Inspired by the book Made to Stick – Why do some ideas thrive while others die? by Heath brothers, I would like to give it a try on software platforms rather than the ideas covered in the book. Although the computer industry is still relatively young compared with other industries, it’s quite dynamic and we’ve seen some platforms came and died while others came and thrive. So, what are the general characteristics for such sticky platforms?
The authors of the book summarized the 6 principals to make ideas stick, meaning the ideas change either the thoughts or/and behaviors of the receivers. These principals are Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Credibility, Concreteness, Emotions, and Stories. They are shortened to SUCCESs for easy memory.
Most of these principals don’t apply on software platforms. Unexpectedness, for example, may be the last thing you would like to see of a software platform. For software platform, we definitely need predictability, among other qualities.
After thinking the problem over, I summarized 4 basic principles for a software platform to stick: Simplicity, Extensibility, Ecosystem, and Developers, in short SEED. Read more »
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
During last Friday VMware beer bash, I bumped into Carter Shanklin. He told me he’s ready show off how his Onyx project can help Java developers using VI Java API at Partner Exchange next week in Las Vegas. If you will be there, be sure to attend his session TEXIBP1007 – also known as “Getting Stoned with ‘Project Onyx’” on Thursday at 11:30.
If you haven’t seen it, Onyx is a tool that converts vSphere Client UI clicks into executable code, which means that instead of writing your code the hard way you just use a tool you know and love to automatically generate your code. If you can’t wait to get started you can download Onyx or visit our community.
Top 3 reasons to attend:
- Learn how Onyx can help you even if you’re a Java/C# developer and not a PowerCLI user.
- Using Onyx means no more digging around in the vSphere API docs to figure out what properties you need.
- Learn how Onyx can even help you debug your own applications!
I will cover more details on how Oynx can help with your vSphere applications later.
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
I posted two blogs on the top 10 best practices of using the vSphere SDK (part 1, part 2) two days ago. Here is a list of several common mistakes developers make during their development. It’s based on the stats from our SDK support team.
- Defining wrong interval information in PerfQuerySpec
- Using same unit number for each device attached to a controller
- Mistakes in defining the TraversalSpec
- Using case sensitive DNS names or IP address
- Wrong customization spec setting for cloning a VM
- Mistakes in environment setup
Hope you can avoid them. If you have any mistakes to share with other developers, please feel free to add them in the comments.
Author: Steve Jin is the author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK (Prentice Hall), creator of VMware vSphere Java API. For future articles, please subscribe to RSS or Email, and follow on Twitter.
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