Jason M. Hanley :: Custom Software Developer

The other day, I was wondering to myself, “What are the most popular web frameworks right now?” Finding accurate numbers is actually pretty hard, so I decided to go to the expert: Google.

Sometimes you can (very unscientifically) determine something’s popularity by simply noting how many references Google has to a particular keyword or phrase, so here are the current results:

Web programming languages:

• ASP.NET: 86 million
• Ruby: 101 million
• PHP: 2.95 billion

Specific web frameworks:

• Symfony: 4.6 million
• CakePHP: 4.8 million
• Ruby on Rails: 5.4 million

I was really surprised that PHP beat ASP.NET by such a wide margin. I was also happy to see that Symfony (my framework of choice) was holding its own against CakePHP and RoR.

It was really surprising to see that Ruby had more references than ASP.NET. Perhaps I’m not searching for the right string. I’d be interested to hear others’ results.

Since I work from home, I’d say my car is generally parked at my apartment building an average of about 23 hours / day (95.8% of the time). Normally my car would have been nestled right back in the corner of the right-hand spot in the picture below.

It just so happened that yesterday when the lightning storm hit, I was out at a networking event that ran late. Looks like that event saved me from a significant insurance claim!

I called Fido today to ask about data plans. The standard rate is 5 cents / KB = $51.20 / MB. To give you an idea, at mobile speeds (about twice the speed of a modem) you can download about 50 MB / hour. So downloading at full speed costs $2,560 / hour - plus tax. The best plan you can buy lets you pre-pay $100 / month for 200MB, and then $5 / MB thereafter — still about $250 / hour.

Fido used to have an unlimited data plan available. This was canceled shortly after Rogers purchased them. How much money did Rogers have to pay to bribe the competition bureau to approve that sale?

It seems like more and more people have been blogging and writing about this. Even the mainstream media is starting to wake up:

• Bell to charge you $3,600 per hour for Wireless Internet access
• Fido data comes down in price, $4000 now buys 1GB of data not 200MB
• Canadian cell phone rates are higher than Mexico

Call your MP today and ask them why the big three (Bell, Telus, Rogers) are continued to be allowed this monopoly.

A couple of the worst possible ways you can manage people:

• Ostrich mentality (a.k.a. Head in the sand): Refers to the “ignore it and it will go away” attitude. Some managers think that if they just “leave it until next week” somehow the problem will just go away. No. It’ll get worse. Act on it now.
• Ditch digging theory of management: This is the belief that every task in business is the same as simple manual labour (like digging a ditch). In other words, they think that to make a project go faster, they just need to add more people (”horsepower”). No. Often adding more people to a complex project will just slow things down. Some things just take time.
• Warm body theory of management: This is a person pet peeve of mine because I see it everywhere. This is the belief that people (”warm bodies”) in the office, sitting at their desk somehow equals productivity. Some managers frown on personal time, and reward people who are there every day from 7am until 9pm. No. This will just cause burnout. Those people sitting at their desks are not being productive. They’re playing solitaire… or reading this blog.

Economic trends are notoriously hard to predict. Lately, I’ve been reading about (and seeing) some things that make me wonder if we’ve already entered a slow-down period. I’m no economic expert, but I have a few personal key indicators that I’ve seen change significantly over the past six months:

1. Emails from recruiters: My resume is well indexed and during boom times I get 3-5 emails per week from recruiters (Usually for jobs that don’t match my qualifications at all! Can’t recruiters read?) I’ve seen this drop to less than 1 / week in the past few months
2. Syllogistic job leads: I’ve been steadily optimizing and improving my online presence and advertising. Until recently, the number of leads was increasing along with this. Lately, this has started leveling off and perhaps even decreasing a bit.

Now, keep in mind that these two factors are heavily US-based (most of the leads I get are from the States). My guess is that the United States could be headed for (or is already in) a recession. And that means Canada won’t be far behind…

Or maybe this is just a small blip on the graph I’m mistaking for a trend. We should know for sure by this time next year.