Office 2007 Beta 2

Just in case you are interested.

Subject Tags: [Software]

Hiring Recommendations

If I were a manager at a technical company, say software development. And I were hiring a new co-worker to work with my existing staff, the first place I would look for applicants is staff recommendations.

I would evaluate their recommendations to be sure they are competent. If they are competent and recommended, I would hire them. The existing staff is the ones who will have to work with the new-hire.

Sure, hiring from a larger pool might produce more technically savvy staff, but personality is more important. Technical training is a whole lot easier to come by then resolving a personality conflict.

So worst case hiring a recommendation is investing in some technical training, since the personality and ability to interact with the existing staff is known. But if we hire from a larger pool (say a classified ad or a job listing site) then worst case is that we have an unresolvable personality conflict, and need technical training.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Jobs] [Workforce] [Personality] [Coworkers] [Training] [Staff]

Rube Goldberg Programming Challenge

I just had a great idea for a fun programming competition this weekend: The Rube Goldberg Programming Challenge! You would be given a simple task, like "Hello World", and then your task would be to solve that task in the most complex way possible.

Points could be given for:

• Each pattern implemented (Need at least one singleton in there!)
• Making unnecessary use of a database.
• Incorporating a web service.
• Extra function calls.
• Classes, lots of classes.
• Weaving some threads in there.
• Extra file I/O with temporary files everywhere.
• XML, it has got to be in XML!
• Using multiple languages.
• Using multiple platforms or frameworks!
• Customized memory management!
• Creating an interpreter or simulator that is required for the final output!
• Recreating all the standard libraries, classes and components!
• Encoding and decoding the data in silly ways.
• Not using any native types.
• Everything (and I do mean everything) is an object!
• Self modifying code!
• Outputting customized source code and then creating a compiler to create a module to complete a step.
• Ratio of pertinent comments to source code greater then 2:1.

What else can you think of? If you've ever had to maintain anyone else's code you have probably seen a lot of crazy extra steps that other programmers go though. You could always check out Daily WTF for inspiration. Who would be interested in such a competition?

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Contest] [Challenge] [Rube Goldberg] [Patterns] [Fun] [Databases] [Web Services] [XML]

Richard Hundhausen in Dr. Dobb's

Our very own Richard Hundhausen has an interview in the latest issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. They interviewed him on Visual Studio Team System, as he is the foremost expert on that subject. The interview is called VSTS: In the Wild. I was actually flipping through the magazine and saw a picture of a guy wearing sun glasses, a Google T-shirt, shorts and sandals while standing on a rock. I thought to my self he looked a lot like Rich, and then glanced up and the headline and sure enough it was.

Scott Swigart was interviewing him about VSTS and how it is being used in the real world. Besides the cool picture of Rich and the kind works about him, the 4 page article has some good information on VSTS.

Also, this month Dr. Dobb's made some changes. It would appear the combined Dr. Dobb's with Software Development magazine. Now you can apply for a free subscription to Dr. Dobb's and read the articles online. That was always one of my complaints, that I would read a great article in the magazine, and then had to pay to reference it later if I wanted to read it online. There are a number of other changes with this as well.

The cover story is about Ruby on Rails and there is are some articles on Game and Graphic programming. There still seems to be a good amount of source code in the magazine, which is nice. That was something that Software Development Magazine really lacked.

Lets hope Dr. Dobb's continues to be the best software developers magazine around. With a great interview like this with the likes of Richard Hundhausen they are off to a great start!

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Dr. Dobb's] [Magazine] [Free] [Interview] [Microsoft] [VSTS]

Can't Wait for ATLAS? Get GWT!

Google has made their AJAX development tool Google Web Toolkit (GWT) available. Instead of focusing on bits of JavaScript to be pieced together, as most other tool kits do, they went a different route.

You develop your application in Java using your favorite Java IDE. You make use of the GWT during the Java development. Since this is a normal Java application at this point, you are running in the JVM and have all the usual rich Java debugging and development tools. Once you have your application debugged and ready to go, you use the GWT to convert it to JavaScript and HTML.

What a really great concept. Plus, since it is written in Java it is available for Windows (2000 & XP) and Linux. Then the published application (in JavaScript and HTML) runs in IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, and Opera, all with no special browser handling required on the part of the developer.

I expect we will see a huge increase in the number of AJAX applications in the very near future.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [AJAX] [Google] [Atlas] [JavaScript] [Java] [Microsoft] [Web 2.0]

Boise Blogger Dinner TONIGHT!

If you live in the Boise, Idaho area and are involved in blogging (reader or writer) be sure you are at the Boise Blog Dinner tonight!

• Time/Date: 6:30-8:30 pm, Monday, May 15 (TONIGHT!)
• Place: Flying Pie Pizza, 6508 Fairview, Boise, Idaho
• Deal: Pizza and soda for $4.00

In addition to local blogosphere members, Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations, will be there.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Boise] [Idaho] [Boise, Idaho] [Dinner] [Event] [Naked Conversations] [Blog] [Blogger] [Blogging]

My Daughter Loves Ruby

The O'Reilly door prize books for Boise Code Camp v1.0 came, so I have a big stack of books I am busily getting to the winners. A number of lucky attendees won their choice of book from O'Reilly's expansive catalog of books. Now they are all setting in my living room. Kind of wish I had time to read them all before delivering them.

My 3 year old daughter really loves the The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide to Programming Ruby. I think mostly because the cover graphic is pink (or close to pink), or it could be the pretty ruby on it too. Although I didn't ask her why. I might do that.

How do I know this? I was reading a computer magazine with her and she pointed to a picture of the book and said “I wove dis book daddy! I wove it. And I have it! Wanna see?” and then went I showed me where I had the books stacked for the prizes. She started going through the book looking for that one.

I guess she has good taste. Or she really likes pink.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Books] [Children] [Ruby]

The Lie About Comments

Have you ever heard the common excuse for programmers not commenting their code:

The problem with comments is they lie. The code changes (as code tends to do) and the comments are never updated which leaves them inaccurate. The code always tells you what it is doing. So you are better off not writing comments since it just takes more time and only confuses and misleads anyone supporting your code in the future.

Seems like a brilliant argument against comments, doesn't it? Why go through the extra work of writing comments if they are only going to confuse future developers, including yourself? One might be convinced that comment writing was a bad idea and no-one should do it.

One might think that, but only until they start to think.

Having supported both commented and uncommented code, I can speak from experience that any comments is 100x better then no comments. Sure, I have seen comments that are out of date, extremely vague, or more verbose then the code it was commenting on, but I still prefer any of that to the alternative of no comments.

Saying the problem with comments is they get out of date with the code changes is like saying the problem with source code is it gets syntax errors when you edit it. If you think about it, over 90% of the time you are editing a piece of source code it has a syntax error and will not compile. If you are writing a line of C# code that is 40 characters long, it will have a syntax error for the first 39 characters, and only be syntactically correct once you put that semicolon in place. Even then it might still be incorrect. Don't forget your curly brackets!

By that same notion you could say that the problem with software developers is they introduce errors into the source code, which we do. Working on a piece of code is like open heart surgery. We cut the patient open, rip a lot of stuff out, move things around, and then connect things back up again (not being a surgeon I have no idea if this is what surgery is like, but it works for my analogy). The very first thing we do is break the code. The program will not work again until we finish with what we are doing. Sure, an agile or iterative approach means the program spends less time in a broken state, but the fact is, every time we touch a piece of previously working code we break the code before we make it work again.

Now you may argue that this is a poor analogy since a good developer always fixes the code they start on. Well, that is my point exactly. If you come to a piece of code that has a comment on it, and you change the code so the comment is no longer accurate, then your job is not done. Just like you put a semicolon at the end of your lines, making sure the code it syntactically correct and operates as expected, a good developer also updates the comments and adds new ones outlining the changes they made.

I don't claim perfection in this area, but I certainly advocate improvement instead of making excuses for laziness. How about you?

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Developers] [Code Comments] [Source Code] [Laziness] [Comments]