Most people think that "failover is essentially automatic and magical." ☛ Michael Nygard's

 Depending on the detection and notification, there can be quite a delay before failover is initiated at all. (I once spoke with a retailer whose primary notification mechanism seemed to be the Marketing VP's wife.)
 
via  Wide Awake Developers Blog by Michael Nygard

I come from a systems management and operations background.  On a recent consulting engagement, I asked the tech leads what tools they used to monitor their production systems?  "None".  Well, I asked, how do you know when there is a production problem?  "The user calls us!"

Choice Quotes from ☛ "The Future of Software Development" by Michael Nygard

Speaking of languages, many of the problems we face today cannot be solved inside a single language or application. 
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Some of this will be mitigated naturally as application-specific functions disappear into tools and frameworks. 
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In general, it appears that Objects will diminish as a programming paradigm. 
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Some people have talked about "polyglot programming". I think this is a red herring.
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Regarding Java. I fear that Java will have to be abandoned to the "Enterprise Development" world. It will be relegated to the hands of cut-rate business coders bashing out their gray business applications for $30 / hour. We've passed the tipping point on this one. We used to joke that Java would be the next COBOL, but that doesn't seem as funny now that it's true
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Where will innovation come from? Although some of the blush seems to be coming off Ruby, the reduction in hype has mainly allowed Ruby and Ruby on Rails developers to knuckle down and produce 
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 The big players here--Microsoft and Oracle--won't let some schemaless little upstarts erode their [database] market share.  

Yes, Wide Awake Developers is now in my google reader...

JavaScript History as Rock Concert Event!?!?

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Douglas Crockford is Yahoo!'s JavaScript architect and a member of the committee designing future versions of the world's most popular programming language. Over first three months of 2010, Douglas delivered his acclaimed series of lectures on the history of JavaScript, its features, and its use. Links to video, transcripts, and photos from each of the events follows: