Expertaya

A few months ago, I read a really great article by Jason Rudolph on how to be a better developer http://jasonrudolph.com/blog/2011/08/09/programming-achievements-how-to-level-up-as-a-developer/ and it left a great impact on me. The impact mostly affected the way I think on how to improve programming skills because I didn’t took much action in relation to what it writes about.

That was so until recently, when I discovered increasingly popular job sites codeeval and interviewstreet. They are different from other job offering sites in means that they allow their users to participate in solving various challenges and earn achievements or job offers from great companies. In this way at the same time you’re becoming a better developer and can instantly evaluate how “good” you are based on how many challenges you solve or based on the offers you get. Isn’t that great? Even if you currently have a great job they are really great for practicing and who knows when you might need your achievements.

General, fun achievements, better, challenge, developer, job

Serbia, Europe

Nis, Serbia

The town of Nis (Niš, pronounced Niche) with its population of over 300,000 people is the University center of the South Serbia. South Serbia is the region with the lowest average salaries, broken industry (including EI Nis electronics which was the symbol of my town 20 years ago), it is often forgotten by government centered around Belgrade, etc. etc (there are numerous places in Serbian language containing more detailed ramblings (complaints mostly) on the current state in the region).

Being an optimist I tend to think that this hard economical situation has positively influenced the development of IT sector. There are numerous IT companies in Nis which are outsourcing partners of US and European companies (for example Accordia, Seavus, Youngculture). There are also companies that have their own products such as MotionDSP’s video enhancment products or Atomia’s server and hosting automation platform (they were also one of the Gold Sponsors of 2011 HostingCon). Please note that the above mentioned companies do not necessarily originate nor are completely located in Nis but have significant development resources located there. Also there are many freelancers including Genius-Tech, Disample, or individuals like me who work from home. I’ve noticed that on elance.com freelancers from Nis are the majority of Serbian freelancers. For a more thorough list of IT companies in Nis take a look at the table below. The given list is unofficial and probably incomplete but helps in getting the overall picture. I’ll update the list with new info from time to time.

*No of employees in software department

**it is recognized among developers as the worst IT company in the region

Please note: This table should be observed from a developers point of view -> potential employment opportunities. Therefore the employee numbers given represent the number of developers that work in Nis even though company could be located elsewhere. It is the same for technology column.

Update: I have updated employee numbers for Seavus, Horisen, Youngculture, SmartNet (Thanks for corrections)

Update 2: Added dualsoft and corrected info about youngculture having office in Novi Sad

Update 3: Updated employee number for Seavus from 25 to 58. Apparently the information I had before was too old.

Update 4: Added Energosoft and updated employee number for ING Software from 5 to 7

Update 5: Corrected info about logik

Update 6: Added Kraftwerk, Diyomi, EtonDigital, Megalink

Update 7: Added FutureForward, corrected info on Megalink (megatrend actually)

The information about salaries is not given for obvious reasons, but for Nis they are within range 300e - 1500e net (for gross value add 40% to that number). Approximately 90% of developers have less than 1000e.

For more details about any of the above mentioned company you can check with provided links or you can contact me (email: sfsgagi attt gmail dottt com or on twitter @draganstankovic) and I would be very glad to help in making contact for you or to direct you in the proper way.

It’s good to be a developer in Nis

General, Javascript, outsourcing, ruby company, eastern europe, outsourcing, serbia

Until I started to travel on a regular basis I haven’t been aware of the value and information that can be found audio podcasts for developers. I thought, “Come on, what can you learn from listening to a radio?”.

Nevertheless, since I had to fulfill my time with something other than staring at empty space (I travel by night) I tried listening to some podcasts and since then I haven’t stopped to follow the ones that I liked the most.

In my opinion (being a Java developer most of the time), Java posse is the best podcast around. The guys behind it are very amusing, have different characters (opinions), and often make a roundups on hot topics where they include more people in discussions. For example, episode #337 they made together with guys from .net rocks which is I guess the best podcast for .net developers.

Apart from Java posse I like listening to grails podcast although they are not as regular with new stuff as Java posse is.

In near future I plan to check some python or ruby podcasts and compare their awesomeness to Java posse.

Try listening to any podcast for developers and you won’t regret. The feeling you’ll probably have is like you have found yourself a good developer friend who is willing to share his personal insights and programming knowledge with you. At least that is how it was in my case.

General, Java, fun, groovy, ruby .net, audio, Java, podcasts for developers, python, ruby

I’ve decided to reveal my startup ideas list size (not the actual content which is in Serbian and would take some time to translate).

This is the list I populated in the last 3 years. Whenever I got an idea about something (in 99% it is IT/web/app stuff) that could be interesting to be done but may lead to startup company or something that can be done out of pure altruism I’ve written it to my tadalist. This tadalist helped me to reduce my frustration of not having time to work on “my stuff” and fear of forgetting what I wanted to do.

Today, I looked at this list to pick the best ideas and could easily enlist a few (actually six which are marked with green arrows on image below). Sadly, I’ve only managed to make some progress on only two items (out of 70 something) and even that small progress didn’t happened until recently.

I guess I am a bad executor but I am improving myself.

I wonder how many people have more/less ideas and what is their execution rate. Also, although I am not 18 for more than a decade, what do you think “Do I have potential?”

my startup ideas

General, fun ideas list, not revealed, startup

Recently, I’ve read about many companies offering rewards for referring great developers to them. Examples are Hubspot offering $10k, SeoMoz oferring $12k, and EnergySavy oferring $10k.

It appears that demand for developers exceeds supply so it’s good to be developer these days so I am using this opportunity to remind young computer science graduates that they are sometimes badly taught that being a developer is like being a plain old dirty worker and that they should strive to become project managers or team leaders. Graduates should ask themselves if they have ever seen a job ad asking for managers and offering reward before making a decision to become “great managers the world will know of”

After all, the most important thing is to be happy in what you are doing. And in my opinion being developer makes you happy and forever young (at least in spirit).

(The illustrations below show Happy developer and Miserable manager)

General, fun brilliant developers, career decision, computer science, graduates

Debugging gui events is usually not possible with regular line per line debugging and is done mostly by tracing.
For debugging code that relies on Java swing events like drag and drop, mouse moving, etc., having something similar to code below is very useful:

 
public boolean isMouseAboveHeaderPanel() {
System.out.println("HeaderPanel.isMouseAboveHeaderPanel() called from: "
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getClassName() + "."
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getMethodName());
 
// ...
 
}

In this way you trace not only current function but also you got information from where you entered that function. Of course to make things easier you should make some kind of a shortcut for entering this trace line. In Eclipse you can do that with code template:

System.out.println("${enclosing_type}.${enclosing_method}() called from: "
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getClassName() + "." 
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getMethodName());

This helped me in lot of situations, I hope that it will help you as well.

General, Java debugging, gui, Java

Even if not being a “regular” warez user it would be good if you stay informed about what is happening inside warez community.
One reason would be finding really popular and valuable programs by browsing warez sites. This is better than searching through regular download sites because programs found on these kind of sites are often more relevant to the field in which they belong. One reason could be this - If somebody put an effort to crack a piece of software then that software has some value for sure :).

I use: http://www.area51warez.info/ and http://softarchive.net/.

General, Links community, resource, software, warez

Smashing magazine is a weblog dedicated to web-developers and designers. Its great because of its overview of interesting stuff for each month. Their published content is a must read if you want to become a good web developer or a designer that follows web design trends.

General, Links blog, design, development, link, resource, web

Launchy is a handy tool that can help you when you have messy folders and want to quickly find and open application, document or play the mp3 song. With it you can forgot about desktop, quicklaunch or start menu for starting applications. Iit’s free and makes your desktop life a lot easier. Try it!

General desktop, keyboard, tip

If you are an active member of some programming community you won’t probably need any of existing freelancing sites since your friends usually have enough jobs to pass to you…

But in case you still want a recommendation for a freelance site then here it is: Elance.

You can however find more jobs on others but at rates that are usually significantly lower than on Elance.

Happy freelancing.

General, Links community, freelance, recommendation