Software is too expensive to build cheaply...

Software development is not a profession. It will never be a profession while people like the guy who wrote this lovely piece continue to get paid to develop software.

The reason, of course, is that professions have the requirement that professionals be competent.

Fortunately, I'm happy being a software craftsman

At work, we are a heavy user of ehcache. Well, we would be... it was initially written at Wotif, to overcome problems with the Jakarta JCS project. I recently had to sit down and figure out exactly how it works, and thought I'd take a moment to write it up.

Update: I tested the Hibernate serialization behaviour. See below for more.

From Jason Yip:

And if anyone wants to buy it at that price (that's US currency, of course), please feel free to let me know. Contact me before the end of 2005, and I'll even through in a 10% discount... afterwards, of course, the price may be even higher, as I'm always making new value on the site.

Serious offers only, natually. No tire kickers.

Well, it's about time, but Apple have finally rolled out the iTunes Music Store to Australia. Now I can see what all the fuss is about.

I can see that I am impressed with how easy it is - I'll have to make a point to not impulse buy, because it's just so easy to do. The integration with iTunes is so smooth as to be unbelievable - it is very easy to see that this is why they make iTunes and why it's free. (Heck, the only reason I run Windows on my home PC instead of Linux is to use iTunes)