Comments for Simon Palmer's blog

Comment on Upgrading to Java 7 on an Amazon Linux AMI by Deploying a Play 2 App to Amazon EC2 connected to RDS | Simon Palmer's blog

Deploying a Play 2 App to Amazon EC2 connected to RDS | Simon Palmer's blog — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:04:11 +0000

[…] the standard Linux AMI at Amazon ships with Java 1.6 as the default, so I had to upgrade that (see here for how to do that). […]

Comment on Recruiting. Challenges. by Javier Callico

Javier Callico — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:46:13 +0000

Hi Simon

You probably don’t remember me but I went through this same recruiting process for your company a couple of years ago.

I’ve been to many interviews, both as interviewed and interviewer, and yours was by far the best one I can remember. It absolutely allows you to find out in less than a week for almost no cost for the organization about the developer what otherwise will have taken 3 months of probation and several paychecks.

Cheers

Javier

Comment on Customers as advocates by simonpalmer

simonpalmer — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 20:11:58 +0000

Thanks for the comment, not quite sure I understand it.

Comment on Customers as advocates by convertibletabletpc.org

convertibletabletpc.org — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 03:12:14 +0000

always i used to read smaller articles or reviews which also
clear their motive, and that is also happening with this piece of writing which I am reading at this time.

Comment on Really simple S3 persistence from Grails by viv

viv — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 22:22:57 +0000

Incredibly, helpful, thanks (2 years later).
Curious if anyone can help configure logging. The jets3t API seems to spew tons of logs in my grails instance and I can’t figure out how to get it to respond to log4j settings.

Comment on Really simple S3 persistence from Grails by Sikander

Sikander — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:19:52 +0000

Awesome. It helped me a lot. If we just install the Grails amazon-s3 plugin and then use the Code Given by you it works like a charm. I was adding the Jets3t libraries explicitly in my lib folder and i was getting exceptions and compilation errors because of some missing dependencies. So Installing amazon-s3 plugin also cleans out lib folder..

Thanks much

Comment on Why I will never score more than 9 on the Joel Test by Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 03:03:32 +0000

Such a false dichotomy… there are options between “plan everything upfront and never deviate” and “plan nothing and wing everything,” and there are options between “each developer codes independently on his or her own continent” and “everyone sits at a table and talks all day.” There’s a balance to be struck here.

Did you read Joel’s series on writing functional specs? He linked to it from the article you’re referencing. Specs aren’t gospel chiseled onto stone tablets. They’re living documents, describing what you’re building right now. They *will* change if you’re doing things right, unless you really did happen to have the right idea from day one.

Besides, why can’t specs be per-iteration?

Communication is a tricky subject—it can be productive, or it can be a distraction. Contrary to popular belief, most humans are terrible multitaskers. Sure, I’d love to hear about your new date picking widget that remembers your dog’s birthday, but not while I’m in the middle of debugging an obscure floating point issue.

We can’t even talk and drive safely. (I’ve met people who can’t seem to talk and walk safely!) How do you expect us to talk and code at the same time?

Why not send me an e-mail instead and let me read it when I’m done? If we need to hash something out on a whiteboard, we can head to a conference room when I get this code fixed and checked in. We can socialize at lunch, or at other times when I’m not actively working on something.

Why does it have to be “caffeinated bullpen” or “no one ever communicates at all?”

Comment on Recruiting. Challenges. by simonpalmer

simonpalmer — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:55:24 +0000

So far, in my corner of the world, we have had around 75 interviews, issued about 50 challenges, 48 completed, 20-some hires. Perhaps it is different where you are.

We have extended the challenge approach out to UX, Product Management, Systems Infrastructure, DBAs, all with great effect.

The conclusion I am reaching is different to yours. As recruiters we often talk as much about the attitude of the candidate when asked to take on a challenge as we do about the rest of their interview.

Sorry to disagree, but it’s really working for us and tech candidates of all stripes, seniorities, backgrounds in the GTA (which is a very hot recruitment market) seem willing to do it.

Comment on Recruiting. Challenges. by Codematrix

Codematrix — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:01:13 +0000

Sounds nice in in theory but in a hot IT market you won’t get many takers, unless the candidate is either desperate or really wants to work for you or your company.

For example, when I entered the job market, in less than two weeks I landed 7 interviews, which in itself was difficult to manage while still working in my current position. As much as the challenge would be rather fun to do, I would have to decline due to time and the the fact there are probably bigger fish to fry.

Comment on Grails by Ashish

Ashish — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:01:39 +0000

Hi Simon,

Thank you this was really helpful.

You had long time back posted a question in stackoverflow on the issue of Primary Key IDs are showing up as comma separated when larger than 999 – ” I can’t seem to get an Integer value as a genuine integer into my code if it is greater than 999 because of the default (and unconfigurable) behaviour of the fieldValue directive.”.

Were you able to find any default configuration setting that would resolve this problem? I could remove the comma from string in the controller, but am trying to find a easier and configurable workaround such that I don’t have to go change it at every other GSP or controller

Any insight you can provide will be helpful.

Thanks