Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Nine Circles of Hell: Front-End Development for Sharepoint

My condolences.

If you’re reading this book, it can logically be assumed that you’ve been tasked with completing a project that involves working with Sharepoint; in fact, it’s probably safe to make the assumption that you’re a front-end developer who stumbled upon this text after hysterically Googling “MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT SOME1 PLS HELP,” tears streaming down your pudgy cheeks, fat fists wildly bashing the keyboard of your MacBook Pro. 

a quick-start guide
by J. Ky Marsh
jkymarsh.com

All is not lost, my friend. I found myself in exactly the same position some time ago; well, aside from the crying, anyway. What are you, some kind of wuss? Christ.

The fact of the matter is that up-to-date, clear-cut information on front-end development for Sharepoint is frighteningly difficult to find. Sharepoint itself is chock-full of bad practices and front-end code taboos that will leave you scratching your head (and potentially crying, since you’ve apparently shown a propensity for doing that, Nancy).

Furthermore, Sharepoint’s default front-end code (that is, the HTML, CSS, and JS that are used by default within a fresh install of Sharepoint) is so horrific that you’ll likely begin immediately assessing how to rewrite or overhaul the existing code in a desperate attempt to bring it in line with modern web development standards.

Don’t panic. I’m here to help.


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How to hire a product manager

It's been a while since I was hiring at a startup, and recruiting at a startup is very different from hiring at a big company

By Ken Norton

Group Product Manager, Google

At Yahoo! Search, it seemed like we were constantly hiring. I did an average of 5-8 interviews a week. It was a never-ending drumbeat of resumes, interviews, and offer letters. Now, I wasn't always the hiring manager. I only hired a handful of product managers in my time there. But somebody was always hiring a product manager and I was usually on the interview team.


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How Beer Gave Us Civilization

HUMAN beings are social animals. But just as important, we are socially constrained as well.



...lifesaving social instincts didn’t readily lend themselves to exploration, artistic expression, romance, inventiveness and experimentation — the other human drives that make for a vibrant civilization.

To free up those, we needed something that would suppress the rigid social codes that kept our clans safe and alive. We needed something that, on occasion, would let us break free from our biological herd imperative — or at least let us suppress our angst when we did.

We needed beer.

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Fools in the Hotzone: Saruman as the Bold but Incompetent Firefighter

Every year the Man sends me to Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response class. These HAZWOPER classes are almost always taught by firefighters because they routinely deal with emergency responses to hazardous materials.

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 | Posted by Adrian Simmons

Every year the Man sends me to Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response class. These HAZWOPER classes are almost always taught by firefighters because they routinely deal with emergency responses to hazardous materials.

...most of the examples of what not to do when knee-deep in an emergency dealing with hazardous materials comes from the hard lessons of other firefighters. More specifically, they come from the gung-ho firefighters who charge into a dangerous situation, make said situation worse, and other firefighters have to spend time and energy rescuing them instead of dealing with the main problem.

Because I’m a nerd, and I’ve taken this class a lot over the years and my mind wanders, I immediately saw a parallel to the wizards of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.


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