May 15, 2008

Avoiding Vista?

InfoWorld recently ran an article by Eric Lai of our sister publication ComputerWorld called Developers explain why they're avoiding Vista. I'm afraid that for me, and probably for most of you, this falls in the "D'oh" department. The subhead of the article is "Fewer than 1 in 12 programmers is currently writing applications targeting Microsoft's Vista operating system." Again, "D'oh." If I'm going to develop a product, I want someone to pay for it. That can be the company that wants it, or end users, or both. (OK, I've occasionally been suckered into developing for equity, but the equity never... more

TAGS: Observations, Web, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

May 14, 2008

How badly do you want a MacBook Air?

At least partially in response to my coverage of TopCoder last week, I have been getting a spate of programming contest and community announcements. ZocDoc is an API for doctor appointments. Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric (EAF) is a grid-based application platform for the development and deployment of scalable applications in Java, Spring, .NET or C++. Notice what these two have in common: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 ZocDoc Announces Developer Contest - Win a MacBook Air! Today, ZocDoc kicked off a contest for software developers to create new applications that help patients book doctor appointments anywhere on the web. ZocDoc users... more

TAGS: .NET Framework, C++, Cloud Computing, Java, Observations, XML Web Services

May 13, 2008

Visual Studio 2008 SP1: To beta, or not to beta?

As I mentioned in An old Visual Studio problem rears its ugly head back in February, I've been looking forward to SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 and NET Framework 3.5. Why? These are supposed to fix most of the problems I've been having with Visual Studio, and restore most of the functionality that was cut from the initial 2008 release. SP1 is out, but only as a first beta-test version. As is true with most beta-test products, there are risks to running it, ranging from a high likelihood of encountering new bugs to a low likelihood of trashing your system... more

TAGS: .NET Framework, C, C#, C++, Databases, Dev Tools, JavaScript, RIAs, Visual Basic, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Vista, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows XP

May 12, 2008

20 registrars control 90% of illicit domains, says Knujon

I recently received a note from Garth Bruen, who with his father runs the anti-junk-mail site Knujon (no junk, backwards). Knujon has so far shut down over 50 thousand junk mail sites. The complete message follows: Martin, KnujOn is preparing for a presentation next week training conference at the High Technology Crime Investigation Association Ohio Spring Training Conference, and we thought it might be prudent to share some statistics featured in the presentation. Since 2005 Knujon.com has been collecting spam samples from the public. Not to build better filters or blacklists, but rather to use them for illicit site... more

TAGS: Fighting Junk Email

May 09, 2008

TopCoder: developer productivity and code quality through competition

Wednesday I had lunch with Mike Morris, Senior Vice President of Software Development at TopCoder. That's his picture at the left. He had an interesting story to tell. I was vaguely familiar with TopCoder through their programming contests. I was never interested enough to sign up for their site, and had no idea what kind of business model they had. Mike filled me in. He and the other founders of TopCoder had been at Tallán, a custom software development and consulting company. Tallán grew to something over 600 developers, was acquired by CMGI in CMGI's brief heyday, and then spun... more

TAGS: Observations, Software Engineering

May 07, 2008

Joyent has changed for the better, VP says

When I wrote about the Morph Application Platform on Tuesday, I carelessly tossed off a reference to my mixed experience with Rails hosting at TextDrive, now called Joyent. Kristie Wells of Joyent asked me to clarify my experience privately, and has since given me permission to post our exchange. Here's my clarification: Kristie, you asked about my TextDrive hosting experience. It was for [name removed], in 2006. My name didn't appear on the account, but I supervised the software development. I'm no longer associated with those thieves. The deployment was successful, but lengthy and painful. I realize that the hosting... more

TAGS: Rails

May 07, 2008

Stupid filter tricks

As I discussed yesterday, I signed up for a Morph Application Platform developer account, but ran into a snag subscribing to the DevCenter service. The snag was simple: my name is Heller. The second reply to my trouble ticket explained and fixed the problem: Hi Martin, After looking at your reported support ticket, we found out that the subscription name you entered contains the word "hell". Our system explicitly filters all words that contain "hell". Sorry for the inconvenience. We have have made the necessary changes for you to register the "mheller_dev" subscription name. Thank you. If you have any... more

TAGS: Observations

May 06, 2008

Rails, and now Java, in the cloud

I had a conversation today with David Abramowski, CEO of Morph Labs. We were supposed to talk about how Morph Application Platform, which uses Amazon EC2 and S3 for on-demand cloud computing and storage along with its own routing and provisioning infrastructure, compares with Google App Engine, which uses Google's own cloud infrastructure. That part of the conversation was short, though, because beyond the fact that they're both on-demand cloud computing platforms, the two have nothing in common. I was put in mind of Shakespeare sonnet 130, My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. Google App Engine, as I've... more

TAGS: Cloud Computing, Databases, Dev Tools, Java, Python, Rails, Ruby

May 06, 2008

Backbase meets AIR

Backbase, "The Ajax Company," announced today that it officially supports Adobe AIR in its development environment. This was implicit in last month's announcement of Version 4.2, but now it's explicit. Here's the full release: Backbase Enterprise Ajax Now Supports Adobe AIR Allows deployment of Ajax based Web applications on the desktop SAN MATEO, Calif., May 6th, 2008. Today, Backbase, The Ajax Company™, adds official support for Adobe® AIR™, a new runtime environment from Adobe Systems for deploying rich Internet applications (RIAs). This integration lets applications built on Backbase Enterprise Ajax run as applications on the desktop across various operating systems.... more

TAGS: AJAX, JavaScript, RIAs

May 04, 2008

Pair programming at a distance

One of the drawbacks of working by myself is that I can't usually do pair programming. This is usually offset by the increased concentration and "flow" that comes from being by myself and undisturbed for long periods, but sometimes I just need another pair of eyes to look at my code. Last Tuesday was one of those times. No sooner had I published my little blog entry on "clans" than I started to hear bug reports that traced back to some ActiveX code I'd written for PC Pitstop. It wasn't straightforward: two people reported "IE aborted in an unusual manner"... more

TAGS: C++, Dev Tools, Software Engineering

April 30, 2008

Ajax Web suite boosts customer interactions

Last week at the Web 2.0 Expo, Ajax framework vendor Backbase introduced a new application suite called Customer Engagement 2.0. As far as I can tell, the 2.0 in the name has nothing to do with the version, as this is all new; it has everything to do with the suite being about Web 2.0, meaning Ajax and Web-based interactivity. The applications are built on top of Backbase Enterprise Ajax. According to the company, Backbase’s Customer Engagement 2.0 "delivers a comprehensive Suite of Rich Applications that brings customer facing web applications to the next level. Customer Engagement 2.0 helps companies... more

TAGS: AJAX, JavaScript, Web

April 28, 2008

Which clan are you?

No, this isn't another dumb questionnaire. Bear with me. Recently I saw an article in which the author attributed the development of computers to people with Asperger's Syndrome. I can't seem to find it again, but no matter: I can find lots of other articles linking Asperger's to hacking and "The Geek Syndrome". In his 1964 science fiction novel Clans of the Alphane Moon, based on a 1954 short story, Philip K. Dick writes about a society that has evolved from a psychiatric institution. The various diagnostic groups have formed seven clans and taken appropriate roles in the society: the... more

TAGS: Observations

April 25, 2008

Imote2 .Builder Kit makes creating wireless sensor networks a snap

I spent several hours today exploring the Crossbow Imote2 .Builder Kit, a "complete development environment for high performance wireless sensor networking (WSN) applications leveraging the Microsoft .NET Framework," as the company describes it. (I'd never say "leveraging" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence myself if I could avoid it, because of Microsoft's rather checkered legal history of "leveraging" its near-monopoly -- but oops, I did it again. Back to Crossbow.) The Imote2 .Builder Kit sells for $990 in the U.S. in small quantities. It includes three Imote2 processor boards, two Imote2 sensor boards, two battery boards, batteries, a USB... more

TAGS: .NET Framework, C#, Dev Tools, Embedded Systems, Hardware

April 24, 2008

Going over to the dark side

A note from daughter #2, who had a choice of a Mac or PC laptop for her Ph.D. program next fall. "SK" is Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and SK largely uses Macs: I just confirmed with SK that I want a Mac for next year. It's weird, I feel like I am switching over to the dark side or something. I feel like they should put "Switching from PC to Mac" as one of those huge life changes that you go through that may cause you undue stress when combined with other life changing events. It's an... more

TAGS: Books, OS X, Observations, Systems, Windows Vista

April 22, 2008

kannuu Developer Network open for business

What's kannuu? Basically, it's a novel input method editor for selection, which can reduce the number of button clicks needed to pick an item from a large but finite list using nothing more than a four-way selector. It looks like it might be useful for picking items on cell phones, media players and set-top boxes, although I found it less than intuitive at first. For a canned demo with explanations, try the "view demo" link at the bottom of this page. For an interactive demo, try this. To understand how it works, go here. I have to admit that I've... more

TAGS: Embedded Systems

April 21, 2008

Is "professional software developer" an oxymoron?

I've been reading Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development by Scott Bain (Addison-Wesley, 2008, $49.99, 0-321-50936-6). I'm finding it a thoughtful book, which makes a good case for the adoption of patterns, refactoring, and test-driven development. On the other hand, Bain leads with the premise that software development is not currently a profession. Why is that? It's not a matter of being paid for the work: it's because software development is too hard, too unpredictable, too chaotic. Of course, those are the things that make it fun. Bain admits that as well. I think it's no... more

TAGS: Books, Design Patterns, Software Engineering

April 17, 2008

DSM tool offers high developer productivity

I should have known better than to write about a vendor demo, as I did on Monday for Telelogic Rhapsody. Now everybody wants to give me a demo. As the organ-grinder's song from The Threepenny Opera goes, "Oh, the line forms at the right, dears, now that Mackie's back in town." This morning's demo was a Web meeting, since the vendor, MetaCase, is in Jyväskylä, Finland. My Plantronics DSP headset worked well, the voice quality was good, and the VoIP delay wasn't all that bad as long as I didn't interrupt Dr. Juha-Pekka Tolvanen, CEO of MetaCase. Dr. Tolvanen's starting... more

TAGS: Dev Tools, Embedded Systems, Software Engineering

April 16, 2008

Can Google Apps crack large enterprises? Today's IMAP outage casts doubt

InfoWorld just ran an article questioning the idea of Google Apps in large enterprises: Can Google Apps crack large enterprises? | InfoWorld | News | 2008-04-16 | By C.G. Lynch, CIO.com One of my small enterprises uses Google Apps (and pays for the privilege), and this afternoon IMAP was out for about an hour. I'd say about half of us read our mail with IMAP, since it's a convenient way to get the messages into the local mail client while allowing for synchronization. Having the IMAP go down for an hour was unacceptable. Sure, we could fire up a browser... more

TAGS: Observations

April 16, 2008

New Backbase version improves Ajax speed, features

Backbase introduced Enterprise Ajax 4.2 today. According to the company, the new framework version offers developers more technologies, allowing for choices between rich and lightweight Ajax functionality, between CSS and XPath, between JavaScript and tag-based development, between JSON and XML, between native widgets and 3rd party widgets and between online and offline RIAs. The principal improvements to this version are: New hierarchical data binding New Data Services module Support for lightweight Ajax New and improved widgets Performance enhancements A more complete discussion of the new features can be found in Jep Castelein's blog. The offline RIA feature is basically support... more

TAGS: AJAX, Dev Tools, JavaScript, XML

April 14, 2008

New Rhapsody version interesting for embedded software and systems

Last week I took advantage of the fact that Telelogic has a facility here in Andover to get an in-person preview demonstration of Rhapsody 7.2, the new version of their model-driven development product, which is being announced today. I should actually say "Telelogic, an IBM Company," given the recent acquisition: please take that as read. The signage at the facility still just said "Telelogic." At the beginning of the demo, I sat there thinking "All this modeling junk gets in the way. Let me at the code." Then we got to the point of doing testing on animated UML diagrams... more

TAGS: C, C++, Dev Tools, Embedded Systems

April 12, 2008

Copying audio CDs on Windows Vista for x64

As I blogged last June, I have a Compaq Presario V6305NR laptop, on which I upgraded the operating system from the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows Vista Ultimate for x64 for testing purposes, using my MSDN subscription. I still need to use it for 64-bit testing once or twice a week, so reverting to the pre-installed system is not an option. I have more use for it at home than at the office, so that's where it lives most of the time, and as a result I use it for my digital music and photos. The other day... more

TAGS: Windows Vista

April 11, 2008

A security note about ftp and CushyCMS

In my first look at CushyCMS on Monday, I mentioned that "personal site already had ftp access set up the way CushyCMS expected to see it." This raises an issue that I chose to skip in the interest of brevity. A reader with a Web-based financial application has questioned me about it in email, so it seems worthwhile to discuss it here. As you probably know, ftp is an ancient protocol by Internet standards. Many Web hosts offer password-protected ftp as the primary way you can upload content to your Web site. Some other Web hosts don't allow it at... more

TAGS: Servers, Web

April 09, 2008

Wait-listed for Google App Engine

I made a teensy-weensy mistake when I started to look at Google App Engine: I downloaded and installed the SDK and read through the Getting Started Guide fairly thoroughly before signing up for an account. As a result, I've been wait-listed. I think that means that more than 10,000 others have already signed up for the free App Engine beta. Oh well, I can still develop locally until my invitation comes through. As about a million other bloggers have already discussed, Google App Engine feels like a direct competitor to Amazon's three Web services (EC2, SimpleDB and S3) all rolled... more

TAGS: Cloud Computing, Observations, Python, Servers, Technologies, Web

April 07, 2008

Free Web-based content management for sites

Let's start with the press release: On Tuesday, April 8, Stateless Systems will launch a private beta of CushyCMS, a fast, simple and free Content Management System that aims to make Web designers’ lives a lot more comfortable. Unlike other CMSs, Web designers can implement Cushy in minutes, without any hosting requirements or software installation, and it is easy enough for non-technical content editors to use without any training or programming skills. Web designers can give content editors access to separate pages or parts of a page at a granular level (headings, images, sidebars, etc), enabling them to produce standards-compliant,... more

TAGS: Dev Tools, Web

April 07, 2008

Will you like Curl?

As Doug Dineley and I were discussing my draft review of Curl last week, now posted here, he asked me a serious question: You essentially recommend readers to give Curl a try. Is there a way to tell who is the best kind of match for this product? I mean, what sort of developer, in general, trying to meet what sort of need? My answer about the need being addressed made into the final review. On the other issue, I responded: The sticking point for a lot of developers is that the Curl language is different from what they already... more

TAGS: Computer Languages, Curl, RIAs

April 03, 2008

AIR is nice, but probably not the next big thing

InfoWorld's Test Center chief technologist, Tom Yager, sometimes gets a little carried away in his enthusiasms, at least from where I sit. His deification of Adobe AIR in his recent posting AIR gets rich apps right is one of those cases: I'd go so far as to say it's a little over the top, even for Tom. Right up front, let me say that I like AIR. It's a clever way to allow Flash and Flex developers to create desktop applications using their existing skills. I'd recommend it to those folks. But there I stop. Tom's first assumption is that... more

TAGS: RIAs

April 02, 2008

Fear of bugs

I used to give a talk at trade shows and seminars called Bugoholics Anonymous. I'd start with "Hi, my name is Martin, and I'm a bugoholic." The audience would invariably respond with "Hi, Martin." I'd apologize for the lack of a coffeepot (unless there actually was one in the room), and go on to talk about how I had no power over bugs, but bugs had power over me. Then, of course, I'd present a twelve-step program for learning to deal with bugs. The talk always went over well, and often filled the venue. It wasn't just for the entertainment... more

TAGS: Software Engineering

April 01, 2008

Augmented reality

This weekend I read this book on augmented reality (AR): Augmented Reality A Practical Guide By Stephen Cawood, Dr. Mark Fiala First Edition  January 2008  Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf Pages: 328 ISBN 10: 1-934356-03-4 | ISBN 13: 9781934356036 I learned a lot about the need for markers for synchronizing virtual reality with the real world. I learned how to set up some desktop AR demos using a computer, Fiala's ARTag system and a webcam. I learned the nitty-gritty of doing AR programming in C++ with Fiala's ARTag API, Intel's OpenCV computer vision library, and OpenGL graphics. I didn't like the book... more

TAGS: Embedded Systems, Virtual Reality

March 31, 2008

Tracking an old school chum...

First, the connection: Dave Barry was a senior at Haverford College when I was a freshman. I'm tickled to say that he hasn't changed much, although from this video it looks like his guitar playing might have gotten a little better than it was when he played with Federal Duck in 1969. What we have here is a video of Roger McGuinn of The Byrds singing the 1967 Dylan classic You Ain't Goin' Nowhere with the Rock Bottom Remainders. Dave is at the left playing guitar and singing choruses. Steve Martin is next to him on banjo. Roger is... more

TAGS: Observations

March 28, 2008

TDD with Silverlight

Microsoft has not only released the source code for the Silverlight controls, they have released almost 2,000 of their own unit tests -- and a unit testing framework that works with Silverlight. More on Brad Abrams' blog... I think this is seriously cool. What do you think?... more

TAGS: .NET Framework, C#, Dev Tools, Silverlight, Software Engineering

March 26, 2008

Developer fungibility: discussion

Two weeks ago, I posted an entry based on a visit by Richard Rabins, in which he said: Software developers are not fungible commodities to be bought and sold. You can't grow or train great developers: they just happen. The emphasis on great is mine: it's something that several readers who contributed to the discussion seemed to miss. It was a good discussion, however, and one which bears a recap shorn of the infighting and personal invective. I asked two questions: Does it make sense to replace a productive but expensive experienced developer with an inexpensive developer fresh out of... more

TAGS: Observations

March 22, 2008

Cross-domain madness

One of the sites for which I consult recently licensed a Flash component from a third party. Of course, the vendor wanted to restrict the component licensing to avoid having the component re-used by others. So far, so good. But this site, being large and old, has many domains and subdomains. It would be bad enough if it were just sampledomain.com and www.sampledomain.com, but then there's staging.sampledomain.com for testing and www1.sampledomain.com for bypassing the load-balancing switch and weblog.sampledomain.com for blogs, plus a bunch of variants to protect against cybersquatters. Would the vendor license the Flash component to *.sampledomain.com? No, that... more

TAGS: JavaScript, RIAs, Web

March 18, 2008 | TrackBacks: (57)

Alpha Five Platinum looks useful for enterprise development

I mentioned last Thursday that I'd had a visit and product demo from Richard Rabins of Alpha Software. I was initially hesitant to take this meeting at all, because I remembered Alpha Five from the 1980s: it was essentially an easy-to-use variation on dBase II. I couldn't imagine any of my readers being interested in a product that depends on DBF files, no matter how easy it is for the developer. What changed my mind is that Alpha Five Platinum, a.k.a. Alpha Five Version 9, supports working with SQL databases from the desktop, using active-link tables. For that matter, it... more

TAGS: Databases, Dev Tools

March 17, 2008

Third-party Silverlight controls demo

Infragistics is one of the major ISVs developing controls for Microsoft platforms. I favorably reviewed their NetAdvantage controls for ASP.NET for InfoWorld in 2006. They have also released controls for Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Framework (WPF). It's no surprise that Infragistics has jumped on the Silverlight bandwagon. It is a surprise that they have been able to come up with a significant Silverlight control sampler site so quickly after Microsoft's release of Silverlight 2.0 beta 1. But there it is at top left: see www.faceoutlive.com for the actual site. According to the company: "Infragistics Silverlight Showcase Sample, a... more

TAGS: Silverlight