The BuzzwordMasochist is the best friend of the StandardsAndMethodologyGuy. He is everywhere. You might be one too. Most people in high-tech are BuzzwordMasochist(s). Admit it!
Recommentions for the BuzzwordMasochist: How to select an ApplicationServer?
Choose a young company
- They are hyper-innovative. They innovate on top of other innovations. They don't know old stuff and will reinvent everything for you.
- The company's name should include the words "net" or "web". This guarantees that they have less than 4 years of experience. The less, the better. At least they should have less experience than yourself.
- Be suspicious if they claim to have 10+ years of experience. Probably they use binary numbers. (Or, they did a sum from everyone connected with the company. No really; small startups really do this!)
- Big companies are no fun to work with because they are too stable. No risk no fun.
- IBM is evil. Oracle doesn't develops the real Java, it's just a database and a hardware manufacturer. Nothing else exists on the world than start-up companies. (Check also derivates and the new market frequently.)
Don't care about Java
- Pure Java is only about coffee. A better name would be cholesterol-free. A Java Application Server is basically a coffee machine.
- Choose a 4JL. It's almost the same as a 4GL. If nobody knows what a 4JL is, you can "own" this new buzzword. You will be famous.
- Who likes programming anyway? Consider coffee instead. Let external contractors do the dirty work.
- Enjoy debugging. Work only with beta versions. Delivery is the end of joy.
- Make it more fun by using a framework without source code. You can not only be a detective but rather a secret agent or spy.
Choose a product by name
- To the company naming rule add liberally "Active", "object", "component". The ideal product is ActiveNetObjectWebComponentCoffeeMachine, Ver. 37alpha.
- Measure the importance of your project by the price tag of the product. If your project is not worth that $$$ product, it's not worth working on the project anyway.
Make "VapourTechnology" a key requirement
- If no product supports it, you can choose anything you like. Wouldn't you like to have a new palmtop?
- Strongly believe in "the next release will have it".
- If you don't know the VT, include all RFPs, beta and 1.0 specifications around.
- To exclude most products ask for object-level transactions. The only choice -- OODBs -- are nonexistent for management. You won't have to use an OODB because you have an RDB already.
Misc
- Don't make pilot projects. The word "pilot" devalues a project. Call it "strategy" instead.
- Everybody should make his/her own strategy. The nice thing about strategies is that there are so many to choose from (and they look good on your resume).
- Apply PoliticalEngineering techniques to promote your strategy upon others.
- Don't base product choice or strategy on experience. Experience is futile.
- Avoid people with experience. They will invariably be against you.
- Ignore operations. If you follow these recommendations you will not make it that far anyway.
- Ignore the customer. That should be obvious.
New buzzwords
- develop an instinct for new buzzwords.
- use them wisely and have new ones ready. Example: we all know that client/server is dead. Now we build multi-tier achitectures. But you know better. Don't tell the customer that this really means MultiTearArchitecture unless he finds out himself during roll-out.
- if you want to amuse everyone in a meeting, then keep straight face and say "Let's ask the StandardsAndMethodologyGuy in your company about this."
- create a new discipline: buzzwordology.
What about the ThreeLetterAcronymZealot -- is this a related concept? --PhilipEskelin
Hey, cool, I'm going to start a company to build WisdomBases -- JimCoplien
Fantastic. This was me five minutes, er, I mean years ago --RichardEmerson