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I have been working on something small on the side lately. I hardly have anything to show for it though, most of it is still being shaped in my head. Anyhow, a very important part of the front-end is built using jQuery mobile. Although the framework hasn’t been released - release candidates are available though -, it’s something you should start looking into today. Why? Because the browser is the future of mobile applications. With the Flash and Silverlight bombs that were dropped today, I am even more confident that that future might be nearer than we think. ...

Just after graduating, I hated legacy with the heat of a thousand suns. I felt unfortunate, having to work on old code, built using outdated technologies, while software is all about making new and shiny things. Right, guys? Those naïve expectations of a rookie got crumbled very soon. Legacy is a constant in our industry. You can try to ignore it as long as possible, but it’s impossible to keep that up forever. Over the years, I have come to accept that. I even have been fully embracing it lately. ...

I think The Art of Unit Testing targets a broad audience. Beginners will find every part of the book useful, where intermediates might be more interested in the final two parts. Roy Osherove starts this book by laying a solid foundation of the unit testing concept. Why is testing important? What defines a good unit test, and how does a unit test differ from an integration test? In the second part of the book, he demonstrates the use of two core unit testing techniques: stubs and mocks. After showing you how these techniques work, he shows off various isolation frameworks which can help you creating stubs and mocks at runtime (fakes), greatly reducing the effort of writing these objects. ...

My mini-website arealdeveloper.com will no longer be available online after tomorrow. I slapped it together over a weekend, trying out WebMatrix, which turned out to be the perfect companion for building small things. A pleasant surprise was the mention of ‘A Real Developer’ by the guys at Channel9. This made the traffic go through the roof for a few days. A few months later the site was a ghosttown. But I don’t mind, had to happen. It never had the ambition to deliver real value. I was more than happy to deliver five minutes of entertainment. ...

Something that can bother me tremendously is being surrounded by people who are in a constant state of being comfortably numb. People who don’t welcome change, try to scare away new concepts and are just too much at home in their comfort zone. Some are perfectly happy filling their days keeping up appearances of being busy. They don’t care about self-improvement, but only care about augmenting their paychecks by accumulating as much legacy baggage as possible, with the sole intention of being perceived as an irreplaceable asset to the company, whilst not having to leave their comfort zone. These people also have the tendency to shy away from responsibility and commitment. They are satisfied with doing just enough to not draw any attention to themselves. ...

Due to the nature of things we build in our day to day job, writing software can wear out even the most fit of us. Most software jobs make you constantly deal with complexity. The amount of things which can lead to a complex software project are immense. A poor first design, and failure to redesign. External dependencies, which seem to behave different every time around. Or just the complexity of the problems itself. You are almost always working in a team, which can be exhausting as well. If the team doesn’t share your passion and you have a hard time getting your ideas across, you will get frustrated, real soon. Add some coroporate politics to the mix and you’ll be on your way to Paranoia. ...

The girlfriend and I returned from our West Coast roadtrip yesterday morning. We found this trip to be an unforgettable experience, which made us even more hungry for future travels. This blog will return to business as usual, with mainly technical content and opinions. Here is an overview of our posts exploring the West Coast: If you’re going to San Francisco Yosemite skyscrapers Sands of Nevada Rusty Rocks From Glen to Grand Edge of eternity Fear and loathing in Las Vegas City of fallen angels ...

After seeing the celebrities at Madame Tussaud’s in Las Vegas, we went for the real deal. Turns out Hollywood is a lot less glamourous than we expected. The Walk of Fame isn’t a lot different from any other gray sidewalk, paved with long-forgotten stars. The famous Hollywood sign isn’t even lit a night, making the contrast with Beverly Hills at the other side of town even bigger. Maybe there’s another side to Hollywood that we haven’t seen, since we only stayed for two days, one of which at the Universal Studios. Here we took a sneak peek behind the scenes of movies like The Fast and the Furious, Jaws and Jurassic Park. We also drove through Wisteria Lane and other generic-built shooting sets. ...

Driving back into the desert after our breakfast, with Las Vegas in the rear-view mirror, we secretly feel a little relieved to be heading back to the real world. The cocktail of fake pyramids, indoor jungles, Paris landmarks, castles and volcanoes became a little nauseating. With hotels and casinoes resembling labyrinths, designed to get people trapped inside, it feels liberating to drive through the wide open landscape again. Some of the things we enjoyed the most were the late nights walking the Strip, watching free shows, standing on top of the Stratosphere and posing with the wax celebs at Madame Tussaud’s. ...

We all know the Grand Canyon as one of the seven natural wonders of the world, today I learned why. As one of the locals described: ‘Pretty amazing for a big hole in the ground’. Being the closest to the south entrance, we visited the South Rim of the canyon. A trip to the visitor center taught us there were no easy hikes (except for the going down part), so we didn’t attempt at one. A hike down the canyon and back up is a two day endeavor. A shuttle bus took us along the scenic route, dropping us off at three viewpoints. Standing on the edge, stunned by the view, we were accompanied by some California Condors circling above us. However, their view must have been more impressive, being able to stare down right into the 4000 feet (1200m) deep canyon. ...