CPTTM software developer newsletter issue #14

Dear Software Developers,

This CPTTM Software Developer newsletter is to bring useful news to you, software developers in Macau, for references without obligations, so that you can do your jobs easier and better! Hope you like it. if you'd like to unsubscribe or recommend your friends to subscribe, just let me know. Old issues are available here.

Topics in this issue:

• Writing secure code
  
• How to advance your career in software development
  
• Overview on rich internet applications (RIA) technologies
• Upcoming courses for software developers

Writing secure code

If you haven't received any training on writing secure code, then programs written by you are bound to have security problems. These problems may let hackers take control of your servers, steal your data, deface your web sites, steal the passwords of your users and finally destroy the image of your organization. Now CPTTM has launched a new course to teach you how to write secure code in Java. Don't miss out!

How to advance your career in software development

To advance your career in software development, there are basically three paths:

1. Become a lead developer/architect.
2. Become a business analyst.
3. Become a project manager.

If you enjoy doing technical thing more than talking to people, then option (1) is probably your best bet. How to make it come true? An architect must know about various "trendy" technologies and frameworks, but the most important thing is that he can judge some given code (as little as one line or as large as a class diagram) is good or bad and can improve it. This is the fundamental skill that differentiates an architect from an average programmer.

How to acquire this skill? This skill is quite hard to learn. The best way is to look at a lot of sample code and try to improve it and compare it with the result of real architects. How to get access to these? You can learn all that in our upcoming Refactoring: Improving Quality of Software Code course. This is an outstanding way for you to advance your career to become an architect.

Overview on rich internet applications (RIA) technologies

Rich Internet applications are those web-based applications that supports a highly interactive UI (e.g., drag and drop). To build a RIA, you either use AJAX and do the hard work yourself but the code is the most portable, or choose one from different technologies:

• Adobe Flex. You write the UI in XML and Javascript which gets compiled to Flash and run in the Flash player. It is mainly open source except the visual IDE plug-in and some data services.
• Adobe Apollo. It is like a Flash player that is not run in the browser, but directly on the OS. It allows the RIA to do things like access the local hard disk. It will be free of charge but not open source.
• Microsoft Silverlight. It is like Flex but you write the UI in XML and a .NET language.
• OpenLaszlo. It is like Flex but it can be compiled to Flash or to DHTML. Supporting multiple client types may be good or bad, depending on your need. If you need to support as many clients as possible, then it's good. If you need to use the unique features of say the Flash player, then it's bad. OpenLaszlo is open source.

Upcoming courses for software developers

Feedbacks

Have any questions, ideas or experiences regarding software development? Contact me at 28781313 or kent at cpttm dot org dot mo.

Until next time, 

Kent Tong