have browser, will travel Jim Roepcke's weblog, since 1999

links for 2008-04-25

• Erlang Forum - Trap Exit - View topic - POP3 client library
  Looking for mail client libraries for Erlang, this thread is a keeper.
  (tags: erlang pop3 examples)
• Dryverl
  (tags: erlang c programming xslt binding)
• Notes from Scaling MySQL - Up or Out
  So Facebook has 1800 database servers, 1200 web servers, and 805 caching servers. In my mind I imagined they would be using more. Perhaps that's because I didn't know they use Erlang?
  (tags: database facebook scalability mysql flickr youtube sun fotolog wikipedia erlang)
• Inside Facebook Engineering
  I had never visited this page, but there it is, the list of languages they use... "PHP, C++, Perl, Python, Erlang, Java, and even a little bit of ML"
  (tags: facebook languages)
• Report: Twitter fires VP of engineering
  Fallout from the recent Twitter outages...
  (tags: twitter scalability)
• Facebook Development (in Erlang)
  There will be a followup link to a blog post announcing the open-sourcing of this code.
  (tags: api development erlang facebook programming web erlang2facebook)
• Erlang Facebook Code Open-source
  Facebook API client for Erlang
  (tags: erlang facebook api programming opensource erlang2facebook)
• erlang2facebook - Google Code
  (tags: api erlang erlang2facebook facebook library programming)

Legal route narrowly avoided

I was on the phone with legal counsel yesterday when an email came in saying I would finally be paid (in increments, but paid nonetheless). Nothing like good timing!

Lessons learned:

• Demand up-front payment from new clients before starting work.
• Don't wait over 6 months before threatening legal action when a client doesn't pay a significant invoice.
• Invoice on a regular basis, even on a relatively short-term contract.