Ahmed Fouad Abdelraouf's Blog

New Technology Trends

ahmedabdelraouf — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:12:57 +0000

Well, I’m trying to keep up with blogging. I can say that this is not something easy.

I passed by a newly posted report by ThoughtWorks, a leading US company. It talks about technology trends and strategies ThoughtWorks will take in four major domains: Techniques, Tools, Languages, and Platforms. You could find a review of the report by InfoQ here.

Well, that’s all. A short post with valuable content. Right?

At last I know what’s RSS

ahmedabdelraouf — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:27:06 +0000

You might find it strange that a software engineer sitting almost all of his day on the computer surfing the web, programming, debugging, etc. doesn’t know what RSS feeds are. Yes, I didn’t know what they are? I was always asking: Why do all of these websites provide RSS feeds for their websites? How to use these RSS feeds icons on lots of web pages? As a result, I began searching the web for rss feeds. First hit: Wikipedia. I said: Well, that’s great! Wikipedia is a great source of information (and it really is). I began reading, reading and reading but I eventually stopped. I didn’t get the essence of it. Don’t know why! So I felt like disappointed and stopped searching.

After a while I saw a very nice video on Youtube. It was really very nice. I got the essence of RSS feeds but I didn’t begin using it until I was passing by a friend of mine at ITWorx, where he was checking his Google Reader. I began asking what Google Reader is and why to use it? He gave me a brief explanation which encouraged me to begin using RSS feeds. After using it for a while this is why I find it useful:

Are used to visting multiple websites everyday, checking new stuff on these websites? Then, using RSS feeds is ideal for you. By using an RSS feeds aggregator like Google Reader, you could, by just checking it, know all the new stuff on your favorite websites. ALL in one place. Nice, isn’t it?
AND, most probably it will allow to be more committed to reading new stuff on these websites, because Google Reader indicates the number of new feed entries you didn’t read which will encourage you to read all the entries to nullify the number of unread feeds.

Well, I hope I gave you a quick introduction about RSS feeds. Hope you will be using it in the near future! Your comments are most welcomed.

Variable-length Argument

ahmedabdelraouf — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:12:56 +0000

I just came across a new feature in Java I never knew about. It’s the variable-length arguments which was introduced in Java 5. You might it useful. Check the following link for more information.

http://www.deitel.com/articles/java_tutorials/20060106/VariableLengthArgumentLists.html

My First Day At ITWorx

ahmedabdelraouf — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:32:27 +0000

The 27th of September was my first working day at ITWorx, one of the companies I dreamed to work in as I was in the university. What was very surprising to me is how they welcomed us. We were four newcomers, one of them is Omar Maher, a dear friend since the university. One after the other entered the company and then to the welcome room, where we had to wait for an hr representative.
After a while the HR representative, welcomed us and took us for a quick tour in the company. Afterwards, she guided each one of us to his office where there was an arrow from the ceiling stating “NEWCOMER HERE”. Oh, everybody will be coming in a couple of minutes to see these newcomers, I thought. Before leaving each one alone on his desk, she gave each one his username and password, showed him/her how to access the email account, and took a photograph of each one on his “new desk”. While waiting for the people to come and celebrate our first day, I accessed my computer with the username and password , and I changed the password as instructed.
Zuhr prayer time came, so I went to the nice mosalah in the company. After finishing prayer I returned back to my desk and found a bowl full of small pizza pieces and cakes. Colleagues in the neighborhood began coming one after the other congratulating and getting known to each other. The pizza and cakes were a motivation for lots of people to come and talk. It was a nice day and I hope it will be a good start for my career.