Fernando Zamora

A few days ago I went back to checkout pubnub . I tried out at first some years ago.  Recently I and another colleague got an idea for a chat app.  I pointed out that we can use pubnub.  So to test out the waters, we decided to test out the demo code at pubnub.  You can find the gist at github at the following link  https://gist.github.com/fernandozamoraj/596b9cd61645be57e6dc . All you have to do is copy and past the content into a html document and then open the page in two different browsers sessions to see how it works.

Just today I saw an article on a new product that I thought up a few years back.  The product in question was more refined and more sophisticated than I envisioned it, but the basic premise of the concept was there.  I've had this happen to me a few times with other products. Some may laugh when I say this, but I envisioned and app store long before there were app stores of any kind.  Over the years I've had many ideas but I have yet to fully pursue one and develop it into a finished product. Whenever I bring up the idea talk, it's not unusual to hear about the ideas other people have had.  I think we are all born with a creative instinct.  We all have ideas that we can champion and see to fruition.  I heard once that there is a place where you can go and be in the presence of thousands, if not millions of great ideas; the cemetery.  Many of those buried there had great ideas, and their ideas are there buried with them. I've personally witnessed some friends pu

There are things that we all wish we could do but don't seem to have the time to do.  That could be anything from creating art such as paintings or music to working out or meditating.  With our busy schedules, it always seems that there simply is not enough time to do some of the things we really want to do. Is there something that you have been wanting to do for a while?  What if I told you that you have the time and you can do it easily.  I learned this tip recently. Do the 5 minute challenge.  Commit yourself to just five minutes everyday doing it and cut yourself no slack for skipping the five minutes. Almost Everyone has five minutes...almost everyone.  The point of the exercise is not to get results from whatever it is that you are doing but rather to create a habit.  Try it. I challenge you to do something that you really want to do for five minutes every day for the next thirty days.  You can thank me later. You can get more helpful tips like this one from the book

There is something within all of us. That something, many call a gift and it is accompanied by an inner voice that will calls us to it all of our life. We can choose to ignore it or we can choose to follow it. It takes everything we got to follow it; courage, humility, perseverance, persistence, patience, love, passion. It takes nothing to ignore it, other than your time wasted on this earth. Time wasted doing something you're only lukewarm about. So what prompts me to write this? I'll answer it by asking this question: If you are a software developer, are you doing what you were born to do? Are you doing what you love the most? 

I created a new post on codematterings regarding the issue of null database columns. Go check it out.   http://www.codematterings.com/software-engineer/beware-of-null-database-columns

Traditional thinking tells us that it is safer to dress up than to dress down.  Wearing a suit and tie to an interview when only a button up is expected, is safer than wearing a polo, when a suit and tie is expected.  This kind of thinking comes from true and tried corporate culture, where success says that a well fitted suit and tie makes the best impression.  Wearing a suit and tie is considered a sign of success and power (throw in the red tie to demonstrate you are a real alpha type).  Dressing down on the other hand, such as wearing a polo and Khakies, can send the message that you are a slouch or lazy individual. Show up wearing a polo and you can send the signal that you are too laid back. On the other hand, many of my technical peers will consider you too uptight, if you show up wearing a suit and tie. If your suit is specially well fitted and you speak in an articulate manner, but are questionable in your technical speak, you may be seen as the salesman type (developer

If there is one phrase that I would like to not ever hear again is "all for less money than you spend on a cup of coffee".  I don't know who came up with this phrase but frankly I think it's way over used. I know that the people that say this believe the phrase and most of the time are not trying to be sinister, sneaky or anything like that.  In most cases the value that their services or products offer are well worth their value, if they are fully used. When you consider the amount of consumer investment that it takes for any type of mass produced/sold item such as music, movies, educational videos, tutorial websites, gym memberships, etc, the investment is well worth it.  The producer carries all the risk but if they are successful, they have the potential to reap huge profits. There's two points of view on this.  On one hand the the provider is betting that his profit will come from mass number of sales/subscriptions.  The consumer is betting that his expen

Java has something called inner classes. Most of you know what an inner/nested implies in an object-oriented programming language. When we talk about nested we are referring to something (a element or block) of the same kind as the outer kind declared within the inner body of the outer element. Nested is simply a more specific term for an inner element. You can have an inner if statement within a loop for example, but since a loop and an if statement are two different constructs, that does not qualify the if statement as nested. A nested element must be inner in addition the inner element must be of the same kind as the outer element for it to qualify as nested. An example of this are nested if statements or nested loops. In the case of a nested if statement, a nested if statement is an inner if statement within another if statement. Same with a loop, a nested loop is an inner loop within another loop. This, I think is an acceptable description of a nested element in any language, w

   I have been studying for the OCP Exam.  I passed the Programmer 1 exam and that one wasn't too difficult to prepare for.  Preparing for the Programmer 2 exam  has proven to be a much bigger challenge.  It covers 12 areas with one of them being Building Applications with JDBC .   In my work experience, I have been exposed to a small subset of JDBC. That's mostly because we don't use the raw implementations and instead use a combination of other persistence frameworks.  I tried studying JDBC straight from the book to prepare for the exam and it's proven ineffective.  Studying theory with no hands-on JDBC is difficult.  There is simply too many unanswered questions. It also proves to be difficult because it is vastly different than anything I've done with ADO.net.     So earlier this week I decided that in order to truly grasp JDBC, I was going to get some hands on practice. With this goal in mind, I figured the best option for a sandbox database system was MySQL.

Interesting Observations in my Java Certification Journey Posted on Feb 12th, 2013 by Fernando Zamora As of today I am an Oracle Certified Associate (OCA). That is because today I passed the OCA Java SE 7 Programmer 1 exam. Overall it’s been a journey that has taken me a little over a year. While I can’t speak on what the exam covers, I can talk about the things I learned about Java while preparing for it. There are many other things that you should know besides what I cover in this brief list, but these are the major interesting points that I learned along the way. They are interesting because they are different than what I am used to in my years of experience with C#. Read More