Low Country Software Ramblings

Back in the saddle after a long week-end.

Community

Scott Bellware has a great piece about Mark Miller and his commitment to customers. I’m a big fan of Mark Miller’s satire, and, like Scott, while not a customer, have always admired Developer Express, even though I use ReSharper, as it fits my style better.
Scott also wades into the Multiple vs. Wide Monitor debate.  After this, I might just campaign for a 30″ wide monitor…

Scott Hanselman (it’s the all Scott edition tonight!) points out that UPSes are turning out to be a necessity with Windows Vista.  I had a UPS for my TiVo, but the dang thing beeps louder than an alarm when power goes out…nothing like getting woken up at 2AM by the dang UPS…do they make them without the dang beeper?

Rob has a great entry on Attracting Software Developers that fit your company.  Boy, if we could only manage to have ANY software developers to attract in Beaufort…Anybody want to move South to the coast?

Design

If you will be designing a framework, Brad Abrams has collected a few papers by Steven Clark about framework usability.

.NET

Adnan Masood has a great post on five easy steps to Log4Net.  As a Log4Net occasional user, this little cheat sheet comes in handy! (Via The Daily Grind)

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Who knew #10 would come so quickly?

.NET

Eric Gunnerson has a first impressions of WPF with Visual Studio and Blend working together.  Bottom line: Recommended.

Community

Doug Gaff talks about what it takes to have a successful open source add-in project for eclipse.  Quite a bit different than your typical corporate project.

Ryan over at Rally muses about the downside of agile: No big release party every 18 months.  His solution:  Just win the Jolt award two years in a row!

An open letter to Scott Guthrie: Microsoft, why do you reinvent the wheel? Play nice with open source! (via The Daily Grind)

Sam Gentile has a great News and Notable 151 with Agile & Good Software Design practices. Just go read it.

Download the latest Hanselminute for an interview with Raymond Chen (of the Old New Thing).  Don’t pass an occasion to hear about MS Bob.
Design

Neil Ford has a great podcast on Domain Specific Language (via Scott Bellware)

Tim Ottinger talks about Solution Probleming…looking for a way to shoehorn that new technique (he’s talking about design patterns) you learned into your project.

Tim Ottinger is being prolific this week. He expands on his original post about the only significant numbers in software design: Zero, One and Many.  Here are the expanded entries: Zero, One and Many.

Owen Taylor talks about the SpaceFacade pattern.  I don’t know enough about the technology to know what I’m talking about, but this seems to be more SOA. Looks like it’s tied to the GigaSpace service, but hey they have a .NET API.

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I would dearly love to add an embedded category…help…please.
.NET

Scott Hanselman has found a cure for his “Why doesn’t FireFox support ClickOnce deployment” ailment.  If you like FireFox and want to do ClickOnce, go read his article.

Scott Bellware thinks the Entity Framework gets in the way of Behavior-Driven Design.  He’s grumbling about it.

Sam Gentile has come out with New and Notable #150.  Go give him some love!

Humor

Michael at The Braidy Tester is now a lyricist.  Move over Weird Al, this one is a keeper! It should shoot to the top of the Charts.
Development

Talking about Michael, he has an older post about stepping back from your urgent tasks and spending some time on items with longer term payback.  Well worth doing…if you can find the time.

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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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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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