I've heard from quite a few programmers who are interested in putting their toe in the RoR waters. It is a big step -- and to make that as non-stressful as possible, I'm going to hold a free two-hour online "Intro to Ruby on Rails for ColdFusion Programmers" training on September 22 from 12.30 to 2.30 Eastern US time.

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Well, the internet is roiling with accusations, conspiracy theories, cross-complaints -- you name it -- regarding Apple's much ballyhooed smackdown on Adobe's Flash. I found this comment to be particularly telling:

"The iPad is an anti-technology device targeting consumers who are too lazy/stupid to use or want a keyboard or mouse or stylus. Why should a website focusing on tech-savvy people modify their code to play along with the silly-ass marketing scheme Apple plays making its airhead users _think_ they're some kind of pioneers?"

Let's stipulate that Apple is not too fond of Adobe. Why? Who knows. And it was particularly cold-blooded of them to let Adobe develop their Flash-to-iPhone technology, dropping this bombshell only a few days before the release of CS5. Let's stipulate, in fact, that Apple is bristling with its own power -- and is using it with shocking disregard for what other members of the tech community think.

But we techies miss an important point that Apple does not: computers are too damned hard for normal people to use. In the tradeoff between power and ease-of-use, techies will always choose power. Apple really does seem intent on making a computer "for the rest of us" -- and that means that power must/will be sacrificed to make the device(s) simple to use. And reliable. And having a decent battery life.

Does Apple's decision to cut Flash off at the knees make sense? It depends on whose interests you're thinking of. Is it good for you and me who crave all the power we can get? No. But is it good for the vast numbers of people who just want a computer that works and are frustrated by the unintended side effects of power run amok? Reluctantly, I have to say yes.

Recently, I read Ben Nadel's post of his thoughts stimulated by a book that we both seem to be reading, Drive by Daniel Pink. Ben is thinking about the best way of compensating workers. It's a great read with lots of comments. It reminded me of how I stumbled into something that I had pretty much forgotten about -- and I wonder if it would work in a different context.

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We're looking to hire some developers. The first person I thought of was my friend, Ben Edwards. In talking with Ben, he had an unusual -- and I think brilliant -- idea about resumes: kill them all.

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Packt Publishing seems to be one of the leading publishers of client-side programming books -- and good ones. My first experience with them was the excellent Learning jQuery. Now, I've just finished jQuery UI 1.7: The User Interface Library for jQuery.

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Most of you will be familiar with blogger extraordinaire Ben Nadel. Ben recently posted about a fundamental misunderstanding he had about jQuery event objects. There's something very important to be learned about how Ben approaches problems.

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For an upcoming, large job, I did a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats". It's a formalized way of assessing both the business opportunity and one's abilities to leverage the opportunity. (Sorry for the market-speak...) SWOT is helpful in thinking realistically about one's strengths and weaknesses -- and it is a more formal way of doing something that I've undertaken for years with clients: the pre post-mortem.

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A recent article in "The Business Insider" here reveals some of the questions Google uses to interview applicants. Google's smart, right? So, we should emulate Google?

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Recently, I was reading a post about how Perl blew it (here-- and why it's lost its viability as a web language for new projects. Many of the comments were savage in their response. Yet, ask any non-Perl person and I think they'd agree that Perl no longer has the luster for writing web apps it once did. Given that, why the extreme reaction to what seems a fairly obvious point?

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I spoke with a friend recently who told me that his company had just hired another programmer to keep up with the work. Good problem. Bad solution.

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