Chapter 1: Language and Syntax — Jython Book v0.91 documentation

“Elegant”, that is an adjective that is often used to describe the Python language. The term elegant is defined as “pleasingly graceful and stylish in appearance or manner”. “Uncomplicated”, and “powerful” could also be great words to assist in the description of this language. It is a fact that Python is an elegant language that lets one create powerful applications in an uncomplicated manner. One may say that if you look at trends that are occurring within the computing industry today, Python can be looked at as the main objective. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of programming languages available today which each offer a different flavor to the field. Although there are many flavors, there is a similar objective for each of these programming languages...and that is to produce powerful and uncomplicated code that is easy to construct and maintain. Python does just that.
via jythonpodcast.hostjava.net

Interesting...

UI Test Automation Tools are Snake Oil

It happens over and over again. I visit a team and I ask about their testing situation. We talk about unit tests, exploratory testing, the works. Then, I ask about automated end-to-end testing and they point at a machine in the corner. That poor machine has an installation of some highly-priced per seat testing tool (or an open source one, it doesn’t matter), and the chair in front of it is empty. We walk over, sweep the dust away from the keyboard, and load up the tool. Then, we glance through their set of test scripts and try to run them. The system falls over a couple of times and then they give me that sheepish grin and say “we tried.” I say, “don’t worry, everyone does.
via blog.objectmentor.com

Make sure you go to the link and read the entire post. I generally agree with the points. We're headed in this direction with a new project and luckily the packages we're looking at provide API's into the application that the UI uses. We'll be able to automate many tests without directly going through the UI. But... the UI must still be tested thoroughly and UI testing tools are required.

Insurance & Technology: Insurers Warm to Flexible Technology Architecture

Some choice quotes from the above named article...  You can find it here
 
O'Connell suggests. "Senior business executives are sitting down and asking questions about the architecture that this new platform will be built on and asking for assurances that three years down the road we will be able to reuse the platform and architectural components and be able to give them the flexibility they need," O'Connell says. "They really want to understand." 

The former Hartford Life CIO says that in the past the company found value in the flexibility granted by letting the company's various businesses go their own ways with regard to technology decisions. But even though flexibility may be more important than ever, he adds, as the businesses have matured scale and efficiency have become more important.

suggests Infosys' Mohan. "Technology modernization cannot be justified on the basis of technical merit alone," he says. "There has to be significant business upside for modernizing or re-architecting to be approved." 
 
Hartford P&C CTO Kim identifies four layers of enterprise IT that the committee considers: infrastructure, platforms, applications and business architecture. "The trick is understanding which of those layers is appropriate for different services. In some cases it's a shared platform, but the application might differ between life and P&C," he explains. "That's the art -- not science -- that we're grappling with right now."

The Coming HTML 5 Train Wreck | XML Today

Ambiguity is unfortunately one of the consequences of standards development - the larger the spec and more complex the task at hand, the more potential points need to be nailed down, so a certain level of ambiguity in a working draft simply indicates that it is, well, a working draft. However, HTML 5 is seemingly being pushed inexorably towards recommendation status with most of these ambiguities still intact, with almost no community feedback (beyond the half-dozen or so committee implementers) and with remarkably little rigor being applied to what is, without a doubt, one of the most important potential specifications to emerge from the W3C in a long time.
via xmltoday.org

(via @spolsky) - The Duct Tape Programmer - Joel on Software

Jamie Zawinski is what I would call a duct-tape programmer. And I say that with a great deal of respect.
...
 “At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products.”
via joelonsoftware.com

Although I don't always agree with Joel, this column is spot on...

Adding Simplicity - An Engineering Mantra: Are Data Warehouses Dinosaurs?

Adding Simplicity - An Engineering Mantra: Are Data Warehouses Dinosaurs?:

"As anybody that follows my blog knows, I am not a fan of vertical scaling. I don't like solutions that can only be implemented in a single address and storage space. Unfortunately, there are analytical problems that need a holistic view of data. This is very typical of data warehousing applications. As a result, data warehouses are expensive, often out of the reach of smaller organizations. But there may be an alternative that is less expensive and horizontally scalable. What is this great revelation? Processing streams of events using an Event Stream Processor (ESP) solution."

Enterprise Architecture - A Perspective

Service Oriented Enterprise: Why Enterprise Architecture is a Joke:

 "Anyone who has been in our industry for any period of time has heard the jokes about EA... 'EA's are the guys who program in PowerPoint.' Despite valiant efforts to mature the discipline by groups like IASA, the OMB, The Open Group, The Zachman Institute as well as individuals like Ambler, the discipline remains fragmented and often unproductive."