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THE 2004 SALARY
SURVEY Coming
Out of Cold Storage
The good
news? After two years of stagnation at $77,000, staff salaries
show a glimmer of growth this year, to just under $80,000,
and recruiters are beginning to stir after a long winter.
The bad news? Fewer women are in IT, and benefits are frozen
solid. By Alexandra Weber Morales
WOMEN IN SOFTWARE Open
Source, Cold Shoulder
Proponents
of open source software often describe their campaign as
a great equalizer: Not only is it freely available, but anyone
who wants to help can do so. But does the community welcome
all with open arms? By Michelle Levesque and Greg Wilson
NEW & NOTEWORTHY Me
and My Shadow
Keep
your server copy piping hot with XLink's ClusterReplica,
morph .NET into Java with Stryon’s iNET, and get a simpler
bug tracker: Excel’s QuickBugs. Also, don't miss these
four tomes from Kerievsky, Sobell, Bejtlich and a Russian
troika. By Rick Wayne
PRODUCT REVIEW The
Little Engine That Can
Continuing
its tradition of flawless cross-platform support, Visual
SlickEdit's new duo is a powerhouse that accommodates
almost anything you can throw at it. By Gary K. Evans
SPECIAL GUIDE: MIDDLEWARE
SOLUTIONS Distributed Objects and
Messages
Middleware: the glue between distributed
and often disparate computing systems, most frequently
realized in the form of object- and message-oriented implementations.
Here’s how to choose from among today's mature technologies.
By Mike Riley
CROSSCUT It's Not Metaprogramming
AOP was a move away from explicit metaprogramming
to a direct semantics for coding crosscutting concerns.
But metaprogramming can still be useful—if it's kept
under control. By Gregor Kiczales
THE AGILE EDGE Less Is More
Tired of estimates that are overly detailed,
yet often wrong? To deliver working software that meets
your stakeholders' needs, try an agile approach to requirements
management. By Scott W. Ambler
THE CRAFTSMAN In the War Zone
Is all this testing nonsense just make-work
for morons? After toiling on the suit registration requirement
for nearly four hours, the only production code the team's
got to show for it is... By Robert C. Martin
INTERFACE Paladins or Serfs?
Thanks to the DMCA and the ambiguous nature
of IP, a few large corporations have created a neo-feudal
system. Are IT professionals the new peons? By Warren Keuffel
COMMENT Murphy's Law
When
an interview on women in open source software goes comedically
wrong, I wonder what damage I may have done to gender equality
in computer science. By A. Weber Morales
FEEDBACK
In which
our readers discuss homeland security, criticize capitalism,
decry dumbed-down education, and assail appalling insensitivity.
TIMEWARP Multitasking Magic
Fifteen
years ago in SD, tasking applications broadened
PC programmers' horizons, and The Bard was picked apart,
bit by bit. Compiled by L. O'Connell
DEADLINE Military IT
Developer
at war, asterisk alarmism and a new whiteboard challenge.
Plus, Amazon's top 10 industry tomes. By R. Lum
64-BIT SPOTLIGHT
MSDN Webcast: Guest Presenter: AMD64 Architecture Drilldown: 64-bit Performance and 32-bit Compatibility—Level 400 In this session, AMD will drill into the AMD64 architecture in the Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron processors, and provide tools and optimization guidance on how to leverage the 64-bit core capabilities such as extra CPU registers, AMD's Direct Connect Architecture, including integrated low-latency memory controllers and HyperTransport I/O links. This session will also cover how the architecture has been designed to provide excellent compatibility for 32-bit applications running on the Windows™ platform.
CMP DEVNET SPOTLIGHT
Automating the spamlist.org Blacklist Sys Admin Magazine Here are some tips for automatically incorporating a blacklist into your mail server configuration — handle with care!
A SPECIAL GUIDE TO APPLICATION SERVERS The Major Players
The first app servers eased session management, enabled three-tier software on the Web, improved accessing server-side data,
and simplified common tasks. Since then, J2EE and Web services have revolutionized the market—but which one’s for you? By Chris Minnick
Incorporating
New Architect Software Development will be including online editorial
coverage from the award-winning New
Architect (formerly Web Techniques), which
ceased publication as a stand-alone magazine after the March
2003 issue. Let us know what
you want from this expanded coverage. Check out some highlights
from the magazine's archives:
Skinnier RUP Want the best practices that are exhaustively explained in the Rational Unified Process, only streamlined for your leaner, meaner software-building machine? Here's how.
PERT: Precursor to Agility Estimation just got easier: Dust off your statistical math and learn how the basic tenet of a decades-old technique can be used for smaller software projects.
Has This Trend Sprung a Leak? Proponents of the contractor-programmer labor model argue that design and project management jobs will stay in the U.S. while basic coding gets shipped out. But is the tide of high-abstraction tools and practices rising fast enough to compensate for historic levels of IT unemployment?
Managing J2EE Risks If you’re making the leap to distributed application development with Java 2 Enterprise Edition, take heart: You’re smack in the middle of the bell curve. Here’s a handy guide to assessing whether your team has what it takes to succeed with J2EE.
Swiss Wisdom Avery's resistance to acceptance tests creates a stumbling block for the DTracker team, as our intrepid Alphonse remains neutral.
Are You Certifiably Agile? Want to stay competitive in these volatile times? Certification in your chosen specialty may help you stay employed.
Open Source, Cold Shoulder Proponents of open source software often describe their campaign as a great equalizer: Not only is it freely available, but anyone who wants to help can do so. But does the community welcome all with open arms?
Coming Out of Cold Storage The good news? After two years of stagnation at $77,000, staff salaries show a glimmer of growth this year, to just under $80,000, and recruiters are beginning to stir after a long winter. The bad news? Fewer women are in IT, and benefits are frozen solid.
From Headless to Rich UI The OSGi framework isn't just for embedded gateway devices—this versatile set of open specifications is universally useful.
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
Nominations for the 15th Annual Software Development
Jolt Product Excellence Awards are now open. We’re looking for products that have made a difference to developers in 2004—products
that have “jolted” the industry. Last year, hundreds of 2003’s best products, books and websites were nominated in 14 categories.
Will your product join the field this year? The deadline for nominations is December 15, 2004. Click here for more information.
reports from SD Best Practices
Welcome to SD Central! It's that time of year when the experts and editors
who write Software Development get to mingle with the readers and
developers who do it. Click below for reports from the SD Best Practices
show, which was held in September at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Mass.
Day Two
The Expert Eye
Senior Contributing Editor Scott Ambler attends Charles Stack’s class on Enterprise Architecture Governance.
The 2004 SD Readers' Choice Awards Software Development's editors announced the winners of the second annual Readers' Choice Awards today at SD Best Practices.
Kent Beck's Oprah Moment
The founder of XP finds there's more to life than pair programming. By Alexandra Weber Morales
Abstract Prototyping
Sticky notes and canonical tools bridge the wizardry gap. By Rosalyn Lum
Common Sense Scrum
Ken Schwaber touts his management-focused process's versatility. By Tamara Carter
Day One
Portfolio Management for Fun and Profit
Andy Kaufman explains how to steer projects as shrewdly as a stockbroker overseeing a
healthy mix of investments. By Rosalyn Lum
Admitting Uncertainty
Author Tom DeMarco: "Waltzing with bears is clearly a risky business—as
is software development." By Alexandra Weber Morales
MDA Explained
Will the 4 Ms—models, metamodels, mappings and markings—save software? By Tamara Carter
Ins and Outs at Work
Understanding personality type is key to clear team communication. By Rosalyn Lum
live interview
Date: Thursday,
September 16, 2004
Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm PT
Duration:
One hour Click
Here to register and view the archived discussion.
Lean
Software Development author Mary Poppendieck
explains how you can increase productivity, quality
and speed—and make more money and raise
your standard of living, to boot! Sound impossible?
Not if you use the principles she's spent decades
honing at such innovative companies as 3M. In
this one-hour interview by Software
Development Editor in Chief Alexandra Weber Morales, you'll
learn how to achieve the software productivity
imperative by applying lean product development
practices to IT shops.
This interactive event,
third in the 2004 SD Editorial NetSeminar
series, offers an opportunity for you to ask
your own questions and get immediate, practical
answers. Don't miss the streaming medium that
really satisfies: If you're a developer, IT manager
or CTO, register today and view the archived discussion!
the readers' choice awards
The winners for the 2nd Annual Readers' Choice Awards
were announced at the SD Best Practices conference in Boston. Click here to see the complete list of winners and runner-ups.
DOWNLOADS
SD Express
Breaking news from the Software
Development West Conference and Expo—from Amazon's
development strategies to offshoring debates, to the Jolt
awards and a Programmers
at Work update.
Click here to download a PDF of Wednesday's and Thursday's edition.
Or click here to view all the reports at a glance.
2004 Career & Training Calendar
Download
Software Development's free 2004 training and trivia
calendar and keep track of this year's best training opportunities.
Hot
Topics
Discuss the latest trends in development or post your critiques
of Software Development feature articles.
Offshore Outsourcing
Development around the world is the topic du jour. Discuss the consequences of outsourcing, strengths and weaknesses of different
outsourcing centers, tips and stories about contracts gone wrong—or right. Those wishing to make global business connections may
post here at their own risk; CMP Media LLC does not warrant the veracity or quality of listings.
Career Center
This is the place to discuss the salary survey, job opportunities, how to improve skills and stay current.
Job openings and resumes may be posted here at the poster's own risk; CMP Media LLC does not warrant the veracity or
quality of listings.
Testing/Q.A.
Do you do test-first development? Are you better at breaking things than building them? Do you have a surefire aproach to beta launches?
This is your community.
Reader Review
We've told you what we think of the products -- now tell us
what you think.
Design
Center
Topics of discussion include: UML, Design Patterns, and Models
(no...we don't mean the skinny kind).
Find
white papers, case studies, Webcasts and analyst reports on
everything from design through development to testing and implementation
at SD's Research Papers
and Reports.
Global Sourcing Strategym Learn from experts and practitioner CxOs on how to drive breakthrough performance by aligning execution with your sourcing strategy at the 'Wipro Strategym' on GLOBAL SOURCING, a forum that looks at global sourcing from your point of view. Wipro Technologies - 1098207509_486 SQL Anywhere Studio: Easing Application Integration Choose SQL Anywhere Studio as the data management solution for your application and unleash the power to create powerful applications that integrate with a wide range of enterprise systems and applications. iAnywhere - 1098207631_795 Taking Information Outside the Data Center: Considerations for Embedding an Enterprise Caliber Database This whitepaper examines key issues that application developers should consider when selecting a DBMS for software applications that are deployed outside the data center or resold to customers as part of a software solution. iAnywhere - 1098207633_189 Preemptive Protection: Changing the Rules of Internet Security This groundbreaking whitepaper explains why the preemptive capabilities embodied in the ISS Proventia Security Platform are such a critical breakthrough - actually stopping threats before they impact your business. Internet Security Systems, Inc. - 1083349267_979 MLX: Machine Learning to Beat Spam Today and Tomorrow Proofpoint's Andres Kohn, Director of Product Marketing and Gordon Rios, Principal Scientist discuss the application of advanced machine learning techniques - such as support vector machines and logistic regression - to fight spam. Proofpoint - 1098207613_340
October 2004
Issue Theme:
The 7th Annual Salary Survey --more--
How can you ensure system backups are accurate and complete? Find out how with Preventing Data Loss During Backups Due to Open Files, a free White Paper for industry experts.
Learn developer strategies Cisco, Motorola & Lucent use to deliver higher performing products faster, at low TCO. Free guide features Berkeley DB, incl. support for ACID transactions, recovery, replication for carrier class apps to mobile devices.
Quickly create your own GPS applications in minutes with the GPS.NET Global Positioning SDK for Visual Studio.NET. This rich object model contains over fifty classes designed to make GPS tasks easy. Works with over 200 GPS devices.
Help Desk Technology's HelpSTAR and BMC Remedy have been declared co-winners in Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice Awards for 2004. Discover proven help desk best practices right out of the box.
HP workstation solutions for software developers, engineers and game developers. Are you transitioning to 64bit computing, interested in remote graphics development, or do you need the latest tools for Linux development? Learn more.
October 2004
