A Positive View of Project Managers

The stackoverflow podcast mentioned this question on the Stack Overflow website. I have had the good fortune to work for several project managers that can keep the work managable and still keep everyone busy.  Totophil's answer sums up the skill set, I think I'll add these to my list of questions to ask when interviewing a company.

Perspective

Today I noticed that the people I work with are employees of a company with roles that require them to perform programmer analyst tasks. I think of myself as a developer that works for a company. I develop software, primarily for a Java platform, using whatever tools make sense for the current task. The people I work with are looking for a set of tools to make their "job" easier. It doesn't seem like a big difference, but it leaves me sitting here wondering why they want to come to work tomorrow.

Communications for the Technical Professional - Day 1

I've been sent to training in Chicago for a few days. The guy that originally signed up for this quit the company. I have to go so we don't lose the money, which means they have to spend more money to not lose money. The best part is the focus is on how to communicate with your boss, who quit and leaves on Friday. Most of the folks in the class are looking for ways to advance in their current companies, because they don't want to look for a new job.

What I learned today:

1. Off-site training is just a way to avoid the problems at work for a week. I can acquire skills quicker by setting a couple of hours aside each morning and working through the book.
2. Hours of boredom in a class and hotel room are a good time to get the resume updated and pushed to the job sites.
3. I shouldn't be working for a company that isn't working on interesting problems. Life is short, the day is long, I may as well do something that I like.

Java with ColdFusion works.

I've been using Java for the last eight years, that's what has been paying the bills. Most of this has been server side, moving data between application and database, sending email, validating form submissions. I've seen frameworks come and go. I even remember reading about the release of ColdFusion for the JVM a few years ago. I meant to give it a look, I have seen some nice sites done using the application server.

About four months ago I changed jobs and found myself responsible for a site built almost exclusively in ColdFusion. It was written by a man that wasn't trained as a developer, but runs remarkably well. I've been factoring the site over the last few months, separating the display from all of the database interaction. I really appreciate this application server. I have moved some logic to stored procedures where it made sense, but for that layer that sits between the user interface and the data store, this really simplifies the developer's life. Java, ColdFusion, SQL Stored Procedure and HTML code can peacefully coexist in this environment.

The original intent of building data driven web applications is still preserved in the current server (I'm using MX 7, looking toward updating to MX 8). With all of the other features it's a really compelling way to develop a website.