Discover Engineering Family Day at Boise State University

Boise State University's College of Engineering is hosting Discover Engineering, a free fun family event from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, February 3. Sponsored in part by Washington Group International, Discover Engineering is open to kids of all ages. It is fun, interactive way to introduce your kids to engineering and science.

Kids will be able to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen, ride a Segway, operate a lunar rover robot, experience a star lab, build an edible aquifer, dress in a clean room suit, design a bridge, and more! There will be drawings for special prizes every hour.

Location: College of Engineering Campus, 1375 University Drive. Parking is available behind the Student Union Building and the general area of the west stadium lot located between the Boise State Pavilion and Bronco Stadium.

Time: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, February 3.

Admission: FREE!

For more information contact Leadnra Aburusa-Lete at 208-426-4432 or laburusa@boisestate.edu.

I am guessing that if you bring a kid you can get in free and check all the cool activities out!

Subject Tags: [Engineering] [Education] [Learning] [Segway] [Family] [Kids] [Boise] [Idaho]

History of BASIC and C

Time for a history lesson class.

You may not be aware of it, but the BASIC language was designed to help lazy developers create Star Trek games. It is true. And C's success is owed to hallucinogenic compounds! Thanks to Billy Hollis who created these great histories for us and setting the history straight. Who's up for writing a history of PASCAL and Delphi? Thanks to Chris for the links!

If you would like to see the interactions of langauges in visual format check out the language history timelines. O'Reilly created an outdated (and slightly inaccurate) color version too.

Enough history for now. Back to work.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [C] [CPlusPlus] [CSharp] [Basic] [Java] [Pascal] [Delphi] [VisualBasic] [DotNet] [Language] [History] [StarTrek] [Hallucinogens] [Funny]

Being IT according to Dice.com

Dice.com has a fun diversion about what it is like to work in IT. You get to see how stressful it is to deal with the CIO, Sales Manager and Project Manager. Then you get to relieve your stress with creative weapons. Interestingly even after you vaporize the project manager he still reappears.

Of course this is a sales tool by Dice.com to get you thinking about how miserable your job is so you will go looking for a new one. Just remember "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." Of course that means as soon as you get your new job through Dice you will notice how were the pastures of your old job.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [IT] [Jobs] [Employment] [Stress] [Diversion]

To License or not to License

We have debated the license (as in Licensed Developers, not licensing our software) question a few times. Mow ACM and IEEE have weighed in with official positions. ACM withdrew from SWECC because they disagreed with their efforts to license software engineers.

ACM Council believes that the current efforts of the Software Engineering Coordinating Committee (SWECC) toward licensing is misguided as they assume that software engineering is a profession appropriate for licensing under the rubric of the Professional Engineers Licensing structure and requirements.

ACM goes on to present a list of reasons why licensing Software Engineers as Professional Engineers was not a good idea:

• Licensing as Professional Engineers would be impractical for software engineers, because it would require examinations over subjects most software engineers neither study in their formal education nor need in order to practice competent software engineering.
• Licensing software engineers as Professional Engineers would have no or little effect on the safety of the software produced.
• The SWEBOK effort, which specifically excludes from the body of knowledge the special knowledge required for most safety-critical systems (such as real-time software engineering techniques), will have little relevance for safety-critical systems, and it dangerously excludes the most important knowledge required to build these systems.
• Each industry and software engineering domain will need to determine an appropriate mix of approaches that work together to solve their particular problems and fit within the cultural context of the particular industry. There are no simple and universal fixes to solve the problem of ensuring public safety. Effective approaches will involve establishing accountability, competency within specific application domains and job responsibilities, liability, regulation where appropriate, standards, voluntary product certification and warranties, and industry-specific requirements. Licensing as Professional Engineers would not be an effective way to accomplish any of these goals.

IEEE on the other hand disagrees. In fact, the IEEE-CS sponsors the Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) Program. The provide their own arguments for why individuals should consider certification, but don't address the issue as a whole:

Benefits for becoming certified may come in the form of

• Additional knowledge and skills that allow you to move into a new area or perform your current job more effectively
• Exposure to the latest software, equipment or other knowledge-based advantages you might not otherwise have
• Increased level of expertise
• Contact and networking with top-performing professionals in your field, around the world
• Customer confidence based on your evidence of qualifications and suitability for the task at hand or project put out for bids.
• Added confidence

Subject Tags: [Programming] [IEEE] [ACM] [License] [Engineer] [Professional]

AJAX Patterns

Thanks to Steve Pietrek from Cincinnati, Ohio for the links on AJAX Patterns and Frameworks. Be sure to check those out so you will be ready for next months presentation on AJAX at the users group meeting.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [AJAX] [Patterns] [Frameworks]

O'Reilly MySQL Conference

For those who don't know, MySQL is one of the top rated databases available and arguably the fastest database around. It is also available under your choice of a free open source license or a commercial license with support.

I know a lot of very large companies that use MySQL, often because they really need the speed. One place uses it to collect real time data from a production line. The company has "standardized" on another database, but it just cannot handle the data fast enough. MySQL acts as a buffer and feeds the data into the "standard" database at a rate it can keep up with.

MySQL is really wide spread on the internet too, where millions of users can be hitting a site simultaniously speed is really important.

Builder AU recently did a comparison (including ROI) between MySQL and some of the other big name databases like Oracle, MS SQL and DB2. They named MySQL their editors choice award.

I could have titled this post "Too many conferences, too little time" Not only does O'Reilly have the ETech conference coming up, but now there is the MySQL users conference! I would love to go learn more about MySQL from the masters they have lined up.

Subject Tags: [OReilly] [MySQL] [Database] [Conference]

O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech)

This is a conference I would really love to attend. I imagine any self respecting geek would, especially of the programming variety. The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech) will be held March 6-9, 2006 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California, U.S.

Among the speakers is Kathy Sierra, who is the author of Creating Passionate Users (one of my favorite blogs), the Head First series of books. Speaking of, I recently got a copy of Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML. Lookinf forward to diving into that one to take my XHTML/CSS to the next level. I'll let you know what I think of it.

Looks like there will be a lot of neat stuff covered.

Subject Tags: [Technology] [O'Reilly] [Emerging] [Conference] [ETech]

The Lord of the Tools

Jake was commenting about how much he loved Eclipse, especially the fact he can use is as an editor / development tool for all his development needs. He wrote (satired?) this little ditty, which I believe you will recognize. . . .

The Lord of the Tools

9 tools were given to the leaders of open source, for they were the weakest. who hungered for power. 7 to Microsoft developers, who loved darkness, gold, and war. 3 were given to web developers, the fairest and wisest of all. In darkness and with guile, one tool was crafted in the depths of silicon volcano. One tool to rule them all, one tool to find them, one tool to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

After the fall of IBM, the One Tool was lost to the developers. But one day it fell into the hands of the most curious of creatures. An innocent startup who would forever change the course of Middle IT.

I imagine some open source developer might argue with that weakest point (thus the reason he changed it), and I'll give you 3 guesses what kind of developer Jake classifies himself as. . .

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [LOTR] [Parody] [Satire] [Eclipse] [IDE] [Tool] [Editor]

Nice to meet everyone new last night

There were a lot of new faces at last nights meeting. If you haven't signed up for the mailing list I suggest you do so now.

Email:

Then you will be in the know for future meetings as well as the Boise Code Camp.

Since people were asking about it last night, we meet monthly on the 1st Thursday (pretty much without exception) at 7 PM. We do not have dues and are always looking for people who have something exciting they would like to share with the group.

Subject Tags: [CodeCamp] [Mailing List] [Membership]

January 2006 Meeting - Visual Studio Launch

Our January 5th, 2006 meeting will be our Visual Studio 2005 Launch event. The meeting will be at the Washington Group Plaza at 7 PM. We will be covering Smart Client as well as general IDE, Framework and C# language enhancements.

5 lucky winners will recieve a FREE copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition and SQL Server 2005 Professional, plus BizTalk Server 2006 and an exam voucher.

Flying Pie pizza and soda will be provided along with ample networking opportunities. Anyone who is interested is also welcome to stick around and play RoboRally after the meeting.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Microsoft] [Visual Studio] [vs2005] [Launch] [DotNet] [SmartClient]