Joe (Leizhou) Xu

Not long ago I went with a couple of friends to a bar in lower Manhattan. While we were sipping Coronas, Jerry, our system architect friend, told us he had just inherited a high-profile J2EE system, along with one of the top Java teams in his company. "Now we know who's buying the beers tonight," we cheered. Instead of a round of beers, Jerry decided to surprise us: "My first J2EE project might very well be my last." Apparently, Jerry had overestimated the flexibility of the project's code base, and for a guy obsessed with time lines, it cost him dearly - he missed his first deadline by weeks. What bothered him more was the fact that the team seemed to be giving up. "There are bandages everywhere," one developer told him before taking off. "But I thought the team was v... (more)