been working smarter, not harder!

A lot of places they are trying to bring in new people with updated skills but this is turning out to be problematic. New workers have a learning period before they can get really started and sometimes you end up hiring the wrong guy/gal for the job because none of the people who applied was right for the job. Firing people is also expensive (at least it is here in Denmark) and if the current skill set in your workforce is outdated then you might have to.

I just think that it is very irresponsible to accept being outdated in the tech knowledge department – it could lead to unemployment. When my last employer told me I couldn’t go to JAOO, I decided to pay for the whole thing myself by taking some of my vacation during the conference (I got the ticket through version2.dk because of my blog there). Of course now I don’t have the problem of having to use my vacation time on conferences, because I quit my job to travel the world… (I’m leaving just 2 weeks after JAOO and yes, that timing is chosen on purpose.)

I’m so sorry for the rant – soon I will be back to normal and overly positive as usual.

(P.S. Of course there are plenty of ways to keep your skill set updated – I just know the conference business especially well, so I know that those few days are well spent, very inspirational and valuable enough to miss a few work days.)