September 15th, 2008 by Kyle
Tags: Air, BlazeDS, flash, Flex, index, LCDS, monkey
Posted in: Uncategorized
I beleive in the “80-20 rule”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/a/Pareto081202.htm
I think it certainly applies to solving the types of problems I face day in and day out as a part of my job.
Within this realm, I see its application as thus:
For a known set of questions (related to a given topic), 80% of the solutions have already been found (or closely related solutions have been found), leaving 20% of the solutions yet to be discovered.
If there are others in the community who are publishing questions and solutions, then I should be able to find the solution(s) (or other solution(s) that are close enough to make the jump to the one I am looking for relatively trivial) to 80% of the problems I encounter.
Anecdotally, I find this assumption to be not too far off.
So, over the course of assisting customers with Flex/AIR/Flash/BlazeDS/LCDS related problems, I often perform quite exhaustive Google searches on particular topics to see if I can find information to solve or help solve a problem. I come across all sorts of info during these searches. Some of it useful, some of it not.
On one recent occasion, I found I was coming across a lot of good info on the broader topic I was searching on, but it took me a while to find out what I was specifically looking for. I did eventually find something that solved or helped solve the problem, but rather than discarding all the other info that I had gathered, I thought it would be better to collect it together and post it somewhere that would make searches that fall under that broader topic more efficient.
This idea essentially resulted in me devising a new set of pages for my blog. Each page will essentially be a collection of human-indexed topics related to Flex/AIR/Flash/BlazeDS/LCDS. During my searches for specific solutions, I will try to remember to keep the other related results (although they may not solve the specific problem I am tackling) and post them into a more general “topic related” page.
The “jumping off point” for these pages will be an index located here:
I already have a few pages to add and will do so later this week and (hopefully) continue to do so as I, one monkey, attempt to index Google for Flex/AIR/Flash/BlazeDS/LCDS related solutions.
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2 Comments »
October 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
[...] I just published a new “Monkey Indexed Page” (see here if you don’t know what I’m talking about). [...]
November 25th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Hey. I really like the index idea and I can’t believe I haven’t come across this blog before, it seems an excellent resource.
I agree with your 80-20 idea but I have to say it really doesn’t seem that way to a java-to-flex newbie:) We’re vastly outnumbered by flash developers and flash has been so thoroughly discussed for so many years it was a heartbreaking task to search for simple solutions and get hundreds of results for anything from flash 4 upwards.
It’s not so bad now my issues are usually much more specific, but it’s certainly not as easy as sticking “java” into the search used to be.
Sigh. Trying to find a solution for work at 1am. Needed to vent. I’ve subscribed, keep up the good work.