Juan Carlos Herrera's Blog

Project "Hello Buddy/Hola Amigo"

The project "Hello Buddy/Hola Amigo" is a Sun Microsystems' volunteers' initiative to reduce the digital divide. The digital divide is the gap between people that has resources and knowledge to get access to digital and information technology from people who don't. The source of digital divide came from social, economical, and cultural issues. Some technology (specially if come from the open-source world) can help to overcome the digital divide since open-source software does not have cost for using and also can be distributed freely, countries with with broader digital can use for free.

Digital divide states an important difference between rich and poor countries. Every technology company that claims to be responsible and have social responsibility might do something about digital divide. Volunteers project aims to reduce the digital divide through donation, education or other kinds of help to improve the knowledge and access to information technology.

The project itself is based on Wonderland a Sun's open-source project to create virtual 3D world. Wonderland gives us the platform to build a live virtual and 3D classroom where children of different countries can meet and share in a virtual space for fun...and learn. At the same time we can take advantage of this tool to teach and educate children, if we have technology that provides a broadband connection, audio, and publishing tools, we can develop and attend classes closer to a real world. Finally the project will have a children driven approach, in fact both English and Spanish speakers will teach each other their native language.

The project "Hello Buddy/Hola Amigo" is a good example of how Sun's technology within a open-source initiative can contribute to reduce the digital divide. Of course this project (as many) is powered by Java!

If you want to know more about this project take a look our wiki page and also you can join us at Java.net CommunityCorner JavaOne 2008 we have a mini-talk to share with you our experience.

A new Duke was born and bred in Chile

Finally, our jug (www.jug.cl) decided to change the logo & mascot. We conclude that Duke is most representative of Java Technology and we love it!

With the help of Professional Graphics Designer (Marjorie Valencia) we have a lot of proposals to choice.

The story start here (how designer works)

And...some prototypes! based on Chilean's traditional costumes

...in action!

Now we are trying to choice the best design, how hard it is! all design are awesome!

Soft Skills to deal with Open Source Project

Hard Skills is not enough to face an Open Source project, obviously is a cultural aspect the measure of noise in your team communication can vary between countries and cultures.

As a FLOSS Developer I'm facing with a lot of "politician" criticism isn't about technical things is about to deal with "stupid" questions as: why?, what you do you want?, are you crazy?, work for free?, are you rich? and a long etc of a sort of "Poisonous" words.

Today, I can't give you any well documented advice, but take a look this video, from people with more experience than me:

Spanish version HERE

Teaching Java at a Third World Nation: Globalization and Myths

First of all, I was born and live in Chile, that is a also "Third World Nation", although Chileans thinks differently ;), Just take a look at: http://www.gcr.weforum.org/ (The best ranked country of Latin America)

Three weeks ago I was teaching Java at Managua the capital of Nicaragua, a very beautiful place with very nice people. I was teaching Java also in other countries of South America, but it was my first time in Central America. When you think about these kinds of countries as "Third World Nation", small geography and population with a recent past of guerrillas, you can easily imagine a lot of wrong things about Nicaragua. But what about IT people, technology and Java? This is my opinion:

A good point about Globalization is the "natural" knowledge transference, everyone in Nicaragua can learn from authors such as Joshua Bloch through Internet, for instance I saw a few books about certifications as Linux, Java and Microsoft (nobody is perfect :P) bought at amazon.com

I'm teaching Java over five years, in numbers it could be an average of one thousand of people (from Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil) and I can't see any difference between these people and Nicaragua people, and in some cases the most advanced students had a level over the average. The questions always were smarts, very hard in some cases and fun!. The aptitude to learn was excellent, they were very punctual and finished late because of the questions, questions and more questions!

They are developing a bigger project for e-goverment powered by Java!

Chile and Nicaragua share the "a.k.a", knows as:"The Switzerland" of Central America (Latin America for Chile)

I hope to come back to Nicaragua....Vacation could be :D

Spanish Version/Versión en Español HERE/AQUÍ

World's Smallest Duke

Made in Chile by Match Sculpture Artisans

The Human Side of Security and Performance

People always ask me about the meaning of "Human Side" of Security and Performance.

About Performance common mistakes are poor algorithm design, wrong use of try/catch, primitive debugging techniques (a lot of "System.out.println"), etc...is not an issue in JVM is "between the keyboard and chair".

Performance-tuned programmer is more important than performance-tuned application, then Profiling Tools are just a medicine.

About Security, programmers doesn't feel the responsibility of be aware about security, the chance to "produce" vulnerabilities doesn't matter. Is important to know that cryptography or any security technology will not work, if you don't know how to use properly.

No other IT role or profession have the same chance to be a real expert security than programmers.

People are not robots, are human beings and learn technologies is not enough to get good levels of security and performance. Is necessary to inculcate to developers principles, techniques, methods, etc to get well-written security & performance software.

Java has a lot of security & performance features, but is necessary to learn a little bit beyond a tool or API.

I will write more about Security and Performance...but, with the "human side" in mind.

Classic Joke Turned to Programmers...

hahaha!

But is truth? Java Programmers earn more than C++ programmers?...Managers?...SURE!

Sun Tech Days - Boston

Always these kinds of events are a new and good opportunity to learn, I learned from the airplane to every session that I attended.

I learned this:

1) The Airplane video broadcasting system is powered by linux see it
2) The USA Universities has the same issues to train their students in technologies than Chilean Universities (and probably Latin American Universities), as Sang Shin said on his session "Java and NetBeans Demos You Shouldn't Miss!"
3) JavaFX looks pretty cool, excellent presentation by Sridhar Reddy
4) The JEE 6 and Annotations in Servlets are coming soon!
5) The winner of "Temple of Sun" was: Kenneth Schumacher
6) Some guys joined the "Solaris InstallFest" and they've installed Solaris in their IBM Laptops
7) GlassFish rules, see it
8) Sun Studio Compilers and Tools, has over 25 world records in one year! amazing!
9) Solaris is Interesting (through "What Makes Solaris Interesting" session)
10) How to build advanced applications on multicore systems (through "Building High Performance Applications on Multicore Systems Using Sun Studio Compilers and Tools")
11) Brazilian healthcare is favorite of James Gosling
12) Java Real Time is HOT, nice robots! (I'll be working soon with JRT :D)
13) Java and Full Open Source + GPL v3 more info
14) Good Mix: Solaris and Quad-Core AMD Platforms
15) ZSF: Just Good Stuff!