Cave Markings

It appears that I am causing others to loose sleep.

http://scottscovellonvfp.blogspot.com/2005/11/bindevent-and-compile.html

++Alan

Microsoft provides development releases early and often, now.  This is great because I get to see what's coming while it is being developed.  This is part of Microsoft's drive toward transparancy, and it is a good thing.  The problem is that I don't want to test these unstable releases on my work PC because, you know, I, like, make my living using that machine.  As a result, I want to install them at home, where it would be annoying if they broke something, but I could continue to pay the rent.

Seems simple, right?   I just take the file home and install it.  Well, that's the catch.  I can't just take the file home, because it is often a DVD image file, and I don't have a DVD burner at work.  (Incidently, I bought a dual layer burner for my home PC, but have you seen the price of dual layer media?)  Now along comes Jason with a terrific solution.  It's called Free File Splitter, and it is exactly what its name promises.  It's free and it splits files.  Not only that, but it provides a batch file to re-assemble the original file once all the fragments are copied to the hard drive.  Sweet! 

++Alan

I've long said that all programmers are lazy.  There are two kinds of lazy, though.  Good lazy is when a programmer has to do something twice, she stops to automate the process, so she won't be bothered by this rote task again.  Bad lazy is when a programmer uses "clipboard inheritance", mindlessly copy and pasting code, and not stepping back long enough to find a better solution, much less the "best" solution.

This was brought to mind again by a post by Phillip Lensen (via Foxpro.catalyst):

Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb

I hadn't considered the dumb part, but I do look for a drive to constantly investigate and learn when evaluating a job candidate.  Phillip makes some interesting points.

++Alan

I have used the Image Zoom extension in Firefox for many months.  This week I downloaded an update using the friendly Firefox update feature.  It was only today that I "discovered" an exciting new feature.  If I hover my mouse over an image in Firefox and scroll the mouse wheel, the image zooms in or out depending on the direction I scroll. 

Totally cool!

++Alan

In which our hero becomes a shameless media whore:

Microsoft's Visual Studio Team Server enters the arena

Microsft's approach is broad, said Alan Stevens, and leaves room for other vendors. Stevens, a Visual Studio developer who helped co found NTeam, an open-source alternative to VSTS, said "The best of breed components was not the priority; it was the best of breed across the whole development lifecycle. For example, they don't have the best source control or bug tracking, but they were not trying to. What they are selling is the integration of the various pieces so there is no context switch."

Stevens pointed out that other tools used by Visual Studio developers would require developers to switch contexts in order to communicate programming progress. That puts extra overhead on already beleaguered developers. VSTS integration, he said, "provides a kind of automatic tracking so they don't have to manually tell the tester when [something is] complete."

"With Team System, I check in the code and get a list of work items. When that check item is resolved, it immediately e-mails the tester and they can begin testing," said Stevens.

++Alan

NPR says:

Software Industry Sees Robust Growth in China

At least I work for a military contractor.  I don't expect my job to go to China (or India) any time soon.

++Alan

For 90 days, you can sign up for free classes on MS's latest developer products here:

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/visualstudio2005/

I've used some of their e-learning materials before, and found them helpful.  YMMV

++Alan

I love Visual FoxPro.  I love .NET too, but the platform hasn't had time to develop really interesting historical quirks.  VFP is increadibly backwards compatable.  I was reminded of this again today while reading the WIKI.  I saw this little command that moves the project manager outside of the VFP IDE and onto the taskbar.  Not terribly exciting until you consider the syntax, which comes from a time when FoxPro ran on DOS, UNIX, Mac and Windows.

SHOW WINDOW "PROJECT MANAGER" IN MACDESKTOP

Priceless!

++Alan


I take what Raymond Chen says about coding as gospel.  Therefore when he says not to retry a failure, I won't.

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/11/07/489807.aspx

++Alan