No code here (or breaking knives and bending spears)

Unless you were the kind of geek who was bullied mercilessly at school (and, since you’re reading a technology blog, there’s every likelihood you were), chances are that you don’t spend too many evenings in the pub drinking non-alcoholic beer. Because what would the point of that be?

Well, I have bad news for you, my friend, because this entry is just like non-alcoholic beer, because it contains no Apex code at all. It’s made up entirely of the musings of a man who has been an Apex developer for a year. There’s a small chance that it might be of interest to developers who are taking their first tentative steps down this road. And the rest of you? Well, to ensure that these next few minutes are not a complete waste of time, why don’t you do a buttocks-clenching exercise while reading? I hear it does wonders for your physique. Clench … relax … clench … relax … clench … clench … clench … relaaaax.

I have been working fairly steadily on Apex projects since my last entry (well, whenever I wasn’t away on holiday: click here or here if you enjoy the occasional stab of jealousy). None of them has been ground-breaking or earth-moving – just your usual confection of PL/SQL, javascript, ajax and googling. The questions I face these days are mostly mundane (example: how do you set the default number of rows returned by an interactive report? Answer(ish) here.)

All of which has led me to this realisation: Oracle Application Express is, in itself, quite boring. Just like Oracle Forms and every other development platform and language ever invented (with the exception of Oracle ADF which is the evil spawn of Satan). I know this should not have come as a surprise to me, but during those heady first days of constant challenges and adventures of discovery it is easy to lose sight of this fact of life: even beauty fades to ordinariness with time. No wonder there’s talk of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt breaking up, and Halle Berry’s ex cheated on her repeatedly.

The excitement’s got to come from the project itself.

The good news, on the other hand, is that Oracle Application Express does seem to be gaining in popularity. In the past fortnight alone I’ve received 3 phone calls from recruitment agents desperately looking for Apex developers to fill well-paid positions. Which is encouraging, considering the world economy’s supposed to have imploded and whatnot.

Hey, how’s the butt-clenching going? Feel the burn, my friend, feel the burn! Keep this up and you’ll soon have a bum firm enough to break a knife or bend a spear.

And isn’t that what life’s all about?