ian jenkins

I will try to keep this as brief as possible so you’re not left thinking you need to read an article about staying motivated during a large blog post!

I am nearing the end of a particularly large development project. The project has been over a year in development and seen a number of developers working on it.

When working on a project for this length of time it is easy to find yourself losing motivation for the task at hand. Obviously this is undesirable, because as we all know a motivated worker is a productive one.

So how do you maintain motivation during this mammoth task and keep yourself from losing your sanity?

Well, there are few ways I found that helped a great deal and I would like to share these with you..

1. Break tasks down into small chunks

Perhaps an obvious one but by breaking behemoth tasks into small achievable steps you instantly increase the motivation. The smaller the step the better. Spending a few days on something small does not weigh you down as much as having to spend months on one laborious task.

2. Share the workload

Having a massive project solely on your back is not nice and will only damage the project. By choosing a number of developers to work on the task you instantly remove the pressure of one person having to deliver. This doesn’t mean throw your whole dev team at the problem, but simply share tasks based around spare time in the developers schedule. You should determine the development team for the project at the start of the project and it is important to note that if the project is running late, adding more developers to it is not the answer.

3. Use the right tools

Using things like version control and a good issue tracker are always good practice, but they become even more important when you have multiple developers working on a large project. By using the right tools you will ease the pain that can often arise when multiple developers are working on a project and thus increase the motivation of the developers working on it.

4. Take a break

There’s nothing more de-motivating that getting stressed over a particular task. If things are getting stressful or you are struggling with a particular problem, take a break. You would be amazed what 5 minutes away from the screen can do. You often find coming back to a problem with a clear head can solve it almost instantly.

5. Forget about it

Said in my best american/italian gangster accent, ‘fuggedaboutit’. Don’t take work home, try not to think about the project when not in work. Make sure you spend your weekends doing something as far away from the project as possible. This allows you to come in fresh the next day refreshed and motivated to get on with your (small) task.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but like I said, I tried to keep it as brief as possible. Indeed there are many things you can learn and take from working on a large project and I tried to make the experience a positive one rather than a negative one.

On the 21st November 2009, my son, George, will be 1 year old. Just before he was born I had an urge to write down all the things in life I wish I had been told before I embarked on this mad little journey. However, because I’m a lazy arse, I never got round to it.

So now that his first birthday is fast approaching, I’m about to get all philisophical and share my tips for life. In this first post I will list all of my tips, I will then elaborate on each one in subsequent posts.

It is also worth noting that I left out some obvious points such as ‘Live every day as if its your last’ and ‘Life’s too short’, these I consider to be pre-requisites!

I want to give a bit of recognition to an excellent post which inspired this one a little bit. So make sure you check out 100 ways to live a better life.

And finally, here are my tips for life:

1. Silence often says more than any words.
2. Learn something from every single person you meet.
3. Be kind and sharing but ultimately be selfish.
4. Support Liverpool F.C.
5. Don’t take yourself (or anything for that matter) too seriously.
6. If you’re happy, carry on what you’re doing, if you’re unhappy, change whatever it is you’re doing.
7. Be humble.
8. Appreciate how lucky you are.
9. Be confident.
10. Ask questions.
11. Be reflective.
12. See the good in everyone.
13. Rise above adversity.
14. Support Liverpool F.C.
15. Don’t take things personally or get defensive.
16. School will be the best years of your life despite how you feel at the time, but remember school is only a small part of your life.
17. Enjoy being a child/don’t grow up too quickly.
18. Observe.
19. Do things for you.
20. Support Liverpool F.C.
21. If you cant say anything nice dont say anything at all.

Now listen to this classic (lyrics).

If any young web developer (of which I am one myself) should be stupid enough to ask me for advice, it would be to do the simple things well.

When I was an up and coming footballer (soccer-er), many a coach told me to ‘do the simple things well’. A player who can control the ball well, pass the ball simply and do all the basics well will get a lot further than the player who tries to do too much, tries to take on too many players and tries to score the perfect goal.

Of course there are the odd exception to the rule, but then even players who are known for their skills such as Ronaldo have benefited from being reigned in a bit. Alex Ferguson is often credited with turning Ronaldo from a spectacular player with no end product to an all round superstar (for the record I hate Ronaldo, Fergusan and all thgins Manchester United).

Going back to my original point, if you can do the simple things well then you can go places. This is not only true for football of course, but is also true with web development and indeed most things in life.

Here come the acronyms

Unless you have been living under a web development rock for the last decade you will be familiar with the term KISS. Just to remind us this stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. As much as it is now a bit of a cliche (and I hate Cliche’s) never has an acronym rung so true.

I would take a web developer who comments their code well, organises things well with sensible directory structure and naming schemes over some web developer ‘guru’ who ignores these assets any day.

It all boils down to what makes a good web developer. Where some people may argue that experience and a good understanding of advanced methodologies make a good web developer, I think all of this is in vain if they cannot do the simple things well.

It is true and some what essential that you are constantly learning new things and expanding your knowledge on a daily basis, but this will all be built on a better grounding if you can do the basics and indeed the simple things well. In effect you don’t want to leave any demons behind when you move on to the next stage of your development as they may come back and bite you in the ass.

I recently started using spotify after I saw someone I was following on twitter rave about it, and all I can say is…awesome.

Spotify is basically a music player, much like itunes, where you can search tracks and listen to music. The greatest thing about spotify is that you can listen to (almost) any track in the world! It is just like having your own personal radio. You even get the annoying adverts, which in actual fact, aren’t nearly as annoying as you might think. You hardly notice a short audio advert, and I much prefer it to having a great big flashing banner hit me in the face whilst searching for tracks.

It’s catalogue of tunes is seriously huge, imagine having an ipod with every song in the world (almost) on it and that’s what spotify is. What makes it even more great, is a sweet ass interface and search.

it even scrobbles!

Yep, after numerous requests and attempted plugins, spotify finally added last.fm scrobbling support. This is a killer feature for me as I am a keen user of last.fm. Would love to see more last.fm integration, such as being able to ‘love’ a track directly form spotify, but then we get in to the realms of just recreating last.fm, which is not what it’s trying to do.

If you haven’t checked out spotify then I urge you to, invite only at the moment for the free version (I got 4 invites left, drop me a comment if you want 1). If, like me, you spend all day at a desk, listening to tunes whilst you tap away at a keyboard, then this is perfect for you.

If you want in depth analysis of the news and current affair, then go for The Times or The Telegraph. If you want some tits and an irreverent look at the latest gossip then go for The Sun or The Star. If however, you want a mixture of the both and in an easy to read bite size format, then the metro is what you are looking for.

its like newsround in it

I was always a fan of Newsround when I was younger, it gave the kids the latest news in a simple yet informative matter, and was a nice 5 minute overview of the headlines affecting the world. The Metro is Newsround in paper format. Ok not so dumbed down and the local ads for casual sex would certainly not be found on Newsround, but the way in which it breaks down the news is brilliant.

its branched to your locality

Despite focusing on the national headlines and gossip it also dedicates a section to local events, reviews and jobs. Thus combining a local paper to the Times/Sun combo mentioned earlier. It is really quite brilliant to read a major news headline and then see that the restaurant 5 minutes down the road does an awesome sirloin steak!

it has a fascination with science

I love the little microcosm snippets and the friday metrocosm section. It is really intriguing to read up on this science and I find it quite fascinating. This is partly due to the way they do it, again breaking it down in to bite size chunks, with neat diagrams and graphics.

it loves the web

They have a new section which basically rounds up all the things that are viral on the web for you to muse at. It also regularly features news on things like twitter (can you imagine the Daily Mail doing that?).

its ermm FREE!

Thats right its absolutely free, my favourite price. Its a commuter paper, and as I’m a commuter I think its bloody great. For those of you who don’t work in a city, or don’t commute you may not have come across the metro, and if that’s the case then you are missing out. It’s an awesome paper and definately makes my commute that little bit faster!

Firstly, Happy New Year!

In 2006 I graduated, 2007 I got married, 2008 I had my first child….2009 has a lot to live up to!

To make sure it doesn’t go down the pan I thought I’d better make some resolutions, so here they are in all their glory…

exercise more

Ok lets get the obligitories out of the way

eat less

See above

blog more

Having just become a Dad, I’m finding any spare time to be a rarity. However, I need to pull my finger out and blog more often, starting with this one (if this is the latest entry in a months time, then you have my permission to punch me in the stomach)

get more involved

Even simple things like commenting on blog posts and twitter updates. I read so many of the things, but can never normally be bothered to put my 2 cents across, this needs to change, because my opinion is quite frankly, awesome

get motivated

With the run up to Chrimbo, I seemed to lose all motivation for work and the web, I’m sure having a baby had something to do with this as well, but I definately want to get this back in 09 and I will damnit.

frameworkerisation

Want to start developing with a framework, with Zend being preferred choice for PHP and am still musing over a javascript framework to go with, jQuery and MooTools are in pole position at the mo.

get back into css

I use very little html/css these days, with the bulk of what I do being purely php, which is how I prefer it. However, I would like to get back into css and having read Transcending CSS: The Finid Art of Web Design I think I need to get back into it before it all goes completely over my head.

become zend certified

This is like 3rd year on the trot this has been a resolution, but who knows, maybe this year will be the year. Just need to find someone who wants to pay for me to take the exam…

attend a conference

Again this one hinges on someone paying for me, because I’m a tight git. Would love to go to FOWA, PHP conference, PHPNW etc. and hope I get the chance in 09.

Bad, untidy, ugly, messy code is one of my pet hates. This is by no means a definitive post, but a few guidelines on how to instantly make code less ugly and more maintainable. Please don’t think that by applying these 5 steps that your code will instantly be maintainable, however it would be a good place to start!

1. indent your code

If I open up some code and its not properly indented, I have to wade through the code and indent it correctly. It honestly makes it soo much easier to read and make changes to, if everything is indented properly. Sometimes I wish PHP was like Python and absolutely required code to be indented properly.

I cannot stress this enough, indent your code!

2. name variables meaningfully (but sensibly)

Another one of my pet hates. Variable names like the following…

$mv = 'blah';

I would much rather have to spend an extra few seconds writing a longer variable name which makes sense, so in our example above, something like…

$my_variable = 'blah';

Now, this also requires some common sense. Yes longer variable names are good if it makes them more meaningful, but that doesn’t mean you should go overboard, for example…

$this_is_my_variable_name_right_here_long_and_meaningful = 'blah';

…is just taking it a bit too far.

Meaningful variable names should also be used in the database. For example TABLENAME_id is far better than simply id.

3. comment your code

There is no such thing as ‘self documenting’ code. Sure you can write some code which is really obvious what it does, but if there’s any doubt what so ever, even a smidgin…write a frickin comment.

It will take only a few seconds extra and could save the next developer hours.

There is also no such thing as over-commenting, although quality should always trump quantity.

Also worth mentioning is docblocks, these are excellent and means you can use a documentation tool such as phpDocumentor to create documentation for your code.

4. use a coding standard

Coding standards make life so much easier, especially when developing in a team. They set the development rules. Without rules, anarchy ensues, and the same goes for code. I hate to have to open some code and see something like the following where different developers have added or edited the code…

require_once 'blah.php';
include("foobar.php");

if ($foo == $bar) {
    $random_array[] = 'hello';
}

foreach ($random_array as $word)
{
    echo "hello";
}

Using a coding standard you would not get the mixture of bracket placement, the single and double quotation mash-up and you wouldn’t get the combo of require_once and include().

There are a few coding standards out there, but the one I would go for is the PEAR standard.

5. separate code and html

I’m not going to get into a spiel about MVC (I’ll save that for another post) but what you should definately have is a clear separation between your code and your html. Even if this means just having your code at the top of the page and the html at the bottom, it’s a start. However, ideally you should be putting your html is a separate file, bonus marks for using a templating engine.

I’ve been blogging now for a few months (albeit quite sparsely!) and I think it’s about time I write the obligatory dev tools post. These are tools that I use day in, day out and couldn’t imagine developing without. If you have any which you would like to add, please do so in the comments below…

editor/ide

Texpad – love its flexibility and simplicity. Does everything I need, never crashes and has loads of settings.

ftp

Smart FTP – ok, so you have to pay for it, but it really is the best ftp client out there.

honourable mention

FileZilla – a nice, simple, free solution. Seems to update all the time, which is a bit annoying, but other than that a very nice alternative to smart FTP.

database management

PHPMyAdmin – Was torn between this and Navicat for the main spot, but went for this because it’s free.

honourable mention

Navicat – This has some really nice features and is a lot more enterprisey than PHPMyAdmin, but then you have to pay for it

browser

Firefox – at the time of writing Google Chrome has just been released and so far it looks good, however firefox is still number 1. Everything about it just feels right, and the add ons take it to a different level.

honourable mention

Google Chrome – just released, but looks by far the next best thing after firefox, and who knows, could even surpass firefox one day (Tangent: isn’t google developing a browser a bit of a conflict of interests, considering the money they plough into firefox?!)

firefox extensions

Web Developer – the mother of all firefox webdev extensions. If you’re a web developer and you don’t have this plugin, you may as well go home.

Firebug – Another plugin I couldn’t live without. The inspect function is awesome, the javascript console and debugging is incredible, again this is a must have.

HTML Validator – Validates pages as they load and has some nice features like tidying up the html.

Color Zilla – Lets you instantly get any colour from any web page with the handy colour picker.

Screengrab – Allows you to easily take a screengrab of the page, visible portion or just a selection.

YSlow – A plugin for firebug this allows you to see how fast your page is and where you could improve.

Delicious Bookmarks – Allows me to easily bookmark pages and also gives me access to my bookmarks at the click of a mouse.

Bloglines Notifier – A bit naughty this one, but when you love bloglines as much as me it makes sense.

version control

Tortoise SVN – If you’re using subversion then you need to have this gui tool (if working in windows).

regex

Regex Builder – There are loads of online ones, but I like this one for its simplicity and quickness. Shame it requires the .net framework though.

misc

Stickies – Very useful when having to log time. These handy sticky notes sit on your desktop so you can easily record what your working on and between what hours.

Ok, so that’s my list. If you would like to add to it, or feel there’s a tool out there which you can’t believe I don’t use then please point me toward it.

In the process of setting up a home development server. Basically want a debian box with all the necessary stuff loaded on to it, so any personal projects or freelance stuff I can do on a decent box, rather than develope with a wamp setup.

Anyways, during my setting up of the server, I managed to mess things up, so I couldn’t boot up into it. I knew exactly what the problem was and knew the exact file I needed to change. Luckily, I manged to use the installation disk to boot me into a command line (one which isn’t just readable!).

The command line was limited to only the basics, naturally. However, little did I know that the only editor I could use (or so it seemed) was vi. Now I have never used vi before and can safely say, they I do not plan on using it ever again.

it’s frickin crazy!

I know there are lots of vi fans out there and they would probably berate me (if anybody every manged to find and read this blog!), but it’s the most retarded editor I’ve ever come across. It took me the best part of an hour to remove just two words from a file, an hour!

I’m sure their are perfectly good reasons why it does things in such a crazy way, but it confused the shit outta me. Things I learned from using vi:

1. to delete a character it is not backspace or delete, oh no, its the letter x
2. to move the cursor from left to right and up and down its the keys h,j,k and l
3. You need to be in command mode to navigate around the file, and interactive mode to edit
4. i will do all i can to ensure I never have to use vi again!

Give me nano, pico, emacs, joe anyday.

Not sure why, but it seems to be the season for a re-design. Two of the sites I visit most have just gone or under a major re-design. The sites in question are last.fm and facebook.

last.fm

I must say, when I intially saw the beta of last.fm, I was horrified. I feared the worse and it seemed that they had created a really bad version of the facebook design.

Fortunately, the feedback they received must have sunk in, and they changed the design into what greets us today, and I must say that the new design is a cracker.

I love the simplicity, elegance and originality of it. Bravo to the last.fm team. I’m sure I will now be spending even more time on there, when I should be doing work!

facebook

I never really had an opinion on the old facebook design, as it wasn’t much of a design as such, but then isn’t that the beauty of it? The site isn’t really about the design but about the functionality, so it is a good thing if I don’t notice the design. They say in a football match that if you don’t notice the referee then he is having a good game, well I think it’s true for the design for sites like facebook too.

The new facebook continues this trend and tidies some things up quite nicely. I’m still unsure of the home page, as some of the story feeds on the homepage seem a bit lost amongst all the white space. However, I think the other parts of the site really excel under the new design. No longer do I need to go to a profile page, only to be smacked in the face with annoying applications telling me to write on their funwall or become a zombie.

The sectioning of all this information and lumping all the apps together on one page is a welcome and much needed addition. The fact that the feed take prominence on the profile page is good, although I do miss the wall as in just a wall of comments.

All in all I think it’s a worthy redesign, but will take some getting used to.

conclusion

I’m sure the owners are facebook and last.fm are glad that my opinion is now out there, how they slept at night not knowing my thoughts on the new design I do not know. However, to sum up, I think that the designs are neat, tidy and clean, which is fine by me. Another site not mentioned in this article (now it has been! ) which has recently gone under the design knife, is the bbc website. Despite the web 2.0 gimmickery on the homepage, they also went for a clean, big and easy to read format, and I must say that I’m all for it. I tend to flick through the web at a really fast rate, so anything which makes my experience fast and easy is ok by me.