Knowing .NET

Okay, I'll admit that it's obvious that I'm not a "connector" but surely there's at least 1 reader willing to admit knowing me.

Blogged on a Tablet PC

5:27:19 PM    comment []   trackback []

Yukon and Whidbey have slipped to mid-2005, Microsoft has confirmed. via [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]

Ooh, that hurts. This is a big stumble on Microsoft's part. One wonders if they are actively rethinking the linkage of tools and database products... Back in September, it looked like the tools were holding back the database people. Now, it looks like the database is holding back the tools.

12:31:34 PM    comment []   trackback []

A USC roboticist has built a robot for "printing" houses that can extrude cement or adobe and shape it using trowel-manipulators to a CAD-represented spec....The key to the technology is a computer-guided nozzle that deposits a line of wet concrete, like toothpaste being squeezed onto a table.... via [Boing Boing Blog]

 

12:24:22 PM    comment []   trackback []

Edward Tufte is one of the leading thinkers in how to visually present information. His latest stuff, on Sparklines, is showing up on lots of the feeds I'm reading tonight. via [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

A "sparkline" is a very compact graph that you inline with text. I once attended a 2-day course by Tufte. It was great. The guy just makes you want to go out and design representations of information.

11:43:37 AM    comment []   trackback []

Okay, now I'll have to write a 10-page article with it and see if my hand cramps...

Blogged on a Tablet PC

11:05:09 AM    comment []   trackback []

My precious...

Blogged on a Tablet PC

11:00:42 AM    comment []   trackback []

Over on Richard Caetano's blog I see the Flight Simulator team has an SDK coming out. via [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

I'm not going to do it, but I bet you could make a cool add-on.

10:28:20 AM    comment []   trackback []

In a response to a NYT column on outsourcing, Jim Fawcette says " Unemployment in programming is 40 percent above the national average, despite the fact that the number of people in that profession has declined rapidly for four years, and salaries are down 15 percent." Nasty numbers, if true (and they seem believable to me).

I keep adding more and more to an offshoring rant that I'm writing, but it keeps getting longer. Why? For one thing, everyone's a free-market capitalist until their job goes overseas. So there's a fundamental dissonance between sets of beliefs that many programmers share: the belief that free trade maximizes total wealth and the belief that programmers in the U.S. ought to be able to make a living. I also have to contend with the fact that I'm a "nearshore" resource -- I work out of my house -- but believe that I deliver value to my customers despite the challenges of communication and distance.

Argh... I wanted this to be a brief post, but the subject just sucks me in. The March 8 InfoWorld has an excellent set of columns and articles on offshoring (as a matter of fact, the issue is a prime example of exploiting the advantages of the print medium -- I could give you a whole bunch of links, but it flows so much better on paper). Anyway, here's an observation: Schwartz' column quotes "work with companies that are CMM Level 5," while Dickerson's column says "Any successful project that I've worked on shared two qualities: a high degree of direct interaction between the development team and the end-users, and a high degree of agility in the team's methodology." There's an important point that's a little too subtle for the general business press: CMM Level 5 stuff is extremely formal, but there's an emerging consensus that non-formal "agile" approaches are much more productive.

10:24:34 AM    comment []   trackback []

James Robertson thinks that Java is an interruption in the forward progress of software development....It is nice to see people returning to serious language research again. Efforts like the Feyerabend Project and more practically focused offshoots like OOPSLA’s Onward! track and the Post-Java Workshops (as well as increasing grass-roots interest in languages like Ruby, Haskell, Squeak, Oz, and even an ongoing Lisp revival) give me hope that we’ll be ready to take a larger step soon. via [Glenn Vanderburg: Blog] (emphasis by Larry)

9:51:40 AM    comment []   trackback []

JOEL JOHNSON -- The government has purchased a completely solid-state 2.5TB (terabyte) drive array from Texas Memory Systems...  via [Gizmodo]

In related news, President Bush received a digital camera for his birthday.

9:48:18 AM    comment []   trackback []

I know that I'm no longer untainted because I work in the big house, but I just don't get this. Do developers really want to build the same thing over and over, project to project, app to app or do they want to spend their time building cool, new stuff? .... via [Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet]

I almost didn't post this, because it seems to me blindingly obvious that programming is in its infancy. There's so much more possible that it defies categorization, let alone justifies wasting time defending the need for progress.

8:36:52 AM    comment []   trackback []

Sometimes I forget that the world is also a place of delightful whimsy. (Via Ben Hyde) via [Exploration Through Example]

Words can't express my delight. I used to count the smoots every day as I rode the Harvard Bridge to get to Community Boating.

8:32:01 AM    comment []   trackback []

I have never really understood the machinations that you have to go through to enable SSL, but Scot Gellock has posted a script to simplify part of it, i.e. getting the certificate. And he does it with freely available tools, which is always a nice bonus.  via [Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet]

This is nice, but no magic bullet. You won't be a trusted certifying agency by people browsing your site and they'll get a certificate error. Training people to ignore certificate errors is a bad thing.

8:28:48 AM    comment []   trackback []

I read a lot of Java related blogs and a lot of MS related blogs, but very few of the Java blogs are by Sun folks.. ..If I'm looking for thought leadership from the community, in the Java community, I'm looking towards the non Sun bloggers -- these are the folks doing AOP, Groovy, SGen, Prevalence, WebWork, etc. This shows the rich ecosystem that has grown up around Java. If I look at the .NET community, I pretty much look for the MS bloggers. There are some leaders outside of MS, but pretty much the thought leadership resides with folks inside the "big house". From where I sit, this is an accurate characterization of the .NET and Java ecosystems. Via [Ted Leung on the air]

I think this has more to do with Microsoft's sheer size. Microsoft has, what?, twice as many developers as Sun has employees. And Microsoft is vastly more aligned than Sun, a company which is, after all, a hardware company. And, frankly, Microsoft getting on the Cluetrain and abandoning strict "message control" obviously struck a chord within the company.

Having said all that, there's no doubt that Java's community is more organic and embracing of external thought leaders.

8:13:38 AM    comment []   trackback []