“OM” Resource System

Handling Available Resources

Appropriately prioritizing and scheduling ones skills and belongings is important to produce a maintainable existence. Living within our means has become ever more critical, and unknowingly being taken advantage of doesn’t help the situation. We need straight forward clarification of what we have, what we deserve for our various works, and who we owe for these pleasures in life.

• Dialogue
Communication with others is vital for relaxation as well as management.
• Reason
Intellect and morals guide an individual toward self defined decisions.
• Action
Every given day should be segmented into a planned and specific routine.
• Tools
Make use of software or hardware to complete tasks more effectively.
• Emotion
Care for and utilize your relationships with others to accomplish your goals.
• Money
Expenses should be budgeted ahead of time, attempt to reduce surprises.

Keeping track of your resources and planning your goals are attributes of success.  Visualising this information can identify strengths and weaknesses in areas of all aspects of life.   Cataloging each item of interest into a well defined place, provides a holistic solution for direction.

Software Developer Conspiracy Theory

Early on in my choice of career path, I have had this itch on the back of my scalp creep up whenever the thought crossed my mind about how the higher up on the totem pole you are the less “manual labor” you’ve got on your plate it seems.  How aggravating to the hard working lower class to be stuck pushing rocks.  There are social classes within work groups as well. Even though the team members roles and responsibilities differ slightly, it is the experience and habits that define how easily one is able to complete a task (and how much one gets paid).  There must be a scientific rate of following “Best Practices” to length of “Time to Market”.  I am continually finding new ways to do things, but the more I stick with established techniques the faster I am able to release projects and the less time I need to spend maintaining them.  I have yet to settle on a specific pattern (not even in my financial life, oi) but anxiously await the day when nearly everything of what I do today is almost completely automated. When that day comes, I am able to run circles around the average software developer who is still tripping over his own code because of all the slight inconsistencies.  Now the ethical question is, do I sit on my pedestal and stroke my own ego over “knowing” I’m better than them, or do I spend my time sharing what I’ve learned to those less fortunate?

Coding by fewest manual steps.

What I am beginning to realize is just how much QCodo does for you. As I’m sure the other frameworks do a fantastic job at as well. It’s more of a change in my perception of Backend and Frontend “programming”, to now, Objects. You can now simply generate a solid reliable data storage mechanism with a single button click. (provided you have a well designed database “model”.) But thats just the point. “Backend-Programming” seems more like database design, than typing a bunch of calculations. QCodo connects all the dots and writes all of your queries, and even further provides working forms and distinct panels for each of the working parts. That once you get over the idea of writing all of that yourself, come to find that you can quite easily pick up these pieces, place them in a page, and it just works. Really by just copying and pasting a few small lines of code. I stayed up all night last night whipping out a really clean functional site, with the peace of mind that the backend was already tied-in. I couldn’t stop. It was great. Thanks Mike Ho.

Symfony

www.symfony-project.com I can’t help but keep reading about other rapid application development approaches. And although I have been making headway through the QCodo methodolies, I am starting to be tempted to dive-into Symfony instead. I don’t really know for sure yet, but it looks like you can model out an application using YAML, which strikes a good chord on my harp-o-fun. I’ve been reading a few other blog commentaries with some complaints, but I guess it all boils down to your style of programming, for me I am getting cozy with the whole Prototype.js syntax and I am able to build sexy UI’s pretty quickly with Rico.js, so I’m partial to keeping those skills around. The decision is really about your team enviornment flows and how you enjoy spending your time. Some things that draw me to Symfony are an existing Smarty templating module, and what looks to be more direct JavaScript event interactions. I really like the idea of the compiling engine, and I know that implementing TestsUnits (with its own built in UnitTest system) and apparently powerul debugging platform, would produce clean functional regression safe code. But this early in the game, I still don’t even really know what I’m talking about.

Trimpath.com

trimpath.com The approach I strive to acheive is much inline with the TrimPath projects. Persistant Client Side web-enhanced browser based applications. Offload the central server design and distribute the load onto the client’s computer instead. Trimpath Templates provide JavaScript templating class, so that you can generate html using a smarty like markup syntax. Not to mention a SQL Query syntax to load data from a local JavaAcript array, all on the client! And even still, a MVC pattern that if I would only take the time to put into practice, could make projects a breeze.

AjaxPatterns.org

ajaxpatterns.org Incredible reference for Object Oriented Programming using JavaScript. I haven’t spent enough time recently reading through the design patterns, but thats the whole goal of the game, follow these rules and add some fire to the mix. Talk about magic. I enjoy developing applications, it truly is modern day alchemy. How a series of symbols can produce a life all its own.

OpenRico

openrico.org I can’t claim that I have done extensive research into the other JS “frameworks” but, this lightweight project sure makes smooth interactive designs a piece of cake. Really it has its base in Prototype.js which is what I have grown to love coding with. DowdyBrown.com provides an enhanced version of the LiveGrid, and also includes a fairly simple to implement Calendar DHTML popup solution as well. I am still curious about using some of the other projects such as Dojo, but I forget now why I decided against them before. It’s probably mostly the syntax, I enjoy Prototype’s iterator methods. They are fun to write once you understand the structure to it all. Damn patterns.

QCodo

www.qcodo.com I can’t explain it any better than the documentation, examples and forums available. But code generation really takes away a whole heaping lot of mundane from programming a PHP web app. Focus on your model and relationships, and QCodo handles the rest. I am still torn with the love of writing my own Javascript, and I aim to learn how to generate my own files. But I should really learn to use the QForms, and keep all the code maintenance in one place, instead of seperate pieces. Coding professionally is about the ultimate business time to market these days. I need to get faster.

… Read More, Qcodo For Beginners.