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Our second day in Dubai saw us back at the Gold markets in the morning and then at the City Central Shopping Centre for lunch. Dubai is supposed to be a shopper’s mecca but I have been yet to see anything ridiculously cheap. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been exposed to the US’s coupon/voucher/rebate schemes so much that nothing else seems relatively cheap. Everything is still pretty reasonable but I really have nothing I want to buy just yet.

We made our way back to the hotel where we had organised a desert safari for the evening. Costing AUE230 (AU$90) this safari offered by several companies (we went with Orient Tours) is something I highly recommend everyone do. The one that we picked combined several different facets that are hugely popular with visitors to Dubai including desert four wheel driving, visiting a camel farm, and several stops at picturesque points along the way, before reaching the campsite for dinner. Activities abound at the campsite including camel back riding, sand boarding (pretty fun too!), getting a henna design, and shisha smoking before chowing down on a tasty Arabian barbeque dinner to be followed by traditional belly dancing (oh, and be warned, pretty much everyone has to get involved as well!)

The safari package is superb value, especially if you are into four wheel driving. I haven’t ever done it back home (is it on Fraser or Straddie?), but I’m not sure if you would ever get the same sort of driving. I’m yet to work out whether our driver was cocky or just crazy for not wearing his seat belt for the entire trip. To give you any indication, my sister and I felt the need to wear our seatbelt to protect ourselves before we even left the city! I don’t think that I would ever be driving a 4WD like that, but the driver certainly made the afternoon and evening a fun one. Imagine an entourage of 16 cars all ripping it up in the sand hills of the desert. After dinner it was even more thrilling (worrying?) that we had to make our way back out of the desert at nighttime, at the same crazy pace we came back in. At least you can tell from this post that we got back home safely anyway.

On our third day, we continued with another tour of the United Arab Emirates. This tour was extremely cheap at only AED130 (AU$48) for an entire day although it did not include lunch. This tour saw us stop in Masafi to browse the ‘Friday Market’, a collection of market stores along the roadside selling various rugs, fruit and vegetables and other various trinkets. I picked up a pomegranate as it the first time I had seen one in real life. This tour was pretty much driving a long way into many of the other Emirates and even a cross over into the border of Oman for a short while. We stopped at a beach resort where we had the chance to go for a swim in the Indian Ocean. We also indulged in a Lebanese-style Mezza spread for two (that really could have filled four people) which was pretty good.

Average temperatures of 40+ meant that the sand was just as hot. Running into the sea from the sheltered beach lounges was the only way of minimally scalding your feet (which I still managed to some degree), only to find yourself standing in some really warm water (my guess, about 30°C). The water was extremely clear and blue and it was refreshing to be in it, if not only to avoid the hot sand.

We drove back through what appears to be the only mountainous regions of the UAE, with the bare rock indicating the strength of the erosive desert winds. Apparently these are the richest areas for agriculture as it receives the most rainfall and has access to the most groundwater reservoirs. Approximately 100mm of rain fall in the UAE, therefore most of the agriculture depends on processed sewerage water, and drinking water coming from refined seawater.

Our final destinations for the day saw as stop at Al Badiyah, the oldest mosque in the Emirates, at old Fujairah city where restorations of old buildings are currently taking place, and then at the old citadel at an oasis in Bithnah. This tour gives you a better idea of what life outside the largest cities is like, and an understanding of how harsh living in the desert can be.

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Writing software for businesses usually has some balance of perfectionism versus writing enough to get the job done. Other people refer to the latter as pragmatism. I think most good developers tend to sway from one extreme to another, as being extreme on either end is likely to either not deliver a system, or leave a very unmaintainable one.

I tend to come more from the pragmatist camp, but would love to be an idealist in the real world (but then economic constraints of time and money come into play). Leaving footprints is something that I have been thinking of lately. It’s a term I think of when we make choices that are less than ideal, by leaving behind something (an impression in the sand) of what made me make that choice I did at the time. If I remove that condition (or series of them), then perhaps someone can make a better choice.

I currently tend to use two different techniques for “leaving footprints”, the first with being comments, and the second being automated tests. Focusing on the fact that I am leaving behind an impression of some sort has helped me in the past to really distinguish between the choices that I have to make and to really explain the forces behind them all.

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After a grueling eleven hour flight disjointed journey from Brisbane through Singapore, I finally arrived in Dubai at the local time of 6:30am. If the heat that blasts you leave the plane to join a transit bus was any indication, today was going to be a hot one. Summer temperatures in Dubai range from 29°C to 40+°C on any given day. Today was certainly no exception and although we were walking around in the 41°C day maximum, we were lucky enough that today was not such a humid one.

I met up with my sister at the airport (who flew Air Italia), and we quickly made our way to our hotel. Australians, like many other foreign nationals, are given free entry upon arrival to Dubai. It is something that the United Arab Emirates intentionally does as it tries t move away from oil as its number one source of income to incorporate a wider portfolio including tourism. I was thankful that my sister had done a lot of planning as I had enough to take care of, tying off loose ends before moving countries. After checking in at the Le Meridian Fairway on Internet rates (it’s definitely worthwhile getting these), we caught the complimentary bus into town.

We ended up in the city rather late, and ended up in a Vegetarian Southern Indian restaurant to grab something for a lunch (it was well past breakfast time by now). Dubai is heavily populated with many foreign nationals, with a percentage of something like 60% being Indians, Pakistanis and Filipinos. Budget eating is not very well advertised, with most of the advertisements you see catered for restaurants in your Marriott, Hyatts, and Burj Al Arab (the only 7-star hotel in the world), although I believe there is a good lonely planet guide that might have helped in our journey. We stumbled across a decent looking place called “Vege World” where we feasted on three different bread and curry dishes including Aloo Paratha, Puri Bhaji, and a Cookie (an southern Indian chilli-bread like dish) for a measly AED15 (AU$6) between the two of us. Dubian (is that a word?) people are lovely and the person who served us also helped tell us what it was we were exactly eating. It’s always pretty exciting ordering things you have no idea about and then being pleasantly surprised.

We walked all throughout the souks (think marketplace) in the Deira area, with the gold and spice souks being the most visually stunning. The gold souk is, of course, the most obviously eye-popping with such intricately detailed necklaces, bracelets and rings lavishly draped all over a number of hanging bars in the store windows. Although we did not enter any of the stores (my budget certainly wasn’t extending to buying any jewelry), we have read that it is apparently a bargain.

We also managed to hit the Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum’s house, the Dubai museum, Bastakiya, Creekside Park, and the mega shopping complex that is Wafi City. Taxis are relatively cheap with fares starting at AED3 (about AU$1.20) and is slow to actual tick over. An even more bargain way of traveling around Dubai across the water is the Abra. A short small boat driven by a single person only costs a person 50 filas (a half Dirham) and gets you from one side of the creek to the other.

Food here is pretty amazing. We stopped for afternoon tea at the Basta Art Café, a hidden treat nestled in the buildings of the Bastakiya area where we indulged in some delicious mint Moroccan tea, some Arabic tea and some baklava. Although we ate inside an air-conditioned tent because the heat is pretty ridiculous, it does have a court yard that would be lovely to sit in during the cooler months. We also ended up having dinner at The Spice Club, a restaurant in the hotel where we indulged Indian banquet of 11 dishes for about 80AED (AU$30). Completely stuffed we went to bed, ready to hit the city for the second day.

I’ll continue to post some more pictures, but for now you can check them out here.

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It really hit hard this week that everything was really happening. I felt a mixed bag of emotions leaving my current client yesterday, both excitement yet sadness. I had been there for almost 18 months, and had formed some great relationships with the people there. It had become a fun environment to work in, and the work itself was interesting.

In about four hours, I depart to work for the London office of my current company. It will be such a stark contrast from the small and disjoint Brisbane office that I have enjoyed working in since I joined. There will be over 25 times the number of employees in the office than what I am used to and will be thrilled to meet them all, especially those whose blogs I find myself reading.

From what I have read and heard from various people, the city of London offers so much more in a week than what you would get in a good month in Brisvegas and the travel opportunities to not so distant foreign cultures is just a few hours flight away. I’ve heard the food can be amazing, but I have prepared myself for the difficulty in getting some types of really fresh food. I’m looking forward to the music scene, and in one night being able to quickly compose a list for the rest of the year of such big name acts I’d be keen to see.

For the time being though, I’m looking forward to having a small break with a five day stop over in Dubai. I’ll try to post some pictures in my photo gallery, and some more stories depending on how easy it is to get access the Internet.

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I’ve had this entry in draft mode for a while, and seeing as I am likely to have limited access to the Internet next week, it’s probably best that I get it out there. After all, I believe that all constructive feedback (both positive or negative) is useful.

The traditional software architect role is an interesting one. Developers, who choose not to go down the management line for one reason or another, typically take up this role. Defining what an “architect” does in a traditional software environment seems to be pretty well known. Trawling some job advertisements you see role descriptions like, “translate business requirements into a framework”, “high level analysis and design”, and “technological evangelization”. My observations of a real ‘architect’ at work is that they generally do spike-like work, develop a little (but usually not so little) framework here or there, or suggest implementation patterns in the form of a tutorial or cookbook.

As a mad keen developer, who is into Test Driven Development (TDD), constant refactoring, and evasion of Big Design Up Front (BDUF), I question where does this role fit into newer software development processes? I respect these people, because they have been around for much longer than I have. They probably have a wider repository of patterns to drawn upon and the wisdom of learning from many different projects. I question this, because I think the typical responsibilities fail in an environment that I like to work it.

Architects in their traditional sense, typically fail because they work leagues ahead of the development team. Sometimes they run with BDUF, but other times, they do spike work that sets a pattern for a simple use case, but fails to address the needs of many other ones. Since they rarely look back at the things they have done, architects rarely get any feedback, and one of the most useful of eating your own dog food. It sometimes gets to the point where the architect starts dictating architecture with diagrams instead of actual code, failing to see the difficulties of how untestable or how inflexible it might be when actually implemented!

Here is my revised list of descriptions on the software architect role in a modern software development team:

• The architect should be an embedded member of the development team – Like it is important to have a customer representative and a tester during an iteration, the architect must be someone a team member can go to for direction relating to a technical feature when unsure. Although it is okay for architects to work on technical spikes in advance, they should also be looking at the implemented result under all real circumstances.
• Identifying, extracting and naming patterns out of the system – Refactoring code is excellent at a microscopic developer level as you can draw out a better, more maintainable piece of code. Refactoring during an iteration by developers working on stories tend to have too much of a narrow focus to influence a large entrenched system. Excellent test coverage and well-written tests also give the architect an ability to execute on this, without having to leave the code in the state that it is.
• System-wide Odor Purification – Bad smells reside in code all over the place for one reason or another. Identifying bad smells throughout a system, highlighting them, developing a strategy for getting rid of them, or better yet, actually removing them is important. Once again, developers do this on a microscopic level but similar smells may co-exist in several parts of the system.
• Mediating technical discussion – Although BDUF is never useful, it is sometimes to useful for a team to talk about different problem solving strategies (a general approach) to take. Reality will always step in and cause something to deviate from a ‘plan’, and the architect should support brainstorming activities and should be able to step in and prevent discussions that become ineffective, and do turn into BDUF.

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It’s frustrating that the

<jsp setProperty="*" name="webJavaBean"/>

does not set nested object properties, yet you call still mix it up with something like

<c:out value="${webJavaBean.complexClass.anotherNestedProperty}"/>.

There’s so much more that can be done with it, instead of having to use the apache BeanUtils class which has its own set of issues.

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Tonight I caught up with Mike, Marie, Matt, Aaron and Suhail for dinner before I head overseas at the Spanish Tapas Bar. I had never been there before, but thought it would prove to be an entertaining evening. Located in the busy Brunswick Central, the Spanish Tapas Bar does not strike you as a very different restaurant from the outside. It, like many of Brunswick Central’s other tenants, have tables both outside and in, but considering Brisbane nights have proved a little chilly recently, we opted for a table inside.

The restaurant does serve several types of mains, but it was more fun and definitely more social to order a variety of different tapas to share. The menu has a great selection of both hot and cold tapas and several platters that reduce the difficult choices you have to make when selecting which tapas to order. Between the six of us, we had a really large variety of tapas including several different croquettes and empanadillas, calimari, sardines, chicken and lamb kebas, fried spanish cheese (Queso Frito), Spicy Potatoes served with Aioli and a traditional spanish potato and chorizo omolete. Listing them all out seems like we really pigged out, but after splitting each dish between the six of us, typically meant about one mouthful of food from each dish.

The food was excellent and there was not one tapas that I did not enjoy. The best dish for me was probably the fried spanish cheese because it had such a strong flavour and I enjoyed its unique texture, combining the gooey insides and the crisp outer shell of the tasty cheese. You are unlikely to walk away from the Spanish Tapas bar completely stuffed unless you order a main (such as the Paella) or plenty more tapas, but you will definitely walk away marvelling at the wide assortment of flavours that you had just consumed.

Details: Spanish Tapas Bar
Found on: 455 Brunswick Street (Brunswick Central)
Contactable via: 3257 3138
Highlights: Great variety of many different tapas that were all very tasty. It was also quite refreshing to have a tasting of Sangria as you were seated. The tapas comes out quite quickly after ordering.
Room for improvement: The restaurant’s ambiance did not feel strongly spanish, and the wait staff’s attentiveness to the table after you have ordered could be improved.

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Last night I had a farewell dinner with the people that I’m currently working with at the Mecca Bah restaurant in The Emporium. It was the first time that many people had eaten there, and the quality of food, as always, did not disappoint. With a party of 18 people attending dinner, I thought it best to have dinner early in the evening, straight after work as this place does not take bookings. Although we were split over two tables, I think everyone had a great night.

Dinner started off with various mezzes including turkish breads and dips, Bastilla (Moroccan chicken pastries), Silverbeet rolls filled with chickpeas, rice & herbs, Kataifi pastry filled with Middle Eastern cheeses, and Spicy Turkish kofte and yogurt sauce. I followed up the entrees with the Roast Zucchini with Middle Eastern cheeses, lemon and mint turkish pizza which had a really strong lemon flavour and was a refreshing and filling main.

Thanks to everyone (Lindsay, Sam, Joe, Anthony, David, Bronwyn, Mandy, Jules, Ivan, Martha, Kate, Hamish, Gary, Jen, Ajit, Julian and Brett) for the lovely evening and especially wonderful company.

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