RE: [xml-dev] <offtopic>Opinions About Cold Fusion</offtopic>

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

I agree with Michael.   Tools is tools.  All stuff really.   The more
important questions are about the tasks, the customers, and the ability to
influence directions.

There is a bit of a sea change past a certain age in a career where one
becomes a beginner again, more interested in the fun and the challenge and
less the career and advancement.  Once one sees enough and experiences the
tradeoffs, being comfortable in the skin is the requirement.  

A personal observation so maybe not generalizable, but two things I've noted
about engineering that are the same as being on stage with a guitar.  At
some point, it stops being about the crowd and it starts being about having
fun on stage with your mates.  If you do that the audience has fun; if you
don't, they don't.  The material you play, the instruments etc, are
important but the real time event is the fun.  Second, maybe serious but so
is to never trade on your values.  You won't get those back.  Money will
come and go, jobs are jobs, customers change, but any time I ever traded on
my personal values, it was a bad deal.  I don't advise one be too pompous,
but a genuine reserve of what is personally important makes you much
stronger and you age better.   The rest is a show, fun and hopefully doing a
bit of good work, but if you let the crowd pick the material and the set
list, they will turn what you do into a clown act for their own amusement.
If you like a clown act, que bueno.  If not, move on.  It's your gig.

BTW, it was a good interview.  Nice people.  Serious work.  Fingers crossed.

len


From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com] 
 
> As I said in my private post to you, I wouldn't use CF these 
> days...but I also wouldn't use jsp, ASP.NET (forced by insane 
> clients with either weapons or platinum...i might)

I think there's a more interesting question here: should you really decide
whether or not to take a job based on the tools they are using? I nearly
refused a job writing database software once when I discovered they were
coding in Assembler; but it was the most interesting job I ever did until
Saxon came along, and I became quite a good assembly coder. And there were
valid reasons why they had made the choice. My point is that the problem
you're tackling is usually where the job interest comes from, not the tools
you are using to tackle it. 

Of course, if you think the outfit you're proposing to join have poor
technical judgement or if you think you won't be able to influence their
future direction, that's a different question. 

I would even consider coding in C if the problem were interesting enough...