Low Country Software Ramblings

Deadlines, Deadlines everywhere…

Agile

Simon Baker points out that a group of people working together is not necessarily a team.  A team is a most rare commodity that must be nurtured.

Marco Abis points out what he thinks is the greatest contribution Agile has made to the development community.  It’s not technical, process related or organizational…
Community

Scott Hanselman points out that Firefox is not compliant to RFC2818.  I wonder if today’s upgrade to 2.0.0.3 fixes that (not that I have a personal use for RFC2818)

Adam Goucher point to a presentation by VIM’s benevolent dictator Bram Moolenaar about the 7 Habits for effective text editing.

Rob Walling has a great post on How to become a programmer. His advice is good, regardless of your level of experience.
Design

Dean Wampler talks about attending the Aspect-Oriented Software Development Conference. Aspects are something that got mild press coverage in recent times, but until a breakthrough occurs, I tend to agree with Dean that it will remain a niche technology.
Tim Ottinger talks about the only three meaningful numbers in software design: 0, 1 and many.   He also has a follow up post about One.

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Unlike Mike Gunderloy who “gets up early so you don’t have to”, I get up early so I can play chauffeur…
Community

Scott Hanselman has a cool little application interfacing to the Microsoft FingerPrint Reader…Not to be paranoid, but fingerprint readers as mass market items? Is big brother looming?

Cory Foy points out that Microsoft is looking for a .NET designer in Charlotte, NC. That’s in my backyard!

I admire Scott Bellware’s prose.  This gem came from his article on choosing the Entity Framework:

It’s an audience that has toiled under the idiocratic, dumbing-down forces of overly-declarative visual development styles for long enough to have been intellectually sterilized.  Until the move to a better balance between imperative and declarative styles has come to fruition in the Microsoft developer community, endless hoards of the programming undead will roam to corridors of corporate IT development shops searching for yet another hit on the old RAD crack pipe

Brian Livingston points out that the new Activation feature of Vista can be defeated indefinitely and was put in to help big customers manage their installations.  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! (Via Edgar G Nilges who points out the point of activation is to hinder home users, not organized pirates)

Design & Development 

Scott Bellware reminds use that model-driven does not mean diagram-driven.

Michael has a very interesting article about “Hot Fix” and how they disrupt the normal flow of development.  As someone interested in improving the development process (and being involved in hot fixing), this has been one of the annoyances.  How to have a good process for hit fixes.

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Cory Foy’s post regarding a .NET position at Microsoft got me thinking about the specialization trend in software development and my tortuous career.  Let’s face it, these days, you will be hard pressed not to specialize.

For example, in the .NET world, you have to become familiar with the framework itself to get anything done.  But that is just the beginning! I’ve been working with .NET off-and-on for 4 years now.  Yet, I still have no clue about ASP.NET.  What about WPF, WCF, InfoCards, WPF/E.  It is nigh impossible to keep up with all these things!  And we’re just talking about .NET here!
The embedded world’s specialization takes a different form.  The technology is pretty common, mostly C or C++, but you have much more dynamics when it comes to the platform and the operating system (or lack thereof).  Processors with 8-Bit, 16-Bit, 32-Bit bus, each with it’s own quirks and a 300 to 600 page manual.  Operating Systems like Windows CE, Linux, VxWorks, pSos, Integrity.  Different tools for each processor family: Atmel, Arm, PowerPC, Intel, PIC.  Don’t forget the assembly languages, all similar, but all different (then again, only nuts like me deal with assembly language)!

This state of affair has me wondering: What chance does a generalist like me have against the hordes (or so it seems) of specialists out there.  While I have been a programmer most of my career, I also have done sales, presentations, training, system designs and vented in frustration at a billionaire. I have used a lot of C and C++, some C# and WinForms, a smidgen of VB(6 & .NET) and assembler.  Scripting? Sure, Python, TCL, REXX, bash, csh, awk, sed and getting into PowerShell.  I have dabbled with Oracle & MS SQL 2000.  I’ve worked with processors of all ilk: Intels, PowerPCs, Arms, Atmels, PIC, Rabbits. I know emulators pretty good, I wield a mean Oscilloscope, but my soldering skills have gone to pots.
How would I stack up against someone who has been doing .NET full-time for the last 3 years?  My feeling is that as long as the position is not specifically for ASP.NET or revolving around databases, I would have a fighting chance.  It boils down to a classic depth vs. breadth debate.  Someone with many years of exclusive .NET experience would have a depth of knowledge I don’t have. This depth of knowledge is a significant asset. However, the fact that I have touched so many areas, and can juggle a sensor in assembler, a back-end in C++ and a WinForm in C# during the same day point to an ability to learn and adapt quickly.  This is also a significant advantage.

The bottom line:  it depends what the hiring party is looking for.  A specialist might be perfect for a given position, but a generalist might have a leg up for something else.  One thing to keep in mind:  If you ever want to leave engineering and become an apprentice under “The Cruel Marketing Tutelage of Pai Mei Sink“, being a generalist might be more advantageous (while that particular opening does appeal to me, I can’t deal with fish heads…)

As for me, I’m content in the knowledge that few people would be able to do what I do here.  The fact that no one wants to apply for our engineering position just proves my point!

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Another week-end gone by much too fast…

Community

Ralph Depping has a blog with an embedded focus.  He is located in lovely Cork, Ireland. I wouldn’t mind spending more time on the Emerald Isle!

Larry O’Brien names names with this follow up to his machine being hacked…This points to the perils of poor customer service and remote management of servers.

Roy Osherove links to The 46 best-ever freeware Utilities at DonationCoder.com.  Not quite as comprehensive as Scott Hanselman’s list, but then again, Scott is the original “I’m a geek who loves to hoard and try every kind of software that ever existed, hopefully free”.
Design

Sam Gentile has a redesigned home site (thanks to Office Live Services).  Do check out his Software Engineering section.  It’s full of goodness.

Sam Gentile’s New and Notable 149 points out that Microsoft is working on better MVC support for ASP.NET
Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror (a new favorite site!) turns his gaze to the 404 web page and how to design a more user friendly “page not found”.  Larry O’Brien thinks we should keep the 404 though.

Tim Ottinger points out that all software developement is Iterative; it’s simply a matter of granularity.

Scott Hanselman points to the uber-cool Optimus Mini Three Keyboard and it’s less than optimal programming model.  When a hardware shop does software…

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St-Patrick’s Day is this week-end…Get your green beer ready!

Agile

Pete Behrens tells of his experience transitioning a company to Agile in a big way.  They went “all in” as the poker analogy goes.

Design

IanG is ranting about the poor design of pop-up windows who steal focus away from you. I sympathize with him entirely, as this has caused me heartburn in the past.

Patrick Smacchia has an interesting article about avoiding dependencies in your .NET components.  Well worth a look.

Cory Foy points out there is a C# Design Patterns Group and they are holding a contest on the Decorator Pattern.  Have a look, fame (if not fortune) might await the winner!  Dang…another mailing list to subscribe to?!
Ted Graham has a good example of a realistic log4net config file.  As we use log4net in one of our program, this came in handy! (via The Daily Grind)
Community

Resharper 3.0 EAP is available.  This is one of the tools that I find invaluable (via The Daily Grind).

Jeremy Miller make a good point that even if your primary business is .NET, you shouldn’t be so blind or arrogant as to not look around at other languages.  This applies regardless of what you’re doing  (like C, C++, assembler, C#, VB…) (via Sam Gentile)

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