My reading list #1

I’ve decided that I need a quick and easy way to remind myself of the useful articles that I’ve read recently or are on my stack to read. Since I use my blog as an aide memoire anyway, I thought why not just put up a blog post once in a while after reading something useful. So here’s the first one…

Web

• The Kayak Framework: An easy way to speak HTTP with .NET
  Kayak is a lightweight HTTP server for the CLR, and the Kayak Framework is a utility for mapping HTTP requests to C# method invocations. With Kayak, you can skip the bulk, hassle, and overhead of IIS and ASP.NET.
• REST APIs must be hypertext-driven
  What needs to be done to make the REST architectural style clear on the notion that hypertext is a constraint? In other words, if the engine of application state (and hence the API) is not being driven by hypertext, then it cannot be RESTful and cannot be a REST API. Period.
• REST – The Short Version
  Getting a clear handle on the definition of the REST architectural style can be daunting. While there is no shortage of descriptions available, I did not find many of them helpful at first. Also, as I began talking about REST to colleagues, I often had a difficult time producing clear descriptions for the key points. Over time, however, I sharpened my summary into a version that seemed to make sense to most of my listeners. I offer here my rendition of the REST model.
• Applying the Web to Enterprise IT
  This is a blog that contains a number of useful article on ReST.
• Building a website for the iPhone
  This tutorial will cover the basic setup and creation of a web page for the iPhone that will detect and change the content based on the phones orientation.

Professional Development

• Unskilled and unaware of it
  People tend to hold overly favourable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.
• Did your boss thank you for coding yourself to death?
  Here is some perspective, you’re not doing this for yourself, you’re doing it for “the man”. Admittedly he might be a nice man, but you don’t owe him slavish commitment. Here is even more perspective, how often are you actually playing with interesting problems and cool tech and how many times are you churning out code desperately trying to get something delivered and meet some arbitrary deadline that someone has assigned to you?