Technological Myopia

Today, as part of his column on The Microsoft Search Tar Pit, John Dvorak criticizes the attitude at Oracle and Sun that “shrink wrap software is dead”. Dvorak points out that shrink wrap software has been around for at least 30 years, and the attitude of Oracle and Sun seems to be tied to the fact that they don’t sell shrink wrap software. This seems to boil down to a kind of technological myopia on their part.

Now, the thing I find interesting about this is, a few months ago, I heard Dvorak and Leo Laporte say on Leo’s “This Week In Tech” show that most people use Firefox, not IE. The basis of that comment was that they and everyone they know use Firefox. This is just so much more technological myopia. Now, it could very well be that the vast majority of techy-types use Firefox over IE, but that is certainly not the case in the real world, where most people are quite happy sticking with the browser that came with their PC.

5/9/2006 10:46:07 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  technology

Remember ATL?

I’m trying very hard to forget. However, I received a huge shock today: ATL Internals, 2nd edition, is available for pre-order! I’d figured with all of the .NET hype at Microsoft, the book was dead. Apparently, not. For those still doing COM development, the book covers ATL 8 (which I assume is the VS 2005 version).

According to Barnes & Noble, publish date is July 2006, but you can pre-order now. And, for those of you who don’t mind the way they treat their customers, you can pre-order from Amazon too.

Hey, anybody remember when Amazon got sued because there was already an Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis (for 30 years prior!) that was being confused with the internet store? Ah the good old days…

5/9/2006 9:11:33 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  books | development

Microsoft has (finally) released Web Application Project (WAP) 1.0

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before. The Web development interface in VS 2005 is vastly different than that in VS 2003. I’d say gratuitously different. My .NET study group took a look at it when VS 2005 first came out and were thoroughly confused by it.

Well, for whatever reason, Microsoft has been working on a thing called the “Web Application Project” for VS 2005. It adds a project type very similar to the VS 2003 Web project, but takes advantage of .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 features. (I’d like to think that its because they realized the error of their ways, but come on. this is Microsoft.

According to Scott Guthrie, this will be part of the VS 2005 SP1, and will continue to be supported in the future as part of VS 2005.

Well, version 1.0 is now released.

5/9/2006 8:51:01 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general | development

Resharper 2.0

I’ve been trying the Resharper 2.0 beta at home, in order to present it to my study group. I’m currently using Resharper 1.5 at work, and have become very dependent on it. The refactoring and cross reference features are fantastic, better than what’s built into VS 2003 (at least the cross reference features. It’s easy to be better for refactoring since VS 2003 has nothing there).

Resharper 2.0 add tons of new features, including a “Test Driven” style unit test runner built into VS (who needs Team System  ). I highly recommend the tool; anyone using VS for .NET development should look into it. You can find it at http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/.

5/4/2006 9:02:53 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Star Spangled Banner Nonsense

I can’t believe that I’m writing about this. Up until now, I’ve ignored the whole “Star Spangled Banner sung in Spanish” pseudo-controversy, because its extremely dumb (knowing the history of the Star Spangled Banner itself).

But, since I’m reading other lame comments on the topic, I feel compelled to add my own.

The lyrics of Hawaii’s state song (state anthem, if you will) is in the Hawaiian language. This makes sense, especially since it was written by King Kalakaua (the Merry Monarch  ) in 1874 and was the kingdom's anthem from 1874 to 1893. There’s also (several) English translations of the song, but (as far as I’m aware of) its always sung in the native Hawaiian. Is this “unamerican”? I don’t think so, and I doubt that any (rational) “natives” (that is “locals”) of Hawaii would think it was. It just makes sense that a place with a non-English tradition as long as Hawaii’s (a tradition that predates the United States of America) would have a non-English anthem.

I say if folks want to sing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish, French, or Serbo-Croatian, let ‘em. After all, they’re singing our song (all of ours).

5/3/2006 5:46:31 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Presidential one-two punch

That’s right: the category is “TV”. So, this is about those “great” presidents, Bartlet and Allen.

The ending of the West Wing is pretty bittersweet for me. At the start, this was a great series, one of the best on TV. But, it fell on hard times a few years back, and (from my thinking) never recovered from the firing of Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the show.  Granted, the writing is still some of the best on TV, but its still a far cry from what it once was. And, I’m sorry, but Matt Santos was an embarrassment of a Presidential candidate. And Josh Lyman has no business either running a campaign or being chief of staff. It was pretty clear that Arnold Vinick was the better man for the job, and then he only lost because of a cheap “writing stunt” of a nuclear accident in his home state. At least Santos is shaping up to be a better President than he was a candidate; I guess he learned that from Bartlet. Josh is still a piece of work. The show keeps trouping people through that would obviously make a better Chief of Staff than him (heck, Donna would make a better Chief of Staff!), but because its the finale, the “story” has to end with him in that job I guess. On the one hand, I’m sad to see a good series end. On the other hand, I’m relieved that I won’t have to watch the train wreck that will be the Santos administration.

On a happier note, it looks like Commander in Chief will also be going bye-bye. Yay! Hooray!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I was looking forward to this show when I first heard about it. It has a great premise: First female President. Gains office through succession. Nice. It reminded me of an old movie, The Man, about the first black president, who gains the job through similar means (in his case, he was President Pro Tem of the Senate; we weren’t ready in those days for even a black Vice President). It had lots of potential. But, the producers of the show turned an interesting concept into a Good vs. Evil show where “Evil” equals “right wing” and “Good” equals “not right wing”. The show is basically a left-wing fantasy show that has very little in common with the real world. I’m soo glad that its going away.

5/3/2006 3:41:02 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV

Here we go again

Microsoft Watch is reporting that the Gartner Group is postulating that the consumer edition of Vista will be delayed until Q2.

Now, first of all, I don’t think this will happen. For those fogeys out there that remember the Windows 95 launch, it was reported late in the game that Microsoft had huge memory problems with Windows 95 that would cause a significant delay, and that didn’t happen. Also, it’s pretty clear to me that the VS 2005 release should have been delayed until it was both stable and complete; it wasn’t (its still not either; I’m waiting for SP 1 due out this summer).

Secondly, I don’t think the average customer cares about Vista anyway.

But, I think the following will happen:

1. Microsoft will “make” their current “release date”. Quality will probably suffer, and maybe some features too, but it will be “released” in January 2007.

2. Due to the quality issues and missing features I mentioned above, Microsoft will get really horrible press over the release. Frankly, it would be next to impossible for MS to get good press. Let’s face it: the press enjoys a good MS-bashing article: it sells copies.

3. At some later date, MS will release SP1, which will be what they should’ve released in the first place. Consumers won’t care (except those unlucky folks who were stuck with the released Vista when they bought new computers), but the press will then gush all over Vista, saying what a great product it is and how everyone should move up to it.

Why do I think that this is how it will go? Because this is how it all went in the past.

5/2/2006 4:18:09 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  technology

May Day

…

I just looked down at my desk calendar and noticed that today is “Early May Bank Holiday” in Ireland. So, “Happy Irish Early May Bank Holiday!” Boy, those Irish sure can name ‘em!

On a related note, as all Hawaiian school children know, May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii (this is a song that school age children get to / are forced to sing at Hawaiian school pageants. So, to all you readers, Happy May Day. May all your May Days be Lei Days  .

5/1/2006 10:42:17 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

At Last!

I was all set today to (finally) send some e-mail to the OSCON (Open Source Convention) organizers, complaining about a lack of open source .NET coverage, and lo and behold, there’s a “Windows” track in this year’s conference. Not exactly what I wanted, and I don’t know how they can call it a “Windows” track when it includes two Mono sessions. Okay, yes, Mono does run on Windows, but come on; its a Linux technology. Microsoft does an adequate job of providing a .NET implementation for Windows; you might have heard of it.

Anyway, it looks like this year I’ll be attending OSCON, especially since it’s in Portland  …

4/26/2006 9:34:25 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Unit Tests, Code Coverage, Cruise Control, etc.

I don’t think that its any surprise to the folks that know me that I advocate unit testing. Two of the big problems involved in unit testing are: making sure that your tests are up to date, and making sure that you have adequate code coverage.

For C# developers, NUnit is a great resource for unit testing. Based upon the original JUnit test framework, NUnit has surpassed its parent in a lot of ways. Anyone doing professional programming in C# (or VB for that matter) should be using it.

To handle coverage, there’s NCover; also a great tool. Unfortunately, NCover’s results appear textually.

Well, this has now changed.  There’s a new tool available called NCoverExplorer that provides a GUI front end to NCover. Version 1.3.3 even provides a way to add its coverage summary to Cruise Control’s web page.

As an aside, CruiseControl.NET is also a great tool. It provides continuous integration for .NET projects and works with both Subversion (for source control) and NAnt (for automated builds). It helps to solve the first problem mentioned above: making sure your tests are up to date. The way that CruiseControl.NET works, every time someone checks changes into Subversion, it gets those changes and automatically does a build. The build process can also include automatically running the suite of NUnit tests. Finally, it publishes the results to a web page. There’s also a monitor application that the developers can run locally so that they’re notified of the “health” of the build at all times. It’s amazing how much this helps to keep development on track.

To recap, here’s a list of tools that any professional C# developer should be using:

1. NUnit
2. NAnt
2. Subversion
3. CruiseControl.NET
4. NCover
5. NCoverExplorer

 

4/26/2006 9:11:40 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Microsoft does it again

Well, the folks that gave us such brilliant product names as Microsoft.NET (search for THAT on the internet) and Windows DNA (what the heck does that mean???) have decided in their infinite wisdom  to rename the Monad shell to”Windows PowerShell”. What a stupid, stupid name. When will the powers that be at Microsoft wake up and realize that their marketing people are idiots?

4/25/2006 11:23:20 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  technology

God

Lately, Scott Adams (of Dilbert) has been on a God/religion jag. His latest question/statement is (edited): do you believe in (1) Psychics? (2) God? (not a multiple choice, this is a two-parter.)

The Psychic thing I’ll leave alone.Scott seems to want to draw parallels between the two, and that just muddies the waters further.

As far as belief in God goes, this is an interesting conundrum. If someone believes in God, this is pretty straightforward. They say “yes, I believe in God, and here’s what I believe about God…”. Now, if someone says that they don’t believe in God, they then have to define what they don’t believe in. This generally goes something like “I don’t believe that God is an old, white man with a long flowing beard.” or “If a benevolent God exists, why is there so much strife in the world?”.

So, here’s the thing: what if we defined God to be “the force that causes the Earth to revolve around the Sun”. Now, who “believes” in God? Perhaps someone could argue that they don’t believe that this force is God, but then how is their opinion relevant when they’ve already said that they don’t believe in God?

So, the way I see it, people who believe in God have defined God in a believable (at least to themselves) way. People who don’t, have defined God as something not believable. So, its less about “belief” and more about definitions, and a “desire” to believe.

 

4/21/2006 9:52:15 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general