What happened with the Data mining?

Well, I simply stopped the project for a while, since I need to see the legal aspects of it. I am not quite sure if it is legal to simply take some catalogs from somewhere, reformat them and use them as your own. I think I can do such thing with some free public catalogs, but I will not act, until I have the written permission from the authors. Here are two screenshots of the spider in action : The above screenshot is when the spider is gathering data. It displays how much data is gathered and what the spider is doing in the given moment. The above screenshot displays the results of the crawl as a treeview. It uses MS Access database to store the data (since it is a small project). Technologies used for the spider :

/>.NET 1.1 (Windows Forms), MS Access, Internet Explorer Automation COM Libraries (AxWebBrowser, ShDocVW COM mshtml).

Training your collegues from the beginning

A collegue of mine recently wrote very interesting post about the relations at work (here). He is currently project manager but he was also software developer for years. So he knows a lot about those specific problems at work. I think I also can give my opinion on the subject as a intermediate software developer. Some problems: First of all - it is really hard to refocus after being taken away from your work once. That's true. It is also true that some time a single line of code somewhere deep in the project once found may be lost easilly, which means more hours of work. I think that in our work we should first respect each other. So if I respect my collegues I will not ask them to come to my desk each five minutes. I will think on

what exactly do I want to ask them, after they come and answer to me I will think what else can be difficult for me and ask that collegue who is already on my desk. It is really disturbing someone to ask you to come each five minutes to help him / her and to see that this person doesn't care what are you talking about. Or to hear - "I can't think now". Every time I hear this I know I will be asked to come back to that particular desk in not much than five minutes. So trying to extract knowledge and routine from other people's mistakes I have the following rule - if I can't think and see that I am absent-minded - I simply take few minutes and then I ask my collegue to help me. Also when I hear : "I'm not here." - I simply ask that collegue to have few minutes break and then ask me to help him/her. So rule number one is to estimate why is your collegue facing that particullar obstacle - is it so hard or he / she simply needs few minutes of break so he/she can focus. It doesn't make any sense to bounce between your desk and that of your collegue if he isn't there, right?
On the other hand - ignoring any team member leads to disballance in the team. We should be as responsive as possible in order to push our projects ahead. But the trick is to make your collegue deal with the difficulty or at least remember the solution so he can use it next time. That is what actually upgrades us as software developers.
Another very frequent problem is the psychological barrier. I had collegues who simply deny to try deal with the problem. For example I've heard : "I don't know JavaScript". And he/she simply stops his / her work when it requires JavaScript. In such cases I am trying to convince that buddy that this is very efficent and useful technology to point some advantages using it and to make it look easier. I am saying : "See, it's not that hard, you simply use this property and everything you needed is done."
I believe when you go to another desk to help someone you should not only think about the problem itself but the condition the other party is in. So being helpful developer requires some kind of psychological knowledge.

Senior software developers against juniors

That often becomes a great problem. Some of the senior software developers simply can't teach the youngers on how to deal with their work. In most cases it happens becouse the seniors are too self-reliant. They often believe their work is ten times more important. In most cases it is true. But investing in future seniors is also very important. If you train junior developer well - he will become senior too and will help you with your work.

Isolation at work

There are people who doesn't seem to be a part of the team. At first the headphones- I think it is good to put headphones on your head so you can isolate from the noise for example. It is not right, however, to make them a wall between you and the team. You should be open to any team member. I also have headphones at work. They help me a lot to isolate myself, but I am also trying to watch if somebody is comming to my desk and I take them off in the moment I see him/her. If he/she is few meters away and see that you are taking off your headphones he understands that you are ready to help and what is even more - that you will be glad to help. It is a simple psychological stimulation. We should spend much time in thinking about those little stimulations which can improve the relations at work a lot.

Other developers don't need headphones to build a wall between them and the team (or at least the younger part of the team). I think those should be punished somehow. The should also be responsive and help their collegues. I've worked with developers who answer to your question with half word, making you feel the most stupid developer on the earth. They say : "How can you missed this, it's so easy, I can't believe you ask me for this." Once you hear this answer you will not ask that developer for anything. What's even worse - you won't want to see him/her outside.