Engineering blogs of top technology companies

We dont have to always learn the hard way. We can learn from others experiences. Here are some links of great engineering blogs from solid technology companies where you get to see how they use technology FOR GOOD. Hope this helps!!

http://engineering.linkedin.com/
http://engineering.twitter.com/
http://engineering.tumblr.com/
http://nerds.airbnb.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Engineering
http://google-engtools.blogspot.in/
http://googledevelopers.blogspot.in/
http://googletesting.blogspot.in/
https://engineering.groupon.com/
http://developer.bazaarvoice.com/blog
http://techblog.netflix.com/
http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/
http://codeascraft.etsy.com/
http://engineering.foursquare.com/
http://word.bitly.com/
https://tech.dropbox.com/
http://code.flickr.net/
http://37signals.com/svn/sysadmin
http://devblog.xing.com/
http://www.twilio.com/engineering
http://blog.socialcast.com/engineering/
http://corp.klout.com/blog/category/engineering/
http://eng.yammer.com/blog/
http://engineering.slideshare.net/

Please feel free to add, if you find something great missing here.

Agile - for Indian teams

Agile - Scrum, have been the buzz words among software teams for a while now. While I love keeping things really Agile, the bigger question has been, at least for me, how far does this fit into Indian teams and especially with - Pyramid Structure - which has been a very successful formula for Indian majors, at least in terms of their financial results, or probably the only place of success !!

I have been a part of many discussion, with friends or friends or sometimes even in interviews on what I think of Agile and my answer has always been - NOT A RIGHT FIT* - * conditions apply !!!

What Agile wants (my views):

• Independent contributors
• Everyone is equally talented
• Everyone does everything (Analyze, Design, code, Test... everything)
• ego less (not less ego :-) )
• Broad Thinkers (think beyond the given task)
• Helping others 
• Dare to take risks
• Disciplined/Punctual
• Passion
• Love what one does
• Forget QA (QA should just ensure product is without bugs, not work to only find bugs)

I hardly see someone with about tenets, instead, something like below is more prevalent:

• Indians do not have a habit of being on time - we are never late, we are on Indian timings
• Most love what they GET for what they do rather than what they DO - confused?? think deep !!!
• Attitude of treating a technology cheap, without knowing the true value - best example HTML/CSS/JS
• Ego or selfishness in part of the paracel, taking them away is close to impossible
• Writing unit test cases is a crime, not a job of a programmer attitude
• Always see QA as gateway to find bugs - think as if, that is what they paid for....
• Risking something is hardly seen, let us play safe all the time, WHY ME attitude !!!!
• Biggest of all, lack of passion, for most, a job is a purpose met

I have lot to speak on these grounds but do not have much time to write. 

I dont deny that we have stronger Agile teams in most of the companies around, that is what I meant by *conditions apply

Start it the right way !!!

I really had many experiences of starting something the right way, of course, I had the other side of it too...

When I started my career years ago, I started with Java - OOP language - but for more than a couple of years from then, OOP/OOD for me was just about 4 properties, I dont think there is a need to mention what they are. It is only at a later stage in my career, I even came to know something about OOAD principles, THE SOLID principles. I felt embarrassed, ashamed but then realized that I dint start it the right way. Had to unlearn many things before taking the right path. Now, whenever I get a chance to talk to young programmers, I make it a point to tell them my experiences and its consequences. They, at least, don't have to learn it the hard way.

I got a chance to manage a high end web based application, where UI is rich and built in Javascript. My experience kicked in, said, "Start it the right way".

Goal: Get a good hold on HTML CSS and Javascript

Approach:

I started with searching for good programmers in those technologies, came across many -  Douglas Crockford, Paul Irish, Nik Zakas, Rebecca Murphy, John Moore and some more to list... not that I want to disgrace others but the list is a bit long

I tried to understand their recommendations, suggested books, sites, blogs and what not and just read those and do the way they suggested and recommended.  Check this, it's is really interesting: http://w3fools.com/

My past learning helped a lot to do things the right way and now, I can surely say that, we are not going the wrong way, if not the right or the best way.

Maybe, I would suggest the same approach for others too :-) Good Luck :-)

Wish to see someday where my name is in the list :P.. sarcasm :-) !!!

Using gallery as Horizontal list view in Android

The question has already been asked on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3877040/how-can-i-make-a-horizontal-listview-in-android

We have had a real problem getting a horizontal list view in one of our mobile applications and were initially planning to come up with one of our own. We have even come across some implementations online for Horizontal List View as a reusable component. But when tried understanding it more, we came with a approach where an existing Gallery component can be used as horizontal list view and that too with little efforts.

Gallery by default center locks the element selected and, unfortunately, is not extendible to even override that behavior. So the alternative way is to adjust the margin. Here is a sample implementation:

public class CustomGallery extends Gallery{
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.
.
    public void setMargin(Context ctx, int width) {
        LinearLayout.LayoutParams localLayoutParams =
                        (LinearLayout.LayoutParams) getLayoutParams();
        localLayoutParams.leftMargin = (width - tileWidth - 2 * gapBetweenTiles) * -1;
        setLayoutParams(localLayoutParams);
       
    }

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.
.
}

That is just a sample implementation, you can have it in your own way keeping the approach same :-)

Good Luck !!!