JOS Statistics - Recent Comments

last updated:04 Sep 2004 18:17 UK time

JOS Statistics - Recent Comments
(Comments added for week ending Sun 05 Sep 2004) | View Other Weeks

New Forum Request | Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis

Joel, Is it possible to arrange that there are links from the new forums to each other, so we dont have to do too much navigation between them ? Obviously, the answer is yes, it is possible, but I dont mean it quite that literally. Rather, it is a request that I hope you will take onboard and implement. Thanks.

Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis | Thanks Joel, you seem to be very responsive today.

Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | I think Joel has always been reasonable. Only some guys here forget that we are only guests and it is actually HIS thing, and so we can only ask. So when he doesn't respond, they crib.

Fri 03 Sep | Freddie boy | just checking :-)

Joel on Software graveyard | Fri 03 Sep | phil jones

Joels says theres be new discussion fora, but fora which arent used much will end in the graveyard. Any reason why groups should get cut? Is it the disk-space? The screen real-estate? The cognitive confusion?

Fri 03 Sep | Ogami Itto | The time it takes to police groups that aren't being used?

Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis | In a year's time, will we remember this as the beginning of the end for JoS ? Sadly, I think we will.

Fri 03 Sep | no name | I think the end started the first time this forum got slashdotted.

Fri 03 Sep | Ogami Itto | When was that?

Fri 03 Sep | Dennis Forbes | Change is, in general, difficult to accept, however the success of this forum over the past while has been a huge surprise to me given the dearth of features. Ultimately I think this forum survived more in spite of itself rather than because of some tremendous insight into online communities - Joel's essays attracted some wise people, and it's those people who intrigued me by this board (which makes it especially strange that Joel has shown a contempt for 'regulars' in his observation of community - there is nothing special about this forum, quite contrary in fact, beyond the fact that there are some quality people who have hung out here).

Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis | A wise man once said, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Nobody comes here because of the amazing features, or lack thereof, it is to see what the regulars have to say. Quite a few of the old regulars seem to have abandoned ship lately, including Joel himself.

joel's articles | Fri 03 Sep | Cat

where are the articles by joel? I can only locate APIWar from an external link.

Fri 03 Sep | John Topley (www.johntopley.com) | They're where they've always been: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html

Fri 03 Sep | Cat | Thanks.

Where's Philo? | Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy

Wheres Philo. Havent seen him since a long time. Im sure he is still posting. I guess hes taken a new avatar on the forum. Any guesses who Philo might be amoungst the new crowd? Or may be hes not posting anymore. May be hes just reading it. Or may just be that hes plain busy and not even reading it. But I find it hard to believe. Philo cant go away from JoS.

Fri 03 Sep | Regular Poster | Who gives a damn? I could never see what the big deal with Philo was anyway.

Fri 03 Sep | no name | Maybe he fell down the cracks between the new forums. Or maybe he just went on his holidays; people are allowed to do that you know.

Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Nothing special about Philo. Just that he was a regular and I haven't seem him lately for long enough. I even wrote to him some time back in July and he hasn't replied yet. He always used to reply earlier. I just hope everything's fine with him.

Fri 03 Sep | Ogami Itto | He's working for apple, supporting a newsgroup that talks about Cocoa development, and how apple won the API war by going unix.

Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis | Sathyaish, as you claim that Philo is your uncle, surely you should be in a position to locate him ? ;-) Don't worry though, I'm sure he'll be back (Arnie-style) in due course.

Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Philo isn't my real uncle. We endeared him by addressing him as Uncle Philo. That's all.

Fri 03 Sep | no name | He didn't post into his blog quite a time: http://blogs.msdn.com/philoj/

Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Yeah, that as well.

Fri 03 Sep | a cynic writes... | Last seen two weeks ago with the 'ump, here: http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=177598&ixReplies=23 Whether he did 'go back to Usenet', is on holiday or just changed his nickname I'm afraid I don't know.

My 2 cents on the new forums | Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy

When things change, it is bad. My first impression of the new forum was that I didnt like it very much. It doesnt look as good, although its the same to use. But experience has shown me that when forums change, they either die or people get used to them after some time and they dont die. So, I guess Ill get used to it. But I hate to think of the crowd being broken down. Lets all sign a pact, where will most of us go? I also have a question. How would you classify a post like My boss sucks. Would that be the human side of software? I still observe a lot of crowd on the new JoS, the first of the four new forums. And theyre not posting much about the topics discussed on the main site, except that today they are because Joel posted about the new forums on his main page. Lets see if theyre going to stick to relevant discussions after today. I am sure well see some salad-cream threads on the new JoS forum as well. And Im still going to check the old forum so I dont miss anything. Feels horrible. But I guess well all get used to it.

Fri 03 Sep | Bob's your uncle | What new forums??

Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Actually, Philo's my uncle. ;-)

Which forum would Chris track now? | Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy

Which forum would Chris (usabilitymustdie) track now? The old one or the new one? If it is the new one, would that mean that there would be no archive for the old posts?

Fri 03 Sep | Bob's your uncle | what new forums??

Fri 03 Sep | a cynic writes... | http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?pg=pgDiscussGroups Those new forums (under test as we speak). They're sort of mentioned on joelonsoftware.com a blog that's stunningly popular on the local manor.

Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis | I hope that he (or someone) will take the initiative and aggregate the separate forums back into a single one again.

New Forum Critic | Fri 03 Sep | RM

Two Thumbs Down. It is NOT going to be as popular as the classic one. In fact, I predict the readership will significantly go down, worse yet, it will mark the beginning of the death of Joel on Software. Why? First of all, IMO, the popularity of JOS is based on its uniqueness; see Joel’s essay on its design and goal. With new bells and whistlers, Joel seems to have abandoned his original intentions. Also, with spawning of several JOS variants, I say, they are all going to die just like the New Yorker group because the visitors don’t come here for the Joel’s user net groups; they come here for one and only one reason that is JOS. On the usability note, I don’t know about most people, but I can’t stand the tiny images. Why can’t I simply click the author name to send him an email just like in the classic JOS? When I first heard of the ability to add link, I had something like this in mind, RM <---E-Mail www.CNN.com <----- Link Not with the tiny images. The new one seems a lot more like the missing link in the evolution of classic JOS to millions of other PHP forums. Anyway, it is still in beta stage and I hope, he will reconsider.

Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis | I agree with you: http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=182807&ixReplies=0

Fri 03 Sep | i like i | yeap, no web address icons (maybe the url beneath the name?), email by clicking on the name, and we want an *irrelevant* thumbnail in the top-left of each thread (rather than the 'hall'). The salting usernames seems like a good idea too. Low cost, saves all the not funny trolling etc.

Yuk!!! | Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis

Sorry guys, but the new forums both suck and blow at the same time, as Bart would say. Part of the attraction of this forum is the fact that you get lots of topics together. Splitting them out into several seems to be a pain, meaning lots of to-ing and fro-ing between them. Anyone care to create an aggregator ? It will be interesting to see if this experiment is successful, as I suspect that the fragmentation will be a bad thing overall. It isnt the case (as Joel suggests) that there is too much traffic here, imho. Also, I would assume that most of the JoS readers know how to scroll. I am interested to see that the new forums appear to be just FogBUGZ databases in a (very) thin disguise. I wonder if this is a new direction for the product?

Fri 03 Sep | Aussie Chick | I thought the new forum lost the 'simplistic' appeal that this one has.

Fri 03 Sep | Christopher Wells | Did it lose the 'simplistic' appeal, only because the new uses an icon to show whether an email address is available? Because apart from that, and the change in font, and there now being several forums instead of one, and the promise of a 'Search' function that actually searches, I don't notice any other change in appearance/functionality.

Fri 03 Sep | . | Give us the old forums back. :)

Fri 03 Sep | Nemesis | I wasn't talking about the look and feel (let's face it, it looks like crap, but it is a beta, so you might expect that). No, my main objection is that there are now several forums instead of just this one. I hope Joel changes his mind on this one and this is just a flag-waving exercise to see if he gets shot down.

Fri 03 Sep | a cynic writes... | I don't think the 'themed' forums will work - if only because I've never seen a thread stay completely on topic. As for the rest - I'm not keen on the new font but otherwise I'm Ok with it - *but* I would like the logon feature that's intended for FogCreek staff to be enabled for the rest of us. One thing I've never seen tried is to split a forum into several with completely arbitary names (circle, triangle and square say) and let people sort out their own themeing. It would still get things down to a manageable size without any particular sub-forum being ignored completely. Most people would stick to their own favourite 'shape' with a few who browsed them all letting us have a small world network.

Fri 03 Sep | devinmoore.com | once the URL's are switched over, i won't complain. As it is, when I click the button, I go to this one, so I use this one.

This forum is obsolete. link to the new forum | Fri 03 Sep | Michael Moser

Just noticed that this forum is obsolete. Here is the new forum http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel And three others, as well. http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?pg=pgDiscussGroups i guess they could have placed a link to the new forum. i am a bit slow to react, especially if there is no direction. This post is for the benefit of people like me; ,

Fri 03 Sep | Michael Moser | ... maybe, now there is no moderation for this forum, now that it is obsolete?

Fri 03 Sep | www.marktaw.com | Those forums are still in beta, notice the "bugs" link on the side of the page.

Fri 03 Sep | kc | So should everyone switch to the new place now?

Fri 03 Sep | Peter Monsson | Nope. They're still in beta.

Interesting hiring posts | Thu 02 Sep | Dennis Forbes

Just noticed this on the catch-all blogs.msdn.com and thought it was pertinent to some of the discussions weve had in the past on here. http://blogs.msdn.com/HeatherLeigh/archive/2004/09/02/224972.aspx

Fri 03 Sep | lrig | Hiring managers hire 'mini-me's' because the highest compliment you give yourself is self-affirmation. 'I am great, therefore people who have the same background as me must be great, too.' Of course, this contributes to homogeneous work environments.

difference between java standard and enterprise | Thu 02 Sep | Savage

The last time I seriously used Java was back in 2001. Please can somebody tell me the difference between the Java Standard Edition and the Java Enterprise Edition downloads available from www.java.com. The Java Standard Edition has the compiler, virtual machine and core libraries. Is the Enterprise edition a superset of the standard edition _or_ does it just contain extra libraries for things like XML, servlets, JSP etc ? Does the enterprise edition contain the compiler and virtual machine? Do you have to download the standard edition to get the enterprise edition to work?

Thu 02 Sep | Vince | Yes. Err, J2EE is just additional libraries (and they may package Sun's app server with it too), for J2EE development. This means servlets, JSPs, EJBs etc. You need J2SE also if you want to do J2EE development.

Thu 02 Sep | Confused | I'm also confused as well - here's what I have: J2SE 1.4.2 Tomcat JSTL Then J2EE is just additional class libraries?

Thu 02 Sep | Dewd | J2EE popularly is the worthy Java. It generally means server Java. JSP, Servlets, etc, are included, of course. But it also means the standardized APIs for server Java, for which there may be different implementations. Generally, someone who does Java, does J2EE. Then there is J2SE, which is generally just a means to an end. It includes de core Java and the core Java tools, like the compiler. It's so basic that it generally isn't worthy. It includes the Java GUI, for example. :-) Tomcat is simply one of the many different J2EE server implementations. It's freely available and is one of the prime implementations. Well, that's one way of saying it. :-)

Thu 02 Sep | Andrew Cherry | To clarify, Tomcat is not a J2EE server. It's basically only a Servlet container. A J2EE server is comprised of various sets of functionality, of which Tomcat can provide a part. As an example, later versions of JBoss use Tomcat as the Servlet container.

Thu 02 Sep | Jeremy | For yet another clarification, J2EE is the standardization of Java _interfaces_, not an implementation. Sun recently made their J2EE app server either cheap or free but every vendor's implementation is a little different in some respects since some of the specifications have quite a bit of grey.

Thu 02 Sep | the artist formerly known as prince | JSP's/servlets are part of j2ee. tomcat is the server that runs jsps/servlets jsps/servlets are a good part of j2ee to start on, and possibly the only one you will ever need

Fri 03 Sep | Koz | J2ee is j2se + a whole bunch of APIs. JMS JTA Servlet EJB JNDI JavaMail etc. etc. etc. The langauge is exactly the same, there's just a whole bunch of libraries to learn.

Re-using desgin/code | Thu 02 Sep | Afraid to tell my name

The question can be interpreted as follows in one line: Will we succeed in re-using a code base and design which has not been designed/developed for re-usable purpose? I am talking about relatively big/complex source code base. The elaborate question is as follows: What kind of code can be re-used? Here is the situation: Product A is big, complex and has lots of product specific code. Product B is new, which is similar to product A. We don’t have software spec for product B. We don’t really know right now what components that we need in product B. Management decided that we have to re-use Product A code. We studied Product A source code and found that it is well designed, has some reusable code but too much product specific code. The developers who are going to work in Product B have no idea about Product A source code and design. Product A source have some software design documents but specific to Product A. How to go about this situation? One proposal is to start removing product specific code from product A and make it some common code base. This is assuming that we know what we wanted in a common source base. Another proposal is to study the Product A source code line by line, and see if we can re-use it or not. Remember we don’t have Product B spec yet. Any thoughts?

Thu 02 Sep | aftraid to respond | > has some reusable code but too much product specific code. Doesn't that seem like the answer there? Abstract out the code so it handles both cases. Don't try to handle every case. Just the cases you know about.

Thu 02 Sep | J. Random Hacker | Basically all reusable code starts out this way--as not-quite-reusable chunks of a real application. If I had permission to modify project A, I'd start out by refactoring useful classes into standalone modules, retesting A at each step. I'd write unit tests for the new standalone modules *and for the parts of A which interface with those modules*. At the same time, I'd start by developing a primitive version of B which called the new standalone modules (and unit tests for B, of course). In general, if I need to modify an existing codebase heavily, I write lots of unit tests *before* making changes. This allows me to make wrenching changes without (much) fear of breaking stuff.

Thu 02 Sep | Christopher Wells | Afraid didn't say whether he wants to maintain Project A: whether he wants to end up with A and B (implying that A is refactored), or whether he wants to end up with only B (implying that A may be cannibalized).

Thu 02 Sep | Noname | Was the code for product A built with reuse in mind? If not, forget about it. Reuse almost never happens by accident or as an afterthought. Write the code for product B from scratch, and deliberately design it make it reusable so product C can benefit.

Thu 02 Sep | Should be working | Been there done that. The code for Product A was well enough engineered that I could rip out huge chunks of it (the stuff not needed for Product B) and still have it mostly compile. What is hampering us most is that the overall architecture for Product A doesn't quite translate to the new product. So we have a few odd pieces of functionality grafted onto or embedded within the code. In the short term, I think we've saved some time. In the longer term, I suspect we will wind up refactoring and recoding to support new features and it'll play out to be roughly equivalent to starting from scratch.

Thu 02 Sep | Jeff Kotula | It sounds to me like the management refered to by the OP has decided that they want some sort of Product B, similar to A. Ergo, we must reuse product A or B will be *too expensive*. This is classic poor judgement on the part of management. There is no way to predict ahead of time whether refactoring a massive existing architecture will be cheaper than starting over, perhaps with newer, better tools or dev environments. This is especially true if you have no specs for product B. I've seen this type of reasoning before from those who think they understand software development, but really have only a limited experience with it. Let me guess: is the management's experience primarily with product A? Another factor to consider is how much destabilization you are willing to accept in the course of heavy refactoring of A. The type of changes you allude to rarely occur without introducing bugs. It helps if you have good unit tests though. My advice is this: don't get into the evolution vs. revolution argument, especially if the management have emotional attachment to product A and some delusions that they understand software. You won't win. Instead, treat the project as an exercise in learning how to safely restructure large existing codebases. But don't be surprised if you aren't given time to do it correctly -- if time weren't an issue they wouldn't have already decided they had to reuse A.

Thu 02 Sep | Andrew Cherry | 'We don’t really know right now what components that we need in product B.' Until you do, forget the question of code re-use. If you start trying to refactor now, all you're going to be doing is burning £5 notes (replace currency as applicable). Unless there's at least one person who has the time to both understand the product requirements for Product B, and understand (at least approximately) the code base of Product A, you might as well start drafting the appendix to Death March now.

Thu 02 Sep | Afraid to tell my name | Product A is active and going to be alive for a long time. I am afraid that instead of developing ‘Product B’ specific functionalities, we will be spending most of the 'Product B' development time on correcting Product A code base to create a platform on which again the Product B code have to be written.

Thu 02 Sep | Afraid to tell my name | Substitute 'correcting' with 'Refactoring' :)

Thu 02 Sep | no name | Sounds like a crock of shit. What do you want us to do?

Thu 02 Sep | redguardtoo | 'Product A is active and going to be alive for a long time. ' maybe you can forget Product A and rebuild (not refactory) product B (of course, you can copy some codes from product A) There is possible risk in development process of product B. When you 'correcting Product A code base to create a platform', maybe you make product B *dependent* on product A in the early phase of development process? Only you know the details. redguardtoo http://www.d2ksoft.com

Thu 02 Sep | Joe | I second Andrew. You *need* the spec for Product B before you can make any decisions. That includes the premature decision that your pointy haired bosses have already made to reuse Product A code, although it doesn't sound like you have any say in getting them to consider that more carefully. But you should insist on knowing more about B before you start trying to figure out what chunks to rip out of A, or whether you want to create a common code base.

Fri 03 Sep | trollop | Third that. Are the following suppositions correct? 1) Product A is up and running with maintainance staff of 2. 2) Product A users like it as it is - working. 3) Product A development team is dispersed / out the door. If so, no one sane would touch Product A, it would be like fitting a new motor to a jetplane in midair. The task is way beyond the maintenance guys (been there, done that) and is a threat to the product. Let it go. Copy A's codebase to B and start afresh. Use relevant chunks from A, but do not retrofit to A. Rehire any good guys from A's development and tell them it's their last chance to get it right. And sack your managers - they're nitwits. Quote from this thread if it helps.

Smokin' theme for Ffox/T-bird | Thu 02 Sep | Ogami Itto

Yesterday I stumbled quite by acident on the Smoke theme by Aaron Spuler http://www.mozthemes.tk/ for Firefox and Thunderbird. Aaron seems to have some of the best looking themes on his website, go take a look. And by the way, whats your favorite Theme for Thunderbird/Firefox?

Thu 02 Sep | josheli | Someone once told Darrell Royal he was crazy for looking both ways when he crossed a one-way street. Coach Royal responded, 'What's so crazy about that?'

Thu 02 Sep | OffMyMeds | hmm... I like everything on my computer to look the same as everything else, so I gotta vote for the current incarnation of Qute, as it blends the best with Windows XP.

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | +++hmm... I like everything on my computer to look the same as everything else, so I gotta vote for the current incarnation of Qute, as it blends the best with Windows XP.+++ yep, you need to get back on your meds.

Thu 02 Sep | JWA | I use a great Office 2003 inspired theme for both FireFox and Tunderbird and I like it alot. I also use the extension that puts the entire menu structure under one Menu entry in the toolbar, so that I can get all of the controls down to one toolbar height, plus the links bar. I like this layout a lot both functionally and visually. --Josh

Fri 03 Sep | Ogami Itto | Got an url for that theme JWA?

Fri 03 Sep | a cynic writes... | Noia 2.0

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy

I finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time a couple of hours back. I wanted to let others who have not read the book yet know a few of my thoughts: (1) The book is about a mentally challenged boy. It is nurrated by the boy himself in first person, so it does not mention explicitly that the boy has special needs, but you are given to pick that up as you read. (2) The chapters of the book are numbered in prime numbers. Unlike all books, where chapters are numbered serially like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...and so on, this book has prime numbers for the chapters, like 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 ...and so on, which is kind of interesting. (3) If you are a programmer, there is a lot in common that you will find between the boy Christopher and yourself. (4) All the time I was reading the book, I felt compassionate towards the boy. If you are too sensitive, please do not read this book. Your heart will bleed tearfully. (5) If you have had a childhood drama/trauma, or have lived away from your parents, or have lost your parents early in life, or your parents have seperated, or there is any kind of a childhood pattern that comes to you now, long after the cause of the pattern occuring in your childhood, please do not touch this book. It will tear you down. You wont read it in one year, let alone one night. (6) At some places, the book reads like Joels writing, when he condescends down to layman alley to crystalize things. It felt nice. I thought a lot about this forum while reading the book, I dont know why. May be because of the simple prose the author has used. It read more like this guys post on this thread. (7) The book carries an implicit reminder that simplicity is the best. (8) I related to a lot of traits this child has. I liked many of the parts in the book those are brought up. For example, he says he doesnt like to talk to strangers. And I dont like to do that too. I mean I dont like to talk to people I already do not know. Not like I dont like to, but I felt sort of run out of memory if I just bumped into a complete stranger and a conversation started. I never could bring out the reason into words as to why it was this way. He does it in this book. He says we dont like to talk to strangers, not because of anything else but because they are new into your life and to record information about anything new in your brain disrupts the flow of the information that is already running through your brain. I just relate to that very well. I am sure many programmers do and that quite explains why people say programmers lack social skills. Its because what we deal with everyday is far too complicated and we have the responsibility of leading a mundane life along with crunching all those logic circuits in our brains. Some descriptions I liked very much because I can relate to them are here: From Chapter 37 (which is chapter 13 actually, because the chapters are prime-numbered) ============= I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I cant tell lies. Mother was a small person who smelt nice. A lie is when you say something happened which didnt happen. But there is only ever one thing which happened at a particular time and a particular place. And there are an inifinite number of things that did not happen at that time and that place. And if I start thinking about somethig which didnt happen, I start thinking about all the other things that didnt happen. For example, this morning for breakfast, I had Ready Brek and some hot raspberry milkshake. But if I say that I actually had Shreddies and a mug of tea, I start thinking about Coco-pops and lemonade and porridge and Dr.Pepper and how I wasnt eating my breakfast in Egypt and there wasnt a rhinoceros in the room and Father wasnt wearing a driving suit and so on and even writing this makes me feel very shaky and scared, like I do when I am standing on the top of a very tall building and there are thousands of houses and cars and people below me and my head is so full of all these things that I am afraid I am going to forget to stand up straight and hang onto the rail and I am going to fall over and be killed.

Thu 02 Sep | Pakter | Still scary, Sathyaish ! ;-)

Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Who/what is scary? I do not understand.

Thu 02 Sep | no name | This post is about a mentally challenged boy

Thu 02 Sep | A.M. | ... And movie rights have already been purchased by Brad Pitt, so if you don't want to read it, wait for the film! (seriously)

Thu 02 Sep | Confused | Sigh. I am so tired of the endless categorization of programmers as some kind of mentally aberrant group. Look, I and none of the people in my team play D & D, we can all, well except for one, can carry on a normal conversation, 4 out of 6 are married, etc etc. We just have a special talent.

Thu 02 Sep | Aaron F Stanton | I'm a programmer. Most people aren't. I'm left handed. Most people aren't. I've lived my entire life as a person outside the "norm" of society. Heck, I even play D&D. But you know what? I honestly don't care how or even if people classify me.

Thu 02 Sep | Alex | Bah, there are two kinds of people, those who categorize and those who don't.

Thu 02 Sep | Pakter | Your last long sentence was scary.

Thu 02 Sep | Xela | Nyet, there are two kinds of people, those who eat lemons, and those who copulate with walruses.

Thu 02 Sep | . | >copulate with walruses. Uh, I ate a lemon once. :-)

Fri 03 Sep | Simon Lucy | The last paragraph was a quote from the book, so who was being scary?

Fri 03 Sep | a2800276 | >Look, I and none of the people in my team play D & D, we can all, >well except for one, can carry on a normal conversation, 4 out of 6 >are married, etc etc. >We just have a special talent. I'm a very good driver.

Fri 03 Sep | Jimmy Jo-Jo | Xela, can't I do both?

Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Now, I didn't mean that all programmers were imbecile OCDs dribbling saliva out of their mouths and making groaning sounds if they didn't like something. Otherwise, all the PDCs and TechEdge's would have wet seats. I just meant that at one level or another, you can relate to the boy's dilemma. I do. >his post is about a mentally challenged boy What would have been a better description? Or rather what is wrong with that description? Please! No, seriously. Tell me. >... And movie rights have already been purchased by Brad Pitt, so if you don't want to read it, wait for the film! (seriously) Cool! >Your last long sentence was scary. You mean point number 8? Yeah, I just wrote that text in a hurry when I was in the middle of writing point number 3 and then when I finished writing till point 7, I numbered that para 8. And I've farted all over the place I can smell. But then, it's just a post. However, if you're talking about the very last sentence in the post, it was an excerpt from the book, as Simon Lucy pointed out. In any case, you'd be helping me if you told me what was scary about the writing, so I could think the next time before writing. One question: How does Joel get to know about all the nice books before everyone else?

Fri 03 Sep | no name | > movie rights have already been purchased by Brad Pitt He won't even have to act.

Windows File Manager thingy | Thu 02 Sep | hoser

OK, I know this has been discussed before, but what is your favorite file manager type thingy? Id like the dual pane (or more?) type FM. Also, how do you guys manage to search the JoS thread archives so effectively?

Thu 02 Sep | Ryan | Total Commander: http://www.ghisler.com/

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Google

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adiscuss.fogcreek.com+search

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | MacOS

Thu 02 Sep | hoser | Thank you Sir. (may I have another?)

Thu 02 Sep | Rob Warner | I use WinNc.net http://www.winnc.net

Thu 02 Sep | Alex | We're using FAR at work, a Norton Commander knock-off. At first I thought it was dorky, but you can change the fonts and resolution and get a decent manager. There are plugins for color highlighting a lot of files in the editor (remember F4?) -- including CPP, HTML, XML etc. Plus there is Hiew, which complements it naturally. The screenshots don't do it justice, I wonder why they are showing it in such a dinky resolution. http://farmanager.com/screens.asp

Thu 02 Sep | Sid | I use Total Commander. Great product. Can't live without my dual panes.

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | farmanager reminds me of DosShell (or is that DosHell? ha ha) still, I do like text lists, because they're so fast. Either give me text lists, or super pretty icon stuff. I don't want in-between stuff that looks like relics from the museum of bad computer interfaces.

Thu 02 Sep | Wayne | I prefer the Windows Explorer (dual pane) style and I can't stand the MacOS File Manager.

Thu 02 Sep | insignificant | Dual pane, but the common dialog control in windows sucks when it comes to the details.

Thu 02 Sep | RedFox | 2xplorer^2

Fri 03 Sep | Mat Hall | I just wrote my own. Not yet production quality, but it suits me fine. I'm a big fan of MDI apps, so it lets you contain a bunch of Explorer-style windows in one container, has features like 'Copy to all windows', will emulate the Win3.x FileMan (which I happened to like, along with the 3.x common file dialogs), brings back the 'New folder' toolbar button, blah blah. Given that the directory view and shell folder view are just ActiveX controls, anyone with 10 minutes to spare can probably knock up their own personalised file manager, and give it the features they need...

Which data type would you prefer here? | Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy

PS: This time, the link provided is not an EXE or a ZIP file. It is another HTML page. I wanted to practice some Linked List stuff, so I set out to create a linked list. The plan was to create the following: (1) A linked list class in Visual Basic (2) A non-class based linked list using functions in C (3) A linked list class in C++ I started with Visual Basic and I wrote an IList interface that I wanted my list to implement. When I had started, somehow I thought this time, Id first use a collection as the ingredient, and so it would not really be a linked list. It would be an extended collection behaving like a (not linked, but just a) list, as in list of things. And my new agenda would then be, (1) A list (not a linked list) class in Visual Basic by extending the Collection object. (2) A linked list class in Visual Basic (3) A linked list in Visual Basic that is not class-based but has a struct (Type) and global functions in a standard module (.bas). (4) A non-class based linked list using functions in C (5) A linked list class in C++ I dont like to create lists if they have no meaning, so I thought it would be a good idea if the list was a list of something and not just ints. So, I made a list of my friends here; a list of JoS members. I called the list MyFriends. I have just finished implementing a list by extending the Visual Basics Collection object. My list has the following interface: [CODE] Public Function AddAtPos(ByRef Object As Object, _ ByVal Index As Long) As Boolean End Function Public Function PeekAtPos(ByVal Index As Long) As Object End Function Public Function RemoveAtPos(ByVal Index As Long) As Boolean End Function Public Property Get Count() As Long End Property Public Function Contains(Object As Object) As Boolean End Function Public Function IndexOf(Object As Object) As Long End Function Public Sub Serialize() End Sub Public Sub Deserialize() End Sub Public Sub Clear() End Sub Public Sub Sort(ByVal SortOrder As SortOrders) End Sub Public Sub Reverse() End Sub [/CODE] If youre interested, you can find the source code and the executable for my first experiment here. http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=303400 Now, I am set to implement item number (2) in my agenda - the linked list class in Visual Basic. Once again, the semantics remain the same. I intend to keep the list as a list of friends. So each node in the list is a friend. While designing the node class or the MyFriend class, I stumbled accross this problem. I am recording two pieces of information about each friend: (1) Name (2) Phone Number Both are of String type. The problem was not with these, but with the node pointer item. I have three data types in mind that I can use to point to the next node. I am confused as to which one would be a good choice, and I want your opinion on the same. Heres what I have thought the node/MyFriend class as: [B]MyFriend Class[/B] [CODE] Implements IList Private mName As String Private mPhoneNumber As String ===Which one do I choose?======= Private mNextFriend As MyFriend OR Private mNextFriend As Long OR Private mNextFriend() As Byte ================================== [/CODE] Let me argue each case, as I thought about them. Starting with the last, if I take the mNextFriend field as a Byte array, it would help me....do nothing, basically. So, ruled out. Next, if took the mNextFriend field as a Long, I think it would be the ideal thing to do, because VB6 Longs are indeed 32-bit values, and then I would use the mNextFriend Long field to point to a new instance of MyFriend type, using the ObjPtr function. I would dereference the mNextFriend Long type by using RtlMoveMemory. That sounds like a nice plan. However, the problem with this is that it does not strictly confirm to a Linked List set up, because of the generic nature of this Long pointer. This pointer could be used to point not only to MyFriend types but to anything. Since I am going to be the developer audience for this class, and hence this is only dogfood, it is no problem, but in general, I dont like it as a habit and I always want my code to represent what it ought to represent. So, this would be like compromising on a trivial issue. If I use mNextFriend as a MyFriend type, I solve the problem of the generic pointer by restricting it to the MyFriend type. So, its more disciplined this way, but now, the field is not really a pointer. It is an object. Of course, it is still a 32-bit reference to the actual object, but it is still not a real pointer. So, I am confused. If you were to be doing this, what option would you choose and why? To me, the Long seems like ok, although it is a little bit of a compromise on the type-checking.

Thu 02 Sep | Mr. O | Ask your Comp Sci 101 teacher.

Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Mr.O. It's not like I am learning these things the first time. I was asking for opinion, trying to start a serious discussion. If you don't have anything to say, just move on.

Thu 02 Sep | Paulo Caetano | 'If I use mNextFriend as a MyFriend type, I solve the problem of the generic pointer by restricting it to the MyFriend type. So, it's more disciplined this way, but now, the field is not really a pointer. It is an object. Of course, it is still a 32-bit reference to the actual object, but it is still not a real pointer.' AFAIK, that's one of the points of working in VB - to avoid dealing with some of the stuff you have to deal with in other languages/tools. If you want to deal explicitly with pointers, move on to your next steps - C/C++. Anyway, answering your question, this is the option that makes more sense to me. The 'Long' option smells too much of a hack, IMHO.

Thu 02 Sep | Kenny | me vote myFriend type

Thu 02 Sep | AllanL5 | The part that uses 'ObjPtr' is fraught with peril. You would be using a function whose only use should be to get around problems you can't solve any other way. It should be the first solution -- of type MyFriend. By the way, I usually use 'My' as a prefix for local data items. I would NEVER use it as a prefix for a class name. I want my class names to be more generic than that. I would want in the future to have a variable named MyFriend, of class Friend. Also, when building linked lists, for the link data items, or accessor methods, I tend to use 'Next' and 'Prev'.

Thu 02 Sep | AllanL5 | Oh, and when your link field is a reference to an object, that's what it is SUPPOSED to be. You are not supposed to jump through hoops to get a 'real' pointer in there.

Thu 02 Sep | bpd | '[...] the field is not really a pointer. It is an object. [...] not a real pointer.' It is not an object, it is a pointer (or reference) to an object. The 'VB way' would be to declare it as MyFriend.

Thu 02 Sep | Bored Bystander | Sathyaish, I recall from a previous thread that you are curious about linked lists as a concept and you have never implemented one. Trying to implement one in VB will obscure the essence of a linked list with typecasting and other mechanical garbage. You need to work with pointers to 'see' what a linked list is doing. May I suggest an alternative approach: implement one in C. Use a non GUI approach like writing to the console using printfs() in order to see what things look like internally. In other words, select the tool(s) that will support learning rather than cluttering things up with a tool that isn't intended for the purpose. And lastly, it will be extremely easy to find examples of simple linked lists on the net coded in C or C++. I suggest that just doing it will be more instructive than putting all your incremental design decisions up for a group vote. It's the way I learned many moons ago, and it's quite effective...

Thu 02 Sep | trollop | I hate to drag in a possible irrelevacy, but what happens if your friend moves house - meaning: hardwired addresses (pointers) are OK if nobody moves. Consider the classic Bill of Materials schema: Parent|child|qty vs Parent#|child#|qty The former is more robust, but slower to execute. The latter more fragile, but potentially much faster. You're the designer, you choose. PS which maps to SQL faster?

Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Hi BB, I agree with all that you have said. In fact, what I am doing is on purpose. I have read the code for linked lists in C already, and from more than three different books and a few places on the Net. I learnt about linked lists in the year 1996. I even taught a limited syllabus of C++, which also covered a chapter on linked lists, back in 1999. But I must admit, I do not know C++ well. I have code samples too. But I am doing this excercise because I want to see how it is going to be trying to simulate one where there is no support. Then, the plan is to do the straight-forward C code for the linked list. Next, will be a C++ class. And for C, as you have suggested, I'd already thought that I would first do a console app to test the linked list, because otherwise I would need to code a lot of UI in Win32 (which I know well) or MFC (which I don't know very well). I know pointers well. What I am doing is an experiment. May be I don't have the words to explain. It's more like knowing something but still having a feeling of insecurity that you do not know much. There is more to be known. I want to master these concepts well. May be, at a sub-conscious level, I am doing these things over and over again as a preparation for my goal - to work at Microsoft. I posted this question because I was really divided in opinion over two of the three data types there. My plan after this is to practice the implementation of a hash table. Then I would move to the sorting algorithms (I mostly use Bubble Sort and Selection Sort, though I know a few others). Then, to compression and encryption, and so on. BTW, I have to still ask you a few questions on the previous thread. Only they are not in the forefront of my mind as of yet.

Thu 02 Sep | . | > May be, at a sub-conscious level, I am doing these things over and over again as a preparation for my goal - to work at Microsoft. Someone told me that a reason why MS use 'linked list' questions in their interviews is because a lot of the O/S code is written in C (which only old-timers know). So, Sathyaish, if you apply to Microsoft, will you be applying for a job writing O/S-level code? He also said that if you apply via HR, they receive a mountain of resumes and might take a year to get back to you: so, better to 'fast track' your resume, by giving it to a hiring manager via someone who already works there.

Thu 02 Sep | Lee | It's good that you're trying to learn this on your own, but wouldn't it be a more effecient use of your time to take CS101 & 102? That pretty much covers the topics you describe.

Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Thanks, dot. Actually, as a matter of fact, I have already applied to Microsoft. I applied in June this year and I have already have a HR phone interview from the recruiter. I am awaiting my next phone interview. No, I dare not apply for a position that would entail writing OS level code. I applied for the position of a Programming Writer - a someone who writes documentation for the next version of Visual Basic, and also some code.

Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | A slight typo here: >I have already have a HR phone interview from the recruiter I have already had a HR phone interview from the recruiter

Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | >It's good that you're trying to learn this on your own, but wouldn't it be a more effecient use of your time to take CS101 & 102? That pretty much covers the topics you describe. Yes, it would. But I can't leave my day job. But I've read all the PDFs from the Stanford University CS website. And I have two good books on data structures that I read a little by little when I get the time. Besides that, I have K&R, which I have never crossed the 6th chapter of, because each line of that book is pregnant with meaning. And I don't want to miss out implementing anything in that book. In that book, I am stuck at the Polish Notation because I don't like it very much. Besides, that I have a lot of books on C, including one by Balaguruswamy, two books by Yashwant Karnetkar (Let Us C), one book on Johnathan Morrisson (C++ for Visual Basic programmers), and many more. I've read a few of these already. And I can write Win32 API programs well even without using a client such as Visual Basic. I love Win32 API very, very, very much. But them, the Win32 API is a platform and not a language, though it is implemented in C.

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | Space is not a premium anymore. Use the biggest data type, and give yourself the best possible option for upgrade in the future, as space is not getting smaller. All databases support large integers now, and the SQL INTEGER is the VB Long anyways. The User/User# problem will always be present. When I am designing a system from scratch, I pick the artsy 'pretty code' way (User#). However, a lot of systems are fully integrated with User, so you'd better be prepared to make a temp table to handle the associations, etc.

Thu 02 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | I wasn't really talking about the backend issues here, but thanks anyways. As you can see, http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=1777300 I don't perist the list to a database. I serialize it to an INI instead.

Thu 02 Sep | A.M. | 'each line of that book is pregnant with meaning. ' That is a beautiful quote.

Thu 02 Sep | K&R fan | 'each line of that book is pregnant with meaning. ' Agreed. My favourite is the last line on p92: #endif Almost Shakespearean in its understated eloquence.

Thu 02 Sep | ronk! | Sathyaish, I for one find your earnestness and enthusiasm very refreshing. As long as you have that you will go far.

Fri 03 Sep | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | >Sathyaish, I for one find your earnestness and enthusiasm very refreshing. As long as you have that you will go far. Thank you, ronk. It was very kind of you to say that. When I need motivation, I come back to words like these, and I am rejuvinated. >That is a beautiful quote. Yes. I like that phrase. I read it in a book a long time ago. From then, I say it when I need to. When someone tells me something that I think has a lot of meaning to it, I tell them that what they just said was pregnant with meaning. >Agreed. My favourite is the last line on p92: >#endif >Almost Shakespearean in its understated eloquence. You're my guy! Of all the #endif's that are so sweet, that one endif, the most extolled, sounds the most melodious; that one endif calls to me, and it lives on page 92. It's got the Shakespearian sound, as you say. Enddddddiffff...what a rythm! Like it were an iamb. That #endif on p92 is being talked about a lot these days on comp.lang.c. And I believe Nostradamus also devoted a quatran to the #endif that was going to be written on page 92. He said it would unite two war-waging super powers. I recieved an email from a user on this board called 'A Friend'. He sent me a link to a book on data structures and algorithms. I sent my thanks to him by replying to his email but I guess his email was fake, so I'd like to thank him here. A Friend, thanks so much for that book. It means so much to me.

New discussion board software | Thu 02 Sep | Carnage & Green Goblin

Joel writes: I think probably the biggest visible change will be that when you post something, youll be able to provide a URL that your name links to. Am I the only one that feels that this big change would take about 5 minutes to code? Maybe 10 minutes if you sipped on a cup of coffee? What do you need to do anyway? Add another field called PosterURL in the database, then add code that will make it an [PosterName] fragment of markup and insert that into the threads? Hell, I couldve finished that in the time I took to type this message. Whats the big deal?

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | You're not allowed to post about it. Your thread will be deleted.

Thu 02 Sep | Ken Ray | Just what the world needs - yet another duscussion board software. How many wheels do we need to (re)invent? Are there any why phpbb or php-nuke can't be used?

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | Err.. Ken, with all due respect, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The OP isn't creating new software.

Thu 02 Sep | a cynic writes... | Funnily enough, since Joel mentioned this it may count as on topic and the thread not disappear (under the no talking about housekeeping rule). In the unlikely event that's the case: The reasons that Joel chose to write his own are set out in an essay 'Building communities with software'. More to the point, I suspect that the main reason behind the upcoming change is to make sure that posts are by the people they appear to be. ('Muppet' has been on the receiving end of this quite a lot recently). Whilst not a big change technically, hopefully it might cut down on some of the sillier flamewars

Thu 02 Sep | Wayne | Anyway Ken, existing message board software kind of sucks. Why doesn't someone make one with a tree menu for the threads instead of a flat list? I know I've seen it before, just not done very well and not used by many. Also, there aren't as many options for an ASP/ASP.Net message board as there are for PHP. I'd welcome a few additions there.

Thu 02 Sep | a2800276 | >>More to the point, I suspect that the main reason behind the upcoming change is to make sure that posts are by the people they appear to be.<< How would that help, instead of typing 'muppet' in the full name box, I'll also type 'http://muppets.url.com' in the URL box... I think the change is meant to cut down on signatures in the posts. -tim

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | I suggested creating some sort of off-site accounting of valid posts by an individual, with some sort of post-specific signature in the URL, to authenticate posts by X person. The thread was promptly deleted.

Thu 02 Sep | a cynic writes... | Their have been a number of suggestions like that all falling victim to: 'My policy in the past has been that 'off topic' includes any discussion of the forum itself, its design or usability. ' (from 'Building Communities...' again). Let's face it, it's touch and go whether this thread surivives. Tim - re-reading the original article I'm afraid you may be right. Ah well...

Thu 02 Sep | a cynic writes... | "There" not "their", "survives" not "surivives". My typing's getting worse.

Thu 02 Sep | Nemesis | tim: 'I think the change is meant to cut down on signatures in the posts'. Exactly. There have been a lot recently, and I wonder if Joel is concerned with his PageRank being diluted, or others getting a free ride. Given that your name will link to a URL, I guess that's the end of the email via the site feature, unless you specify your email address as the URL, which is unlikely. This is probably to eliminate spam via the forum and reduce the load on the server.

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | 'How would that help, instead of typing 'muppet' in the full name box, I'll also type 'http://muppets.url.com' in the URL box...' Who says you could enter the resulting URL directly? You might have a GUID input field. The GUID translates to a URL serverside, that is returned on the page as a link under your name (where Joel has his 'Fog Creek Software' tag. You would get the GUID by email. Remember, for those that put in an email, Fog Creek can already discriminate multiple instances of the same handles (unless someone shared their email address). Getting the GUID proves access to the specified email inbox. URL's need to be unique, but that is a managable problem. Putting in a url without the GUID ) generates a request for a GUID linked to that URL. Variant A: Instead of the GUID one could use a passphrase supplied by the user. Name+passphrase+url then results in a link to te url, and a s before url's are handed out on a first-come basis. Advantage: no mailing involved, short latency Disadvantage: still no proof of email address ownership (ok, inbox accessibility) Variant B: Use the email field as discriminator. Major disadvantage: everyone you send a mail to through the JoS system can now impersonate you.

Thu 02 Sep | Oren Miller | What in the world is going on here? Will no one read the next sentence? 'It's a small feature that I'm hoping will have a big effect on the anthropology of the discussion group.' So: 1) he says the feature is small, not big 2) he says right here why he is doing it

Thu 02 Sep | matt | Why not use phpbb or php-nuke? because they're both slow, bloated, over-done irritating pieces of crap with too many features for their own good. Quicker to write something simple and elegant yourself, than learn to configure crap like that into a state where it doesn't completely suck

Thu 02 Sep | Teller | Wayne said: 'Also, there aren't as many options for an ASP/ASP.Net message board as there are for PHP. I'd welcome a few additions there.' I'm fascinated by this topic...I've written a phpbb-style board for ASP. It's fast as blazes and doesn't have a lot of the clutter you often see with those other boards...email me for a beta account.

Thu 02 Sep | Alex | Plus I don't like it. How long before a 'male/female' radio button is added? And 'age'. Maybe 'Zipcode'. The possibilities...

Fri 03 Sep | John Clark | Interesting discussion. Slightly divergent, but a few years back, I decided to 'roll my own' discussion forum because at that time the alternatives weren't as fully-featured as they now are, and also because there were things I wanted to implement which most if not all fail to offer (still) such as unified topic views and the like. It's still running, albeit in the context of a call centre forum - www.callcentrevoice.com if you're interested (and I always appreciate any comments from other developers as it helps me plot the path forward) - but plugging that isn't what I want to do here. No, I am thinking of creating a community dedicated to the merry band of developers who actually have created (or plan to create) their own discussion software. Talking mainly over issues that crop up regularly - such as categorisation, optimisation, look & feel, etc. plus the softer-skills side like moderation and promotion. Can I poll to see if anyone would be interested in such a site? It'd be a free resource for everyone - no commercial intent as to be frank it's a hobby rather than a profession. OK, back to lurking for now... ;) John

What exactly is a stencil? | Thu 02 Sep | a random geek on the Internet

What exactly you get in your mind when you read or hear the word stencil? How would you exactly define a stencil? Sorry, Im not a native english speaker. I looked into many websites but I wasnt able to get a clear answer (even with google definitions).

Thu 02 Sep | . | A stencil is a flat piece of metal or plastic, with shaped holes cut out (typically letters or numbers). By moving a pen around the edge of the holes, you can draw the shape exactly.

Thu 02 Sep | Another Random geek from internet | In a wider sense, the material can be anything, even paper or fabric; and the painting does not have to be done only by a pen; in some cases, you can use a spray can instead. This is the most common use in day-to-day life. :-) The word is also used to mean an old kind of a copying machine; which used a stencil of waxed paper. You could use a typewriter or a pen to etch stuff on the paper, which was then used as a master copy to produce numerous copies (on paper), using a think ink applied through a roller in the machine. YOu may also go to http://stencilarchive.org/ , http://www.stencilrevolution.com/tutorials/ , or do a google image search for stencils.

Thu 02 Sep | a random geek on the Internet | If you cutout pieces from a piece of paper. Would that paper be called a stencil? And what about the cutouts? Can we also say that a stencil can help you cutout pieces from a larger surface? i.e. paper?

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | errr.. aren't the little pictures in Visio called 'stencils' in the manual?

Thu 02 Sep | Throwaway | yes, and in the application too....

Thu 02 Sep | Adrian | Incidentally, in realtime 3D graphics a 'stencil buffer' is an array of pixels, the same size as the screen, which can be used to perform 'cut out' effects. For instance, you could draw a circle into the stencil buffer, and then say 'draw a 3D scene on screen, but only where the stencil is NOT set', and you'd get a picture with a circular hole in it. Although this might seem trivial, you can perform a variety of operations using stencil buffers. They're at the heart of Doom 3's realtime shadows, for instance.

Thu 02 Sep | a random geek on the Internet | Adrian, isn't it called a mask? Probably, an inverted mask? Yes muppet, actually the way Visio uses this term made me wonder whether the stencil is the cutouts or the paper left after the cutouts?

Thu 02 Sep | Adrian | random geek: Yes, the action of selectively drawing based on a separate image that defines the "cutout" is often known as masking. I just wanted to point out that in realtime 3D (OpenGL or Direct3D) the mask is often called a stencil buffer, or stencil.

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | A closely related word for "stencil" is "template". A stencil is a specific kind of template used specifically in drawing, to trace around. i.e. I can use an ashtray as a stencil to draw a circle, if I trace around the ashtray. In visio, template shapes are called stencils, because they are for drawing.

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | When you cutout pieces, those are "patterns". If you use the patterns as an inverted "stencil" (i.e to NOT trace in the part you cut out), then they are "masks". I knew I got a fine art degree for a reason!

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | Sorry to repeat post again, but actually if you assemble cutout pieces into a single "pattern", then the individual pieces are "blocks", even though a single cutout piece can be used as a "pattern" as well. I'll stop now, before silicon valley transforms into the art district.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Deven, give us Philistines a link. If you don't know of one keep on explainng and then you can link to this thread in future.

Thu 02 Sep | A.T. | Yes, the visio objects are called stencils. I remember using a plastic flowcharting stencil way back when I didn't have grey hair. That's probably where the name comes from.

Thu 02 Sep | AllanL5 | Yes, a 'stencil' is a small flat piece of plastic with various symbol shapes cut in to it. It was intended that you would place it flat on a piece of paper and run your pencil or pen around the shape, to get that shape on the paper. In Visio, they have a 'Stencil' file (.VSS). This file holds a set of Visio Shapes, and can also hold VBA code. They also have a 'Template' file (.VST). This file can contain VBA code, menus, and references to stencil files. When a drawing is created using a Template, the Template is copied to the drawing file. The drawing uses the Drawing's copy of the Template file, but uses the links to the Stencil file.

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | OK, some art links to help explain it in fine art terms: http://www.artlex.com/ - has definitions like the one below. I would use this one first, then hunt for other places if it's not there. http://modernsculpture.com/glossary.htm - much shorter, relates more complex art words back down to words like stencil. http://www.progressiveart.com/art_terms.htm - yet more terms... art is complicated! artlex definition of stencil: 'stencil - Stiff paper (or other sheet material) with a design cut into it as a template for shapes meant to be copied. Ink or paint forced through the design's openings will produce a print on a flat surface placed beneath. The design need special to producing a stencil: balance the requirement to cut out most of the desired shapes against maintaining the strength of the loosest parts of the stencil. The relationship between the positive and negative spaces is best when no part of the sheet is damaged or lost in its use. In lettering stencils, for instance, the centers of such letters as A, B, D, O, and P are some of the shapes most likely to have this problem. The 'bridges' holding these 'islands' in position are the chief characteristics of stencils. Art in which stencil letters are used often make reference to flatness, cheaply hand-produced signage and package labeling, among other common applications. Patterns and other designs are also painted as stenciled architectural decorations. Pochoir and silkscreening (or serigraphy) are types of stencil processes. Also, the image produced, and the process of making it.' (lots of linked words on the real page)

Thu 02 Sep | . | Re the 3D stuff, stencils are implemented in the GPU which means they're fast. Also they can can have properties additional to 2D surfaces, which differentiates them, partly, from the concept of a "mask."

Thu 02 Sep | Confused | I'm old enough to remember mimeograph stencils. Let's just say that the copy machine was a really great idea. Hats off to Xerox.

Thu 02 Sep | Anonymouse | I'm old enough to remember sniffing the old mimeograph copies in grammar school. At least, I think I remember... Mmmm... Mimeographs...

Fri 03 Sep | Stephen Jones | It used to have to type stencils on an old manual Underwood from the 1930s and then run off the copies from a machine in my bedroom. A second vote for the photocopy machine!

Music, mp3's, etc. | Thu 02 Sep | hoser

Who woulda thought that something like the iPod would be so popular? Certainly not me. I rip CDs - which I buy mostly at Half Price Books, since most of the music I like is being recycled - and keep copies on my laptop and work PC. So now Microsoft is looking to enter the iPod game with their own version. What do you think? Another success story? If so, why? If not, why? Why did portable music become so big? I mean, whoopee. I dont quite get it.

Thu 02 Sep | TheGeezer | Portable music is all about convenience - pure and simple. Not sure about MS entering the game but you can be they'll throw tons of money at it (like that have done with the X-Box which hasn't exactly been a runaway commercial success). I guess the good thing about them entering the game is lower prices for the consumer because of competition.

Thu 02 Sep | TheGeezer | >>but you can be they'll throw D'oh - that should read 'you can BET they'll throw...'

Thu 02 Sep | SW | Yeah, but knowing Microsoft, they'll go overkill and try and make it an all in one media machine. By adding video support, wireless internet support, and a nice massage feature, they'll create a product that's expensive, poor on power management, and suited only for a select few tech heads who must have the latest and greatest...That's just my prediction.

Thu 02 Sep | www.marktaw.com | I already said it in this forum. MP3 players are the universe's way of balancing itself. The 28 albums you would've bought if you didn't download them now cost you $400 to listen to.

Thu 02 Sep | Prakash S | Mark, that is one of the best lines I have heard. Maybe we can sell the record companies on that:-)

Thu 02 Sep | TheGeezer | A portable MP3 player that doles out massages will sell like gangbusters!! For a while there I was wondering whatever happened to innovation in these sorts of devices... :-)

Thu 02 Sep | no name | Portable music has been big since, well, the dayss of the transistor radio. Then the "walkman" type players, then the portable CD players. The all electronic version is just the next wave.

Thu 02 Sep | Ben | Since mobile phones are offering increased storage, media cards, bluetooth and wireless conections I can't see there being a need for stand alone mp3 players in the next few years.

Thu 02 Sep | Tom (a programmer) | Yeah, there will be hybrid devices, but just like some people still buy hi-fi separates some people will still buy separate music players, cameras and phones.

Thu 02 Sep | Sony Walkman | 'Why did portable music become so big? I mean, whoopee. I don't quite get it.' Where have you been since 1979?!

Thu 02 Sep | I am Jack's lack of a witty reference | I think any mp3 player's success now will be based mostly on the service that it is marketed with. Sure, some trendy 'style' brands will have a niche... But the broadest success will come from superior services. It seems to me that the RIAA's terrorism is working at least to some degree. Any player is worthless without good mp3's to go on it. More and more, if people can avoid the risk of any RIAA extortion or hassle, they will.

Thu 02 Sep | hoser | I've never owned a walkman. Hmm. Never saw the point. To be sure, when I'm outside, I want to hear what's outside. Even if its traffic and noise. The only time I listen to music is at work, or working at home.

Thu 02 Sep | Tayssir John Gabbour | Well, the addictiveness of music varies in people. (Same with brown bubbly sugarwater.) Consider the iPod a portable IV drip for a drug. Portable music has a huge market because it requires no interaction or literacy, and the music industry has exploited celebrity so that it satisfies peoples' needs for stories. Conspicuous consumption is also an issue. If you have an Apple product, it marks you as someone with good taste who doesn't run with the herd. (Which is kind of true, except for those who do it conspicuously, who are just posers.) Favorite bands are also chosen this way. ('Old Metallica is more to my taste; you know, before they sold out with the black album.')

Thu 02 Sep | sgf | 'good taste who doesn't run with the herd' er, more like different taste who runs with a smaller herd

Thu 02 Sep | Tayssir John Gabbour | Well, I don't own a mac, and I've only done some dev on them, but it's pretty clear it's a very quality system. No one is doing that kind of innovation. So even though I might not have an enormous reason to use them, I'd probably look well on someone who does. As long as they are being reasonable about it.

Fri 03 Sep | DryWell | I have a Neuros (http://www.neurosaudio.com/index.aspx) and I love it. I use WinAmp's Internet radio along with Streamripper to save off the MP3s. I can collect several hundred tunes over a weekend. I d/l them all and if I don't like it, I delete it, culling it back it back to what I like. Works great. Eventually the RIAA will pull the plug, I suspect, but until then it's how I get my music, besides ripping CDs which I've purchased. The Neuros has a feature where I can play tunes through a nearby FM radio. This works pretty well, although I live near DC where there are stations on partically all the channels. I understand in the latest firmware they've boosted the signal strength. Also, they've released the Neuros software into Sourceforge. FOSS is a good thing. Problem with Microsoft's store and player is that it's going to be DRM encrusted. No thanks. I'll stick with my MP3s. Besides, my general opinion is that if there are two products and one is Microsoft, I'll lean towards the other - especially if it's open source.

"The Joel Spolsky's of the world" | Wed 01 Sep | Rednatsyb Derob

...will run your work life. This was stated in the thread why code. AHHH! RUN! DICKENSIAN HORRORS!!! YAHHH!! SCREAM!! I find this to be one of the most amusing non-threats ever invented on this board. Comments?

Wed 01 Sep | fortune from a coookie | There are large brown starfish and warm moist climates ahead of you.

Wed 01 Sep | Bob's your uncle | I think it's a very true statement. Joel has gone to great lengths to describe the wonderful hardware made available to his employees, but based on the arrogance I see in his articles, I can't imagine it can be much fun to work there. Your own fancy schmancy office with 20 outlets and dual 21 inch monitors doesn't mean much if your boss is a real a**hole to work for.

Wed 01 Sep | Rednatsyb Derob | People can come off quite differently in print than they do in person. I take all of his writings as external PR in the sense that I don't know what it would really be like to work with or for him unless I actually worked there. Besides - I haven't met ONE successful person in this business who didn't 'seem' arrogant to just about everyone except their closest friends.

Wed 01 Sep | Standby Robed | I am here long times and do not understand who I am.

Wed 01 Sep | Saprasadecceio | I read Joel a long distance and he my roll model.

Wed 01 Sep | whyBother | I did not mean that Joel is somehow a negative or bad or arrogant person. I mean that no matter how wonderful he is, or anyone in that position, having someone else tell you what to write and how to write is not the dream the programmers I know dreamt of when aspiring to this career. I am sure Joel is wonderful, relative to the others out there. But I still prefer to work for myself. It is very difficult for me to conceive how to get my own company. While 90% of building a viable business is hard work, the 10% that matters is luck. Any self-help book will tell you that you make your own luck. Just after so many years of working for someone else, so many failures of my own start-ups, I am left with declaring myself an eternal failure. I may lack brilliance, but when I compare myself and my ideas to others, I don't see how I am much different, except for the luck factor and the lack of worldly contacts that can assist me. So I must slave away underneath the Joel Spolsky's of the world, saving the pennies that are being slowly sapped from me by the government, the cost of living, and situations out of my control. Boohoo. Waaaaah. So what. This is a forum, I can bitch if I want to. Keep voting for Bush.

Wed 01 Sep | Rednatsyb Derob | I agree in some measure with what you're saying. We all want to have the greatest idea and be self directed. I think what you're 'against' is not so much the 'Joels' of the world as it is the notion of working for someone else besides yourself. Which is a different issue. And I still suggest that what makes Joel an easy target for accusations of being arrogant is that he's so visible. I've found that some lesser-visible technical types embedded within commercial companies, who don't write or have any public persona, can be REAL pricks to deal with. There are people out there that you have NEVER heard about who are probably 100x as insufferable as Joel could be. I know; I've worked for 1/2 of them. ;) However, my experience indicates that working for someone from a different mindset than development or engineering can be truly hellish. IE: instead of compromising with a fellow techie who happens to have veto power over your decisions, you wind up creating sh*t-on-a-disk for someone who whipsaws you constantly, who doesn't respect the process or your skills, etc. Sales people, and ex-managers from manufacturing backgrounds (autos, capital goods) can be REAL assholes to work for... their entire approach can be 'you're just an overpaid secretary.'

Wed 01 Sep | Standby Robed | Saprasadecceio, you are my roll model longs time. Are you thinking large great softwares things?

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | I'll praise Joel if and when he hires a female project lead. Until then, he's just another manager.

Wed 01 Sep | . | 'I'll praise Joel if and when he hires a female project lead.' Wow, kudos on the extreme sexism. Joel has what, 8 employees? And he's 'just another manager' unless he hires a female project lead? Pathetic. You, maam, are worse than hitler.

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | Great rationalization for excluding females. Yes, I'm the bad person, not the chauvinists.

Wed 01 Sep | traf gib | Joel is gay. Does sexual orientation count for anything?

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | No.

Wed 01 Sep | . | 'Great rationalization for excluding females.' Uh, great rationalization for racism. 'I demand 50% whites in the NBA!' Joel's shop is hardly large enough to be an equal representation of society. Idiot.

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | Name calling to get your point across is brilliant. Hire women, it is the right thing to do. Think about that the next time you bitch about how you can't find a girl that wants to dangle from your mini-schlong.

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | If Joel is so great, and hires only the most brilliant people he can find, and somehow wishes to set his workplace apart, he should consider actively recruiting females to work there. The best places to work are also the most diverse. But then, I've worked with all guys....it was great....we got along just fine, I got great code reviews from my peers, blah blah blah, but when the group wanted to go river rafting, I was mysteriously not invited. They said 'Oh, don't be insulted. It's just for the guys!'

Wed 01 Sep | flamebait sr. | Given that there's very little documentation at all about the other employees, it's probably dumb to talk about the makeup of fog creek. But, really, I work at a place where we've got no active threads of gender discrimination, not in the slightest. And we still have a heavy male majority. There just aren't that many female engineers out there to begin with. And at FlameBaitCorp, they do have women project leads and managers.

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | There's only 10% blacks in the US, why should we hire any of them?

Wed 01 Sep | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | Irig, stop your trolling and get your 13 year old ass in bed, huh?

Wed 01 Sep | yob taob | lrig, Will you go river rafting with me?

Wed 01 Sep | Saprasadecceio | I am liking women but they are not for developmnt of great softwares.

Wed 01 Sep | Rednatsyb Derob | How the hell did my "lukewarm endorsement of Joel thread" turn into "militant female variety hour"?

Wed 01 Sep | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | ...and Bobs your uncle!

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | 'lrig, Will you go river rafting with me?' No. Too late.

Wed 01 Sep | yob taob | 'No. Too late. ' Smoke a joint maybe?

Wed 01 Sep | z | >>>There's only 10% blacks in the US, why should we hire any of them?<<< The great thing about random events is that you can find just about any pattern you want to in them if you look hard enough and at a small enough subset. Suppose hiring was done on basis where an individual's sex, race, religion, age, and all those usually irrelevant factors were not considered. That is, the distribution of those characteristics among employees was purely random. Then for some factor that occurred in 10% of the population a small company of say 8 employees would have a 57% chance of hiring one of those individuals. Put another way 43% of those 8 person companies will not have an employee with this particular characteritic. If you want to believe that there is active discrimination going on, you just find one of this 43% and claim they are an example. I've been around long enough to have seen and been the target of discrimination. Even here on JoS one poster admitted to discriminatory hiring in the past and I would have been one of the people he would not have hired. But if you want to complain about discrimination and be taken seriously you need to show you understand the difference between actual discrimination and randomness.

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | 'You won't get a job with my company because statistically speaking, I don't have to hire you nor do I feel the need to show I am an exceptional manager because of my hiring practices because I can therefore hide behind the statistics. I can purport to be all knowledgeable and share my opinions with the world and never feel any obligation to enrich the lives of those who have been formerly excluded. I can also hide behind my openness about my sexuality because people will assume I must be sympathetic to the plight of minorities without me ever having to actually demonstrate.' If Joel is exceptional, he will go out and find the exceptions.

Thu 02 Sep | Rednatsyb Derob | Regardless of Joel's 'stock', he's just this guy running a profit making business. He's not a one man social equality facilitator.

Thu 02 Sep | lrig | YACO. Yet Another Cop Out. As a renter, I can easily justify not sweeping the front porch and let the crap accumulate. Or I can go out and sweep it.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Dear lrig, Problem solved. Joel can hire you to sweep the floors and make the coffee. If you lose your attitude, and get into mini-skirts and make-up, he can promote you to receptionist. Who'd accuse him of sex discrimination then?

Thu 02 Sep | redguardtoo | I have worked for a woman project manager. She is not a good manager because she hates coding. I also saw some successful woman project manangers and woman engineers. Until now, I observed no difference between man and woman in software development business. Ok, maybe there is still little difference. IMHO, More man project managers are easy to be arrogant. redguardtoo http://www.d2ksoft.com

Thu 02 Sep | a2800276 | lrig, Do you really think anyone should hire women, just for the sake of hiring women? A company with 8 employees doesn't really have the luxury of employing all the under- and misrepresented groups in society. Sure it'd be nice if more women, racial minorities, handicapped, excons, gays, foreigners, dyslexics, homeless, ADD-sufferers and whatnot get hired... But shouldn't they be hired on basis of their merits and not on the basis of their being underrepresented in the workplace? -tim

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | 'Hire women, it is the right thing to do.' Why?

Thu 02 Sep | no name | He should hire stupid people to make up for all those companies which only hire "smart people" who "get things done".

Thu 02 Sep | Bill Rushmore | Has Joel actually published that he doesn't have women working for him? I think if you worked for Joel, where smart and got things done, you could tell him to f' off and he won't care as long as you got things done, smartly.

Thu 02 Sep | Kenny | joel's company is small enough that gender equality is a non-issue. ++I mean that no matter how wonderful he is, or anyone in that position, having someone else tell you what to write and how to write is not the dream the programmers I know dreamt of when aspiring to this career. isn't joel a programmer? isn't he living his dream?

Thu 02 Sep | . | lrig is obvoiusly mad because they sent in a resume and didn't get selected. Pathetic. It's reverse discrimination because they're trying to leverage their position for special attention. Fuck that.

Thu 02 Sep | cowardly anon | This feminist hogwash boils my blood. Noone should ever be hired because they fill some kind of race/gender quota. Men have allowed women to get out of control with all the women's rights bullshit. Call me chauvinist or what the hell ever you like. I really don't care, because you are either a woman or a pussy. There is a natural order to things. Women and men have ALWAYS been equal. Just because our natural places in society were more gender-defined and adhered to, didn't make the notion wrong. Women's rights destroyed the family and ultimately is to blame for the moral decay of society. Mommy has to work now so that she is 'empowered'. Who needs a family anyway? And I have to throw this odd twist of irony in... See what having a working mother did to me???

Thu 02 Sep | lrig | 'Women's rights destroyed the family and ultimately is to blame for the moral decay of society. Mommy has to work now so that she is 'empowered'. Who needs a family anyway?' No, Reagan regime hastened the arrival of the two-person income based economy such that now both parents almost have to work unless they are excessively frugal. Blame the right people for society's ills.

Thu 02 Sep | eeh eeh | lrig is a llort.

Thu 02 Sep | a cynic writes... | A general question: what aside from competence would be a reasonable reason to discriminate? and what *objective* criteria would everyone apply to say a particular group needs help? (for example in the UK unemployment amongst men is higher than women. Should positive discrimination be used to restore the balance?)

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Dear cynic The reason unemployment is higher among men is that overall women are discriminated against in the workplace with lower wages and less job security - the result is that unscrupulous employers prefer to hire them. The solution to your conundrum is to sort out that underlying inequality - treat the disease not the symptom. That are plenty of cases where I would encourage positive discrimination. However employing women as programmers is not one of them; the reason is that the problem occurs earlier in the education system - there are few women employed as programmers because few women choose programming as a career. Incidentally I have come across strange variations on the theme. For one year I taught in the industrial city of Igualada ('mala parada' as folklore says) which is the kind of industrial city that you find in the Mid-West with the attitudes that Bored Bystander describes so well. One of the students I knew was a young girl with a fabulous talent and love for English Literature; however she was forced to study Engineering at University because her idiot bore of a father didn't want any of his children studying arty-farty crap.

Thu 02 Sep | bob mim | "arty-farty crap" never put food on the table.

Thu 02 Sep | It's me... | Stephens Jones, ----didn't want any of his children studying arty-farty crap.---- So true, this is here in India too. Personally, I don't like females who claim that they are in all aspects equal to males and are discriminated in some way or the other. Fact is they have their own strengths and weaknesses and so does males. They can be suited for one job, but not at all suitable for another job. As far as I am concerned, I have never seen a good female programmer. Because mostly they don't have the aptitude for them.

Thu 02 Sep | cowardly anon | If women wouldn't have been allowed to vote for Reagan, his economic policy would be a non-issue :P Just kidding, couldn't resist..... I agree wholeheartedly that Reagonomics did nothing for americans' socio-economic health. I see the two-person income standard as more a symptom than a pathogen itself though. Competition for jobs is why companies can pay so little that two incomes are required. It's fairly obvious that women's fairly recent assimilation into the workforce plays a significant role in increasing competition, and therefore, lowered compensation. It's supply and demand. I am not blaming women, nor do I think badly of them. I don't think women are any 'less' than men. As a matter of fact, there are few things I find as enjoyable as an intelligent woman's company. More traditional roles simplay have more merit. It's not like they were solely draconian principles based on religious half-truths or anything. That social structure had practical, functional utility and reason. What overall benefits to society does women's abundant presence in the workforce provide? What overall benefits to society are provided when the majority are housewives? I'm well aware that it is not practical for every woman to instantly become a housewife. I will not hold my breath, but I do think it would be in man AND woman's best interests to return to more traditional gender-defined roles to at least some extent. I could rant on and on about how the androgynization of society is killing it. Hell, even the ideal female form ('ideal' only because it is marketed as such) in America is prevalently androgynous! Alas, I spare thee from my ramblings...

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | ---'arty-farty crap' never put food on the table. '---- Plenty of copy writers, scriptwriters, university professors, literature teachers, fine art experts, and a long etc don't exactly live off thin air. But don't let simple facts get in the way of a good prejudice.

Thu 02 Sep | bob mim | 'Plenty of copy writers, scriptwriters, university professors, literature teachers, fine art experts, and a long etc don't exactly live off thin air.' In one way or another, they are all living off the taxes dollars that come from common working folks.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Load of balls! How is a fine art expert at Sotheby's living off your tax dollars? Or a copy writer at an ad agency? Or a network TV or Hollywood script writer? And how is a literature professor's source of income different from that of an engineering professor? In fact the proportion of engineers who live off tax dollars is probably higher than that of nearly any other comparable profession. Roads, bridges, railways, guided missile systems, space exploration, meteorology.

Thu 02 Sep | Kenny | as if we have any choice in the matter... patriarchal societies only work if physical strength is a commodity. male dominance was doomed ever since machines started doing a lot of the grunt work... look for a matriarchal society if (when?) men are no longer needed for reproduction...

Thu 02 Sep | bob mim | >>'How is a fine art expert at Sotheby's living off your tax dollars? Or a copy writer at an ad agency? Or a network TV or Hollywood script writer?' They're all subsidized in one way or another. It's just like pro sports; tax payers subsidize stadiums and other facilities. The fat cat owners are subsidized with the taxes from hard working floks. It's the same with the artsy fartsy crowd.

Fri 03 Sep | Stephen Jones | Dear Bobmin What makes you think that artists, writers, archaleogists and all the other people you mention don't work as hard as you?

Fri 03 Sep | a cynic writes... | Hi Stephen - I sort of knew the reason for the difference in unemployment rates - I was trying to see if anyone bit. The other point was that the thread seemed revolve around 'I'm in group x, therefore I'm hard done by' which is a non-runner as far as I'm concerned. What I was looking for was some rigour to back it up - I suspect a long wait.

Fri 03 Sep | senkodemayo | Z, The misunderstanding of the statistical issue is why many small company's are exempt from a lot of the employment law. Here in Massachusetts, many of the discrimination laws don't kick-in until the company has more than 25 employees. This protects the small business owner from baseless discrimination suits. My shop has 10 developers - all male. Out of all the resumes we receive, less than 5% are from women.

Fri 03 Sep | Rednatsyb Derob | >> 'Plenty of copy writers, scriptwriters, university professors, literature teachers, fine art experts, and a long etc don't exactly live off thin air.' >> In one way or another, they are all living off the taxes dollars that come from common working folks. I would be f*cking OVERJOYED if the waste of my tax dollars was limited to PBS and NPR. (note to non US folks: these are the government sponsored TV and radio 'public' networks in the US, with decidedly liberal slants just to p*ss off conservatives. But they are also quite good many times. I think the PBS-NPR/public funding of the arts is the emotional pushbutton here.)

Fri 03 Sep | It's me... | -----What makes you think that artists, writers, archaleogists and all the other people you mention don't work as hard as you?------- Simple! Because they don't whine at forum like these, complaining, other's are stealing their jobs. And how tough life can be to them!

Gradudate School | Wed 01 Sep | David Seruyange

Hey all - So what is the value of a graduate education in computer science? Like many (I suspect), my job and career came from the boom and my undergraduate degree is not in computer science. Ive spent a lot of time studying various aspects of CS (Data Structures, Languages, and so on) as a programmer for personal and professional enrichment but I wonder if Im missing out on a lot. Ive thought about just going through the carriculum on MITs Open Courseware (http://aka-ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/) and staying a professional rather than going back to school. Only problem is I dont want to be relegated to boring problems - it would be cool to do programming that was more sophisticated than business/database development. But Im sure there are some here who have either gotten their graduate degrees w/ out the undergrad background or spent time thinking about it. Any conclusions? Is it worth it?

Wed 01 Sep | devinmoore.com | It's definitely worth it if you want to work in research and development - the ph.d is like a r&d bus ticket, you need one to get on that particular bus.

Wed 01 Sep | AllanL5 | I got my Master's in CS from Johns Hopkins on a part-time basis. It has been very helpful in getting jobs, and in increasing my credibility in software development. I studied applied Software Engineering principles -- 'Structured Analysis', 'Compiler Design', 'Embedded Programming', 'SW Dev under Unix', 'Database Design', that sort of thing. I definitely wanted a degree that included skills, not just theory, and Hopkins delivered that. Since it was part time, I kept my full-time job, and the classes were paid for by my employer. I still run in to the catch-22 of software work, where if you don't have 5 years of experience in exactly the pigeon-hole your new employer is interested in, they won't hire you. Still, Hopkins gives me credibility.

Wed 01 Sep | Dave | It depends what you mean by graduate school. Do you mean a master's or a PhD? My sense is that most CS master's programs (especially at non-elite universities) are geared towards foreigners (Indian and Chinese) with undergraduate degrees from their home countries who are getting a master's either on their government's dime or as a way to get a leg up on the immigration process. I have a buddy who is a prof in the CS department of a selective university (you'd recognize the name) who told me their master's program is basically a tool for squeezing enrollment dollars out of foreigners, with little in the way of real pedagogy. Point being, I'd think long and hard about getting a CS master's on my own dime. I've never done grad work in CS myself, of course, but my sense is that as a credential, the MS doesn't get you much professionally, and you probably won't learn anything you couldn't teach yourself faster and cheaper. PhD is a different story, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Wed 01 Sep | Dave | Of course, I missed Allan's post above....if I could get an employer to pay for it, I'd do a master's in a heartbeat.

Wed 01 Sep | Jeff Kotula | I earned my PhD while working full time over the course of 9 years. I did it primarily because I'm interested in teaching as a pre-retirement career, but I'm staying in industry for the nonce. PhD programs are geared toward doing research. Ideally, the program will teach you how to do it, but your milage varies between schools. Having a PhD, though, is not an immediate 'in' to the research world, just a prereq. Top tier schools require a great deal of publication and proven results before considering you. Middle tier less so, teaching schools don't -- but they also don't have money to fund research. I was happy and pleased to earn the PhD. I think it may have helped me in my industry career and certainly holds the door open on some other career options. But it is a lot of work to get. If you're interested more in just advancing your level of knowledge and not necessarily in research, an MS might be better. Note that you don't need to be doing 'research' to be working on more interesting products...

Wed 01 Sep | Erik | I'm finishing up my MS, to be complete next year. I'm in it to expand my knowledge and also for helping me up the career ladder, especially when some high level positions at some companies require an MS. In any sense, it definitely looks good on a resume. If you're planning to do research, then I would suggest a Ph.D. instead. If your employer will help pay for it, it's definitely a bonus. Unfortunately mine won't pay unless the courses can 'be immediately applied to be job', whatever that means. My previous one was to chicken-shit to pay for anything. Just don't go into debt over it - it's not worth it. I know people I went to undergrad with 10 years ago who are still paying off their education.

Wed 01 Sep | Sgt. Sausage | Gradual School: 'Oh! Well, Gradual School is where kids go and then gradually realize that they don't want to go to school anymore.' -- Robin Williams (as Garp -- The World According to Garp) Seems to sum it up for me!

Wed 01 Sep | Ron | I thought it's where they go when they don't know what they want to do in life.

Wed 01 Sep | Sgt. Sausage | Ron, I see a lot of that too!

Wed 01 Sep | David Seruyange | If I could find a way to get my employer to send me to Johns Hopkins for a Master's in CS, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, being a consultant means a lot of travel which eliminates the option of a program like that. I think Dave is right in saying that many programs are designed for enrollment dollars. I am not American (my passport is Ugandan) and I would therefore have to 'demonstrate' the ability to pay for the program up front. When Americans themselves can't pay for grad school upfront (ie. lots of loans/federal aid) how in the world can Africans and other 'Third World' students hope to? I guess if their fathers are dictators or corrupt government officials this might be the case but unfortunately that's not all of us. I guess that's the summary eh? Do it if someone else is paying for it or if your immigration so inclines you. As for the PhD stuff, that would be fabulous but it's a bit further along I think. I always laugh when I hear people talk about 'real world' stuff versus academia. I've just been given the task of writing a specification for a file import process. We argued over correct 'CSV' formats. I'd rather be building robots.

Wed 01 Sep | Voodoo | what are the best schools for a Masters?

Fri 03 Sep | Postgrad Student | I just graduated with a degree in CS and am now going on to do a MSc at LSE in London. The course seems quite general but I guess I am mainly going for their reputation and the better job prospects that LSE graduates undoubtedly have. If anyone is interested I can keep you posted.

Fri 03 Sep | Postgrad Student | http://is.lse.ac.uk/course/default.htm

Winnable Solitaire article | Wed 01 Sep | Thom Lawrence

Erics MSDN article on Winnable Solitaire is out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsoftware/html/software09012004.asp Cant wait to see the sales figures myself. :)

Wed 01 Sep | Dennis Forbes | Wonderful article. The only downside to the experiment is that we know that it's an experiment. 'I am primarily doing this product as an experiment, but the product is still very real. I'm selling it to real people and I'm charging real money for it. You can check out my product Web site.' This could skew sales figures. Recall the Stephen King online book that was poised to be the watershed to legitimize or ostracize tip-jar style online sales. At first it did great because every Slashdotter trying to prove a point lined up to contribute, but soon enough sales collapsed when the traditional prisoner's dilemma kicked in.

Wed 01 Sep | Ron | Nah, I don't think his target market (such as it is) reads MSDN. But I predict one sale per month.

Wed 01 Sep | Nemesis | I wonder how many of Eric's Google AdWords will get used up by MSDN, etc readers searching for his ad in Google.

Wed 01 Sep | Dennis Forbes | 'But I predict one sale per month.' Heh, I am equally cynical about the market for this, which is what makes me think that as an experiment it is so easy to significantly skew -- if just one of us enjoys Eric's writings, feel that it's a pretty funny experiment, and runs over to his webpage and humorously ponied a couple of bucks to it, that could significantly alter his sales (of course Eric is sitting in the darkened corner laughing manically whlile the loads of humor purchases come rolling in by the couples a year). A better experiment would have been blind (it would have added intrigue too - somewhere out there there's a shareware project by a mysterious backer that is actually Eric Sink). Let's face it - this isn't an experiment, but is rather Eric's take-over-the-world fallback plan if Team Services is a great success.

Wed 01 Sep | Nemesis | But doesn't Team Services include a Solitaire function...? ;-)

Wed 01 Sep | Ewan's Dad | 'But doesn't Team Services include a Solitaire function...?' Hmmm...'team' and 'solitaire'...

Wed 01 Sep | Edward | Yes, but when has anything involving "Team" been winnable? ;-)

Wed 01 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | This could skew sales figures. Recall the Eric Sink Solitaire game that was poised to be the watershed to legitimize or ostracize competing against a product already free in Windows from day one.? At first it did great because every softie trying to prove a point lined up to buy, but soon enough sales collapsed when the traditional prisoner's dilemma kicked in. (Sorry Dennis, couldn't resist)

Wed 01 Sep | no name | 'Yes, but when has anything involving 'Team' been winnable? ;-)' You mean besides football, baseball, basketball, team gymnastics...?

Wed 01 Sep | Edward | Anonymous, would you like a single or round-trip ticket?

Wed 01 Sep | www.marktaw.com | 'Nah, I don't think his target market (such as it is) reads MSDN.' Well if he isn't spending money on advertising, that sure would be a good way to get a lot of the free type.

Wed 01 Sep | Edward | How difficult would it have been to create a new website totally separate from the company site, with no references? With the advertising from MSDN, and the references to/from SourceGear, the sales results mean practically nothing. The legal issues that micro-ISV's have to deal with are different, since SourceGear owns all rights. Micro-ISV's have to battle customer hesitations regarding stability, and the 'Will this company be around in 3 months when I buy a new computer and my key won't transfer' issues. I developed shareware for a year or so, and this experiment doesn't address any of the major problems that were in my way. What is this experiment for? Why not just make up a new company (just costs a few dollars) and a new web domain? I just don't see the point here.

Wed 01 Sep | Thom Lawrence | 'I developed shareware for a year or so, and this experiment doesn't address any of the major problems that were in my way.' Out of interest, what were they?

Wed 01 Sep | Lou | I'd like to know what credit card processor would give him an internet-based account without getting the cardholder name, let alone address or zip. I don't think ANYBODY does that... sounds fishy to me! (Or maybe it's part of the "experiment" not to actually charge money, just tally results?)

Wed 01 Sep | Edward | Pretty much the points I mentioned ;-) There were hundreds of others as well, such as bug management, etc., but any ISV has these issues. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's all interesting, but I don't see what lessons could be learned from this. Eric?

Wed 01 Sep | Tayssir John Gabbour | It should probably have a version with a special installer that makes it a nice present. I couldn't imagine buying one for myself. You know, people could buy it for their favorite cubicle-dweller. There could be a setting where if you press ESC or any of the top bank of keys, it will quit as fast as possible.

Wed 01 Sep | Tayssir John Gabbour | Of course, the biggest thing on my mind is I never, never know what to get people other than a book, as presents. So I'm maybe just projecting.

Wed 01 Sep | Eric Sink | > Don't get me wrong -- I think it's all > interesting, but I don't see what lessons > could be learned from this. Eric? Maybe for you there are no lessons to be learned. After all, you said you've done shareware development already. I haven't.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | I think it will be very interesting to see Mr. Sinks stats. I don't believe the rhetoric generated from MSDN, his blog or this forum will skew his sales figures as long as he continues to market the game the way most shareware authors do. I also believe that the game in and of itself was barely ready to hit the shelves. Don't get me wrong, it is a good game and I like it. Maybe I will purchase the next version with upgraded cards and artwork. Polish is very, very important in a game. Most games are released once and must be done right and polished up the first time. No bugs, the best artwork you can afford, flawless operation on all systems etc, etc... I'm not talking about feature creep here, I'm talking about polish. That is where, I believe, Mr. Sink made his first mistake. (BTW: If you are reading this Eric, there is a minor bug in the game where you can click anywhere in the upper left corner (not just on the face down cards) and the next three cards will flip. If you consider that a bug.)

Wed 01 Sep | Matthew Lock | I like the way Eric put his money where is mouth was rather than just think up an opinion on shareware he actually tried has hand at it.

Wed 01 Sep | Lou | Eric, who's processing your credit card transactions?! If you're not collecting cardholder names and addresses, it sounds like you're trying to (illicitly) use a POS terminal which is going to be contrary to your terms of use with your merchant bank... and is going to bite you in the ass when they take back all their money once they find out! I suggest you check up on that.

Wed 01 Sep | Edward | I have no issue with that Eric. I learned a great deal from the experience; enough to pray that I never have to repeat it. ;-) Maybe I'm misunderstanding what your experiment is about then. If your goal is do walk in the footsteps of other sucessful shareware developers (not me), then why not do it anonymously? Seems to me you'd really have the experience that you're looking for? At the same time, you could comment in your MSDN column about the process, without revealing the actual product that you're developing and selling. Looking forward to the next column,

Thu 02 Sep | Simon Lucy | You don't have to collect address information to process credit cards online, the minimum required is the credit card number and the date it expires.

Thu 02 Sep | Colm Larkin | From the MSDN article: 'With Winnable Solitaire, I want to own the word 'winnable' in the mind of the market. That's the only attribute I'm seeking to own.' Say your main competitor is Pretty Good Solitaire. What happens if they spend a month or two and make Pretty Good Solitaire, Now Winnable. Is that your key differentiator gone, and now the differences between Winnable and PGS are in PGS' favour? If PGS did this, what would you do?

Thu 02 Sep | Simon Lucy | It wouldn't steal 'winnable' entirely, indeed it would validate it as a 'Good Thing'. Eric could then go and rename it as 'The Original Winnable Solitaire', so emphasising the ownership of that namespace. Compare this with 'Soft, strong and very, very long'

Thu 02 Sep | TommyA | >It wouldn't steal 'winnable' entirely, indeed >it would validate it as a 'Good Thing'. This might be the case for a ISV where the copycat may come to the market a significant time after the original, and the origin has had a chance to even been able to the owner of that namespace. In the micro-ISV space 'Pretty Good Solitaire, Now Winnable' could be hitting the market a fews weeks after 'Winnable Solitaire'. The battle could now be down to marketing and advertising, which would not be a nice for a micro-ISV.

Thu 02 Sep | Dennis Forbes | 'Most games are released once and must be done right and polished up the first time. No bugs, the best artwork you can afford, flawless operation on all systems etc, etc... ' A little gripe relating to this - a couple of days ago the wife got me Doom 3, and when I finally got a chance I brought it down to install on my workstation PC (where I work and selectively game at night). This PC is running Windows 2003 Server (legally) for a variety of reasons, such as IIS 6. My first surprize was when the installer informed me that it needs Windows 2000 or XP to run: Apparently the guy making the installer checked off the mandatory OS options, not realizing that there would be newer OS'. There is absolutely no technical reason why this won't run on Server, and I have the brains to shut down unnecessary services and to set foreground applications as prioritized, so there's not even a subjective reason to discriminate against Server. Anyways thanks to some web info I copied CD1 over to the hard drive, ran a vbs script that removes the OS check and finally installed it, choosing to install it at C:\Doom3, even though my 'home' drive is D:. Trying to launch it I'm surprized that it says that Doom3 can't be found...turns out it installed half of the game at C:\Doom3, and half at D:\Doom3. The moral? Don't leave your installation to a last minute hack job, and make sure it works properly on edge cases.

Fri 03 Sep | Chris Nahr | Um, Dennis? It's not unusual for games to refuse to install on unsupported Windows versions. Doesn't matter if your version is 'newer'. The reason is purely economic: their testers didn't test on 2003, their support people don't know anything about 2003, and any lengthy support call from a 2003 user completely wipes out the publisher's profit on that copy of Doom 3. So they prevent installation on unsupported systems, to be on the safe side.

Fri 03 Sep | Chris Nahr | In other words, this was quite deliberate, not a "last minute hack job", and you bet that they have not the least intention to support "edge cases". In fact they would very much love such edge cases not to buy their games in the first place since they're far too risky economically.

If Java doesn't have pointers... | Wed 01 Sep | Just Curious

how come it has a NullPointerException?

Wed 01 Sep | TheGeezer | Pass. They could have created a class called 'NullReferenceException' to indicate the same thing. What I want to know is, does it really matter?

Wed 01 Sep | Marvin | 'What I want to know is, does it really matter?' Does anything?

Wed 01 Sep | Captain Obvious | just cause you can't manipulate them doesn't mean they ain't there.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | it's just semantics

Wed 01 Sep | Koz | When people say 'Java doesn't have pointers', they mean these pointers: T[] t; *(t + 5); etc.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Which is a bit of a b*stard in some ways. If you want to pass an array of "somethings" to a function you also need to pass an offset. In C you could just use a pointer to the place in the array where it starts and Bob's your uncle (again; he gets around a bit does your uncle).

Wed 01 Sep | Koz | Well, I just pass around java.util.List's. Haven't used an Array in ages. But whatever floats your boat ;)

Wed 01 Sep | Name withheld out of cowardice | Pass an offset vs a Pointer? What's the difference? You're passing one extra parameter either way. BTW, for people who miss this kind of thing in Java, check out the nio package with it's ByteBuffers. No pointers but you finally can have a reusable buffer to manipulate. On many OS you can even use allocateDirect to get a native buffer. Lot's of the fun with none of the overflows.

Wed 01 Sep | bigoted against java | He meant that instead of calling SearchNRecordsOfTheArrayStartingAtTheGivenPoint (foo, 5, 10); you can call search_from (foo + 5, 10)

Wed 01 Sep | AllanL5 | Because Java does have 'references', which are a type-safe way of doing what pointers do for C. In C, when you throw around pointers, you are actually throwing around actual addresses to variables stored in memory space. A 'null' pointer actually points to the real location zero in your memory space. Trying to access that location usually results in a memory permission violation error. In Java, when you are throwing around references, you are throwing around a run-time-handle to allocated objects. If you don't properly initialize a reference, it may point to 'nothing' -- but that 'nothing' is NOT a valid address in your memory space. Java can catch that it is a null reference.

Wed 01 Sep | Avrom Finkelstein | From one point of view, all references are really 'pointers' behind the scenes. So, to call it a NullPointerException is correct. A.F.

Wed 01 Sep | Almost Anonymous | Two words: Leaky Abstraction. It should be called NullReferenceException.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | That's NOT a leaky abstraction.

Wed 01 Sep | Almost Anonymous | Sure it is... it's an implementation detail (oh, references are implemented as pointers?! gosh!) that's peaking through.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | That's a pretty generous definition of "leaky".

Wed 01 Sep | Almost Anonymous | Sure.. but it's also pretty stupid to have a null pointer exception when the entire language specification makes absolutely no mention of the word "pointer".

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | Shall we discuss the stupidities in PHP? :)

Wed 01 Sep | as | 'the entire language specification makes absolutely no mention of the word 'pointer'' Not entirely true - eg from Section 4.3.1: An object is a class instance or an array. The reference values (often just references) are pointers to these objects, and a special null reference, which refers to no object.

Wed 01 Sep | Almost Anonymous | Hehe.. so they say "...special null reference..." but the exception is still null pointer.

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | 'Shall we discuss the stupidities in PHP? ' You mean there's other stuff in there as well? :-)

Thu 02 Sep | AllanL5 | In all fairness, I believe the original 'idea' of a 'pointer' came from Pascal. It was C that turned the 'idea' into an implementation where a 'pointer' became a literal address on the machine -- and then made the only way you could change the value of a parameter in a subroutine was to pass the subroutine a pointer to the parameter. In Pascal, you had 'VAR' parameters, which did the same thing, BUT you simply passed the name of the parameter. Only the SUBROUTINE needed to be told it was a VAR parameter. C++ then came up with the idea of a 'reference', which gave to the language a Pascal-type VAR parameter, in effect. Java then decided the 'C pointer' was too dangerous for implementation, and implemented references only. I still think the 'idea' of a 'pointer' is valid. Maybe with Java we can soon talk about a 'reference' to a variable 'pointing' to the variable, without making people argue about what a 'C pointer' does.

Thu 02 Sep | Avrom Finkelstein | http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NullPointerException Has an interesting discussion on the matter.

Fri 03 Sep | crotchety | The first pointers I saw were in assembler.

Americans need learn foreign language? | Mon 30 Aug | redguardtoo

I want the answer because I plan to develop a new software which help Americans improve pronounciation and listening of foreign language (Spanish or French) for example. What foreign language they learn? How many American learn foreign language? I have already investigated through google. but got no answer. BTW: As an American, do you know a kind of software which can replay word or sentence again and again?

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | +++BTW: As an American, do you know a kind of software which can replay word or sentence again and again?+++ Most $5 tape recorders can do this superbly.

Mon 30 Aug | Mr. O | Americans don't want to learn a foreign language.

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | Americans don't have to learn a foreign language.

Mon 30 Aug | Ogami Itto | Have you seen their foreign policy? Americans don't know there are other countries.

Mon 30 Aug | GenX'er | In my experience (being an American) we kind of learn a foreign language a little bit in 'Junior' & 'High School.' Some go on an extend that knowledge in College while many do not. However, to say that we can actually speak the language after such courses is a joke! Maybe we understand a little - but that's about it. The typical languages individuals study are Spanish, French & sometimes Latin (Catholic Education). Most Americans (thinking derived from the English) feel that everyone on the planet should conform to the English language and therefore do not really put too much emphasis on really learning a foreign language. (I am not saying that I agree with that thinking but that is reality)

Mon 30 Aug | Yoey | I'd say the most popular languages Americans study are Spanish, French and German. But as a whole most Americans know only English. It's quite pathetic, really.

Mon 30 Aug | J | I am an American that does want to learn a foreign language but because I dont have to, I do not. I would like to learn spanish

Mon 30 Aug | AMS | University-bound high school students will take anywhere from 2 - 3 years of a foreign language, usually French, Spanish, or German. As part of an undergraduate curriculum, one might take another year or two in college. It's my observation that in spite of the foreign language requirements of the typical undergraduate curriculum, most Americans do not retain much of that and the number of Americans who are fluent -- or even able to converse -- in a language other than English is small.

Mon 30 Aug | no name | It would be nice if Americans learnt English first.

Mon 30 Aug | redguardtoo | My point is : As an American, the ratio of your friends who studying foreign language (for example). How serious they regard learning foreign language (for example, here in China, we are forced to be able to understand VOA standard English in 3-6 months) If the ratio is too low, I quit. -------------------------------------- D2KSoft, Different and Elegant http://www.d2ksoft.com We provide advanced tools only for YOU, the smart, tasteful and lazy hacker! --------------------------------------

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | Most Americans study a foreign language, but only a very tiny percentage are actually interested in LEARNING that language. Most study to meet minimum requirements and then promptly forget everything they learned. If your product is to be marketted to Americans interested in actually learning to speak a foreign language fluently, you might have better luck selling novelty bad teeth to the British.

Mon 30 Aug | yet another anon | Most people in the US don't live in close proximity to another country that speaks a diiferent language. Over 50% of the US population lives within a 500 mile radius of Cleveland, Ohio. As for neighboring Mexico, most people don't feel compelled to learn Spanish just for that occasional trip to some resort where the staff all speak English. So this stuff about US citizens not caring about the world is BS. When there isn't a pressing need or even a chance to practice the language, the point becomes moot.

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | +++So this stuff about US citizens not caring about the world is BS. +++ Ask 1,000 average American citizens to name 5 heads of state outside of the US. I'll lay money that above 80% of them can't.

Mon 30 Aug | Dennis Forbes | 'But as a whole most Americans know only English. It's quite pathetic, really.' No, it isn't pathetic - it's a reality of circumstance. English just happens to be the 'global standard' for cross-cultural communications (if anyone wants to seriously debate this then really it's a futile conversation), so English speakers don't have the same motivation to learn an additional language (or to practice to an extent that maintains it when they do). Sorta ridiculous when some righteous uppity person from a small European country surrounded by centers of differing languages parades the fact that they speak more than one language when it's purely a necessity of circumstance.

Mon 30 Aug | Jack B. Nimble | Most Americans don't really learn a second language (or more), even though quite a few take foreign language courses during high school. I think the 'usual' offerings at the elementary-high school levels are French, Spanish, and German. Our high school also had Latin, but that's not particularly useful to most people. I enjoy studying foreign language (more as a hobby than anything else) and have so far picked up some French, Italian, and Russian. A number of audio-based training series use native speakers to teach the language, so I would expect pronunciation to be fairly good for those who learn through audio methods. Having the courses on CD also allows for easy replay of difficult sections. While I enjoy the audio courses, they don't offer much help in learning to write or read the language, the latter of which is very helpful to anyone actually visiting a foreign country.

Mon 30 Aug | Alain Roy | What do you call a person that can speak three languages? Trilingual What do you call a person that can speak two languages? Bilingual What do you call a person that can speak one language? American

Mon 30 Aug | . | What do you call a person that can speak two languages? Canadian What do you call a person that can speak one language and probably hasn't ever travelled further than the nearby town? Quebecois

Mon 30 Aug | Christopher Wells | In the USA the most common second language for English-speaking people is probably Spanish, and in Canada it's probably English. Many English-speaking people don't learn any second language. English is probably the most common second language being studied: i.e. recent immigrants to North America who are studying English.

Mon 30 Aug | Jean Guy Botecelli | English is the VB of the languages. Java is the Italian and all self respecting C#'ers know French.

Mon 30 Aug | Raju Patel | People from non-English speaking country learn English other than their native language because they 'have to' ... not necessarily because they are smart or because they CARE for the rest of the world. If they don't learn English than they can simply not prosper. America's language is 'American English' and that happens to be the business language of the world. So Americans don't 'have to' learn any other language. If and when, chinese becomes business language of the world, Americans and everybody else in the world will start learning chinese, than this argument will be used for chinese that they don't know any other language.

Mon 30 Aug | Raju Patel | I mean, "English" happens to be the business language of the world ...

Mon 30 Aug | Ogami Itto | > Sorta ridiculous when some righteous uppity person from a > small European country surrounded by centers of differing > languages parades the fact that they speak more than one > language when it's purely a necessity of circumstance. Dennis, not quite. Here in Europe, both the French and the Spanish have a reputation for avoiding to learn new languages. On the other hand, countries that use subtitles on television, like Sweden or Portugal, end up with a fairly large base of english speakers.

Mon 30 Aug | Raju Patel | ASK: Why so many Indians don't know French, but they know Enlgish? Why so many French don't know Hindi, but most of them know English? But when it comes to Americans ... It becomes big deal that 'why Americans don't know French and/or Hindi?

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | +++English is the VB of the languages.+++ You've got to be kidding. English is one of the most difficult latin-based languages to learn. There are a ridiculous number of exceptions and special cases in grammar, spelling, conjugation, etc etc.. which is why most foreigners can't speak it properly :P What a load of horseshit.

Mon 30 Aug | Yoey | Language is the most important skill there is. Go to another country and try to get a low-paying job as a cashier and you'll see that no matter how smart you are you will be denied if you can't speak to the customers. I know, because I lived abroad for 7 years. We, as Americans, can be lazy to learn other languages because (American) English is, arguably, the de-facto language of the world. However, that doesn't excuse us from the fact that we, in general, only speak English. One of the problems, as noted in earlier posts, is that a lot of us will take a year or two to study Spanish, for example, in high school. By that time, the ability to learn another language is much harder than if we are a young child learning it. Many other countries that have excellent language systems begin teaching foreign languages at an early age, so that by the time the kids are in high school they are pretty fluent. Yes, we as Americans don't live so close to other countries like the Dutch, but that's a silly excuse. The world is getting smaller and smaller everyday, and the notion of splendid isolation makes anyone who argues against the fluency of languages not his own is a fool.

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | +++However, that doesn't excuse us from the fact that we, in general, only speak English+++ It absolutely does, for largely the same reason that we don't all have to have Windows/Linux/FreeBSD/Unix on our machines in dual/triple/quadruple boot schemes.

Mon 30 Aug | Name required | Hehe, a nice Troll that redguardtoo. He even managed to get in some links to his webpage in the later posts. But I have seen this topic being trolled about much better on other sites..

Mon 30 Aug | kc | ++ Have you seen their foreign policy? Americans don't know there are other countries. ++ That's what happens with a government run education system.

Mon 30 Aug | Dennis Forbes | 'Yes, we as Americans don't live so close to other countries like the Dutch, but that's a silly excuse. ' This is absolutely inane, and it's countered by your own post - What is the practical value of additional languages (as you mentioned - getting a job). For an American (or even an English speaking Canadian) the likely value is extremely low - the probability of emmigrating to, or getting a job, in a non-English area is very remote. And even if I did like the idea of opening my horizions a bit, what language do I learn? Mandarin, German, Japanese, Spanish, Hindi (?), Portuguese? Or should I just cover my bases and learn all o them? People who learn a second language purely out of practical necessity need to hop off that high horse.

Mon 30 Aug | Raju Patel | 'People who learn a second language purely out of practical necessity need to hop off that high horse. ' I completly agree. People for whom English is a second language, they learn English because they know that they will have better opportunities because of it. Thats the only fact. Americans will also learn different languages when its advantageous to them.

Mon 30 Aug | Peter | >You've got to be kidding. English is one of the most difficult latin-based languages to learn. There are a ridiculous number of exceptions and special cases in grammar, spelling, conjugation, etc etc.. which is why most foreigners (and natives) can't speak it properly. This is correct. I speak several languages (my sister and father have a similar talent with musical instruments). Other than english, the most difficult language I have learned is Japanese (although I am in the process of forgetting it, since the number of japanese speakers in the US is miniscule). The first language you ever learn is incredibly hard. Just watch a child learning and making mistakes. The second language you learn is just very hard. After that, it really gets easy. English is more like a magpie mugger, any pretty word laying around will get clubbed on the head in a dark alley and kidnapped. All those crazy exceptions? Part has to do with where we mugged that word from. Part of it has to do with the way english was written down in the first dictionaries: there were 3 guys going around england, and they each transcribed the words differently. In Germany, there was one guy, that is why there is one and only 1 way of spelling. We had a committee of bandits. Better hide any pretty words you don't want us to swipe!

Mon 30 Aug | Christopher Wells | If you would like to estimate which second languages are popular, and aren't finding this information on the 'net, then you might look at international trade figures (for example, the existence of a lot of trade with Japan would imply a demand for Japanese-speaking Americans); or look at immigration figures (for example my colleagues are eastern european and my Tai Chi shi-fu is chinese, which would give me an incentive to pronounce those languages).

Mon 30 Aug | yet another anon | '+++So this stuff about US citizens not caring about the world is BS. +++ Ask 1,000 average American citizens to name 5 heads of state outside of the US. I'll lay money that above 80% of them can't. ' You're probably right. But I'll lay money that most of those 80% care about the people of the world, just not the politics.

Mon 30 Aug | Ogami Itto | Muppet: I might be wrong, but english is a Germanic word, not Latin-based. For latin languages you'd have Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Romanian.

Mon 30 Aug | yet another anon | Back to the OP's orginal question: Yes, there is plenty of educational software available to learn Spanish and French. I've got an kid's oreiented one for my children and it allows the user to repeatedly play back a word or phrase. I don't know how good your Google skills are, but search 'Spanish software' seemed to work fine for me.

Mon 30 Aug | yet another anon | I believe English is considered a Germanic derived language. However, a good portion of our language includes Latin and Greek derived words.

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | I stand corrected on the technical origins of English. Still, it's a complex and difficult language and certainly not comparable to VB.

Mon 30 Aug | an european | The benefits from learning another language, in term of awareness and understanding of other cultures, go far beyond the ability to be understood by a few more people. So (imho) to neglect foreign languages because one's country speaks the common international language so 'there is no need' shows lack of care for the rest of the world (plus you can probably argue about the 'international status'.. in north america and europe english is the common language, spanish would probably be it in south america, french in africa, ... ) I have no statistics to back that up (so maybe I'm wrong), but I wouldn't be surprised if english people learnt more foreign languages than americans - yet they also speak the 'common' language. ps: it's not only a problem/critic of the USA. In France for instance, people also tend to be lazy too with foreign languages (french is also spoken on 5 continents and rather widespread) - with the same bad consequences imho.

Mon 30 Aug | Jean Guy Botecelli | Hook, line, sinker. Jean Guy 1, Muppet 0 Haha

Mon 30 Aug | Dennis Forbes | 'So (imho) to neglect foreign languages because one's country speaks the common international language so 'there is no need' shows lack of care for the rest of the world' And conversely learning another language simply because there is a need doesn't show any depth of care for the rest of the world. The vast majority of people learn additional languages for completely practical reasons (I know we romanticize that it's the learned scholars and worldly travellers, but that's the exception not the rule), and the simple cold harsh reality is that there isn't as much of a practical reason for an American to bone up on language X. None of this says that one shouldn't pursue alternate languages - I already have my 18 month old daughter lined up for French immersion school - but rather the haughty anti-Americanism is confusing practicality with worldliness.

Mon 30 Aug | Simon Lucy | Actually English is one of the easiest languages to gain a basic fluency in, as easy as Mandarin and for similar reasons. Both languages have multiple root languages but a very simple word order mechanism. Indeed, you can entirely scramble the word order and still get a fairly understandable result (all your base...). English is one of the hardest to master entirely only because there are so many variations, even in the continental US there are a couple of dozen dialects, in the UK there's some form of dialect for almost every town and settlement. People from the British Isles are also well known for their reluctance to learn another language and for the same kind of reason, everyone else wants to speak English at you (well ok, apart from the French). However, I've found that even a tiny use of their language and customs (like not pointing if its rude to point, putting one's hand over one's mouth etc), gets you well past the point of 'stupid english foreigner'. Given current demographic changes, California will be largely spanish in its population (though its wealth may be mostly owned by english speakers), within a generation. There are already multiple languages spoken within the US and there always have been. It would do any citizen of any country well to know the major languages spoken in its own country. Not that my knowledge of Cwmraeg is anything beyond please, thankyou and a few swearing expressions, even less in Gaelic.

Mon 30 Aug | K | Why would I need to learn another language when I know that _anyone_ can understand english if you speak it loud enough? :-) More toward the real - at this point in the US the only additional language that is going to provide real value in day to day life is Spanish. If you are looking for a platform language then lean Latin. Unless you know you are headed to France or Germany they aren't near as useful as Spanish.

Mon 30 Aug | profound insights galore | 'The first language you ever learn is incredibly hard. Just watch a child learning and making mistakes.' The first language you learn is by far the easiest. Kids don't even know how to talk, and they absorb their first language fluently. Meanwhile adults anguish for years in college using the latest techniques, textbooks, tapes, flashcards, software, etc, to get rudimentary and probably fleeting skills in a second language. How many people do you know that tried to learn a second language and failed? Now tell me one healthy person who couldn't learn *one* language.

Mon 30 Aug | Just me (Sir to you) | It is not so much people underestimating the Americans, as them overestimating their own compatriots. I agree with Dennis that foreign language aquisition is 99,999% needs driven. In my own country there is actually a rapid decline in speaking foreign languages (other than former mothertongues by imigrants), because the cost of entertainement production dropped sharply over the last 20 years. People here had music, tv, film etc. mostly in English, since it was bought in from the world market. They picked up English along the way. Nowadays more mass entertainment is in the local language, so spread of English is suffering as a result.

Mon 30 Aug | Christopher Wells | > Not that my knowledge of Cwmraeg is anything beyond please, thankyou and a few swearing expressions How about 'Araf', and 'llwybr cyhoeddus'?

Mon 30 Aug | Dennis Forbes | There is a certain humor (on so many levels...) that there are people dutifully learning Klingon though.

Mon 30 Aug | Yoey | OK, here's another reason to learn another language: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3794479.stm

Mon 30 Aug | Indian Perspective... | I am living in India. I learned German for one year. I was not learning it because I wanted to know more about German Culture, or for the love of rest of the world. It was just to add weightage to my resume. It was all job driven and practicality. And, I can't understand why anyone has to relate, the Americans lack of concern for rest of the world with their lack of interest for learning new foriegn language. So, 'GUTEN MORGEN' (GOOD MORNING) :-)

Mon 30 Aug | Pakter | I may be completely wrong, but the study seems ridiculous, as is shown by the comments : 'However, the results of this particular study need to be interpreted cautiously as they were comparing groups of individual of different nationalities, educated in different systems. ' Couldn't they find old bilingual Canadians ? Well, maybe not.

Mon 30 Aug | Yoey | Pakter: My daughter's pediatricians, both in the USA and abroad, both quoted similar studies. I don't get why people are so vehemently opposed to learning a second language.

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | People aren't vehemently opposed to it, it's just not necessary. I don't learn Japanese for much the same reason that I don't learn how to fly a Cessna. I simply don't need to.

Mon 30 Aug | Messer, Gabel, Feuer, Licht | >> Java is the Italian and all self respecting C#'ers know French. Italian has a garbage collector?

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | No, but you can overload the + operator to fart the French National Anthem.

Mon 30 Aug | Raju Patel | 'I don't get why people are so vehemently opposed to learning a second language. ' Nobody is opposed to learn more than one language. Its cool, no problem. But you CAN NOT tell somebody who only knows English, that there is something wrong with you, and that too coming from people who learn English because thats the business language of the world. I am personally for knowing more than one language, it helps!

Mon 30 Aug | An Evil American | > the Americans lack of concern for rest of the world This is perception but not reality. How many American charites and foundations give billions to others. Benovelance or evil? You decide. For example: 'Evil Americans' give Billion(s) of Dollars per year to all sorts of countries. http://qesdb.cdie.org/gbk/index.html From : http://esdb.cdie.org/cgi-bin/broker.exe?_program=gbkprogs.country_list.sas&_service=default Egypt, 1946-2002, 55 Billion dollars. Israel, 1946-2002, 84 Billion dollars. Saudi Arabia, 1946-2002, 328 Million. And for our trouble, we are hated and many extreme factions want to kill us and our 'evil' way of life. And of course we will keep sending money. Even North Korea, 506 Million from 1962-2002, including 140 million in 2002. Signed, Evil American

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | Egypt, 1946-2002, 55 Billion dollars. Israel, 1946-2002, 84 Billion dollars. Saudi Arabia, 1946-2002, 328 Million. yes, let's think about these contributions and their destinations for a moment, shall we?

Mon 30 Aug | Indian Perspective... | Pakter; 'However, the results of this particular study need to be interpreted cautiously as they were comparing groups of individual of different nationalities, educated in different systems' Nationality matter's! A person in India from say Tamil Nadu (State of India) is good at engish, tamil and little bit hindi. Same a person from Punjab( State) , is good english, punjabi and hindi. But in your case, it is just one language, english. In schools we are taught in English ( talking about private schools), at home we speak in our mother-tongue. But I guess in your case it is not such. It is english everywhere. ( School, home....) A child who has to learn 3 language simultaniously in his/her growing days would be in far better position to grasp a fourth new language than a child who learned just one.

Mon 30 Aug | Peter | >The first language you learn is by far the easiest. Kids don't even know how to talk, and they absorb their first language fluently. Your brain is wired to learn languages at an early age. You spend ages 2-4 saying things like 'blah blah blah' and NO! Learning a language under age 8 is far easier than learning one at 13, which is far easier than learning one at 18, which is far easier than learning one at 33 (when I started learning japanese). Children locked in a room where they don't have another human to talk to until they are 9-10+ have a very difficult time learning grammar of any kind. >How many people do you know that tried to learn a second language and failed? People who tried to learn as adults. Also, part of the difficulty with adults (learning other languages) is that adults are afraid to laugh at themselves (or get laughed at) when they make a mistake.

Mon 30 Aug | Peter Monsson | I don't want Americans to learn a new language because it gives me a competitive edge as a trilingual. F. x. German is spoken by an estimated 126 million people. That's a nice little extra market I can have all for myself... (Take that with a barrel of salt, I'm just proving a point here.) http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa020298.htm

Mon 30 Aug | Indian Perspective... | An Evil American, ---This is perception but not reality---- What about IRAQ!? I guess, you are doing a lot of charity work there too. So let us not discuss this issue here!

Mon 30 Aug | ian | 'in the UK there's some form of dialect for almost every town and settlement' Oh, come now, please, let's not get carried away. The only difference in spoken English across most of the British Isles these days is in accent and the occasional use of a few different words. The vast majority of people everywhere across Britain are all plainly understandable to each other. You have to go a long way back in time (centuries) to find local dialects noticeably different from standard English. One exception I might make is for Glaswegian as heard in the BBC comedy Rab C. Nesbitt (played by Gregor Fisher). That pretty much needed subtitles for anybody not born and brought up in Glasgow!

Mon 30 Aug | Kenny | ++A child who has to learn 3 language simultaniously in his/her growing days would be in far better position to grasp a fourth new language than a child who learned just one.++ sure, however, there are studies which show that children who simultaniously learn more than one language at the developmental stage don't achieve the same level of mastery at one language as a child who learns just their home tongue...

Mon 30 Aug | Stephen Jones | To go back to the original point of this thread there is a lot of software around teachng foreign languages. Little of it is that good, but it will certainly be better than a Chinese programmer can produce off his own bat. There are various factors involved in the production of language software (apart from the most important which is a massive marketing machine) and they include capital (think hundreds of thousands of dollars), domain knowledge, pedagogic knowledge, imagination, creativity and perseverence. Programming skills are almost irrelevant; bookbinding skills don't win you the Nobel for Literature.

Mon 30 Aug | Stephen Jones | Dear Ian The only century you need to go to to find dialects clearly different from standard English is this one, though you are more likely to be talking about social dialects than regional ones. It is true however that pretty well all the population understands standard English and can produce some approximation to it, which certainly wasn't true 120 years ago. It is also true that compared to many other languages English is fairly homogenous.

Mon 30 Aug | IANAL | Yawn. I'm so weary of hearing these Euro weenies who brag about the fact they are bilingual and snub their noses at Americans who are not. The reason most Europeans learn English as well as their native tongue is because they know English is the predominant language in the world. So for them, the purpose of learning a second language is to be able to communicate and compete in a global environment. The cultural reasons are secondary. For Americans, we already speak English so the need for a second language really boils down to a cultural thing, not a competitive advantage like non-English speaking countries. Don't get me wrong, I think learning other languages is a great intellectual excercise and I encourage everyone to do it. But I'm just sick and tired of these pricks overseas acting as if they are so superior because their countries education system long since realized that they needed to learn English to survive.

Mon 30 Aug | Stephen Jones | Whilst it is true that many non-English speakers learn English because they need it as a lingua franca or bridge language, people who give figures like 99.9999% of people learn a foreign language out of necessity are grossly exaggerating. For one thing extrinsic motivation has much less effect on language learning than instrinsic motivation, and the desire to learn about the culture of the speakers of the other language is the greatest indicator of future success in learning the language. Secondly it totally fails to explain the large number of native English speakers who achieve a high level of fluency in foreign languages. You could say that they are impelled by social necessity, but that is not always true (I had read over a hundred French novels and had an active vocabulary of thousands of words before I ever spoke to a Frenchman) and it still doesn't explain why some people learn the language flluently and others not a word, nor why some people learn some languages and don't bother with others. To give my personal example I could speak, read and write French before I ever went to France, and learnt both Spanish and later Catalan to near native proficiency despite a marked English accent in Spanish, and yet my Arabic is rudimentary and my Sinhala almost non-existent. Life is not that simple.

Mon 30 Aug | ian | Stephen, I agree that you can find dialects noticeably different from standard English today in Britain, but they do not have an important impact on the life of an everyday speaker of the language. Simon Lucy implied that one reason English is hard to master is that almost every town and settlement in Britain speaks a different variety of the language. This is plainly not true. I can go to Southampton, Bristol, Cambridge, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Cardiff, Caernarvon, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and all sorts of places inbetween and never have any difficulty understanding or being understood. Regional variations in accent are just not that great these days, and the occasional inclusion of dialect words presents no important difficulty.

Mon 30 Aug | Indian Perspective... | Kenny, ---stage don't achieve the same level of mastery at one language as a child who learns just their home tongue...----- Probably, yes! But does that gives you any competitive advantage over a person who knows two language. In your field of work ( Programming). So, as I earlier said it is all need driven, add more attributes to your personality and education qualifications, you are in otherwise wait for the turn.

Mon 30 Aug | Peter | >sure, however, there are studies which show that children who simultaniously learn more than one language at the developmental stage don't achieve the same level of mastery at one language as a child who learns just their home tongue. My ex would be a perfect counter example to your statement. She grew up in Cuba and the US.

Mon 30 Aug | redguardtoo | I have googled 'Spanish Software' or 'learn Spanish'. The googled results implied that ADULT Americans possibly do not care to learn a foreign language because those softwares seems outdated compared to Chinese 'learn English' software (for example, some voice pattern recognition algorithm are very popular in Chinese learn English softwares). So I think I'd better investigate here at first. -------------------------------------- D2KSoft, Different and Elegant http://www.d2ksoft.com We provide advanced tools only for YOU, the smart, tasteful and lazy hacker! --------------------------------------

Mon 30 Aug | Gav | >But does that gives you any competitive advantage over a person who knows two language. In your field of work ( Programming). Unless you are either very fortunate in your choice of language, then the chance of it being useful is not particularly high. After all, there are hundreds of languages to choose from--what are the odds that the one you choose is one that will actually help you? Stephen Jones's example is great here--he knows French fluently, but not Arabic--so where does he end up working? In Saudi Arabia. This is especially true in programming--it's not a particularly language-intensive job. Frex, I happen to have studied Japanese, out of random interest, and a couple of years back I was working for a company that was doing a big project for a Japanese firm. I thought I was all set, but it didn't work out that way at all--I had virtually no contact with the customer, everything was handled in English; I think I used my Japanese for about 5 minutes one day to come up with a test case, and even that could've been handled by someone with no Japanese. Gav

Tue 31 Aug | Simon Lucy | Its fun being quoted, but it would be better if it were accurately done. I did not imply that English was difficult to master, I said it was difficult to master. For speakers of English as a second language many dialects are difficult, this does not mean they speak or understand English badly. For native speakers of English its easier to ignore or gloss over dialect and vocabulary differences, but those differences are still significant. As an example, in working around the Pacific Rim I found that in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia people had little difficulty in understanding me either as one to one or in public seminars; in Taiwan and South Korea the local ear was used to american intonation and vocabulary and I had to modify my speech and to a degree my accent in order for them to listen to what I said.

Tue 31 Aug | Chris Nahr | I'm not sure why people think dialects are relevant to the question of English being a difficult language or not. Do native English speakers seriously believe other languages don't have dialects?

Tue 31 Aug | Just me (Sir to you) | Kenny is wrong. Studies show that childern raised in a consistent multilingual environment are actually better at language than monolingually raised children. Consistent means that the different languages are separated by context, preferably by person speaking (e.g. mother speaks French always, Father speaks English always). Only childeren that are raised in inconsistent linguistic environments (people mixing different languages all the time) tend to get slightly confused as to the proper separation of one language from another.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | > Why would I need to learn another language when I know that _anyone_ can understand english if you speak it loud enough? Actually you need to know two sentences in any given foreign language - 1) Do you speak English? 2) Find me someone who does. I suppose 'A beer, please' is also useful.

Tue 31 Aug | Simon Lucy | Hmmm, let me repeat. English is reasonably easy to learn as a foreign language, you can speak it attrociously and be understood and you can understand a great deal with a relatively small vocabulary that and the trading patterns of the 19th and 20th century made English a lingua franca. I did not say that dialects made it difficult to learn English, I said it made it difficult to master it. Yes there are dialects in other languages and sometimes those dialects are confusing. German usage varies widely, not simply the pronunciation of ch and sh across north and south but whole vocabularies and there's no way I'm going to understand Swiss German (SchweitzerDeutch). English adopts foreign words and constructions easily and for the most part almost without notice and so wherever English is spoken in non-English speaking countries borrowed words enter the language. This has also helped make it an almost lingua univeralis. There's no discernable gender in English and very simple modifying rules for verbs, virtually all the modifications are actually conjugations of the verb 'to be' with a few word endings, 'ed', 'ing', 'est' and so on. English can make any noun into a verb and verbs into nouns and adjectives and so squish any combination of phonemes from any other grammar into its own grammar. English has been polyglot even since before the Norman Conquest, it (or at least its precursor), had Gaelic, Latin, Danish, Old High German and god knows what already layered into it before Norman French was skewered into it. So, with all that, its hardly surprising that its become the commercial language of the world.

Tue 31 Aug | samurai | Isn't it a pitty that the americans could get isolated because they do not do anything to get closer to the rest of the world? Learning a foreign language is part of it. Actually, at the moment it is the rest of the world who gets closer to the americans (not the americans who get closer rest of the world) but that could end. I don't think the americans should feel confident just because the others learn english. Yes, because it is the others who decide. When the interest in english ends and the others decide that japanese or chinese is the 'new language' the americans will have to change their mind.

Tue 31 Aug | muppet | Start holding your breath now on that whole English interest ending thing.

Tue 31 Aug | Mr Jack | 'Americans need learn foreign language?' Sounds like Americans need _to_ learn english grammar first.

Tue 31 Aug | Indian Perspective... | Samurai; ----Isn't it a pitty that the americans could get isolated because they do not do anything to get closer to the rest of the world?Learning a foreign language is part of it.---- How many language you know, and did you learned them to show your love for other countries!? ----Actually, at the moment it is the rest of the world who gets closer to the americans (not the americans who get closer rest of the world) but that could end.---- At this point of time, whether you accept it or not, they are in commanding position. ----When the interest in english ends and the others decide that japanese or chinese is the 'new language' the americans will have to change their mind.---- Do you want to say learning languages is that easy!? It consumes lot of time and energy. It is not that simple! Anyway, your comments shows that you have something against Americans. I also don't agree with them as far a WAR and other such issues are concerned. But at this point of time you are rather being insane and harsh on them.

Tue 31 Aug | Jack of All | The first language you learn is by far the easiest. Kids don't even know how to talk, and they absorb their first language fluently. ... How many people do you know that tried to learn a second language and failed? The difference being, in the first few years of life you're bombarded with language. Whether you want to learn it or not, sooner or later you're going to understand. Most adults give up after a short while. Move to a country that speaks a foreign language (at least to you) and immerse yourself in it for 2 or 3 years and then come back to me and tell me you couldn't learn it.

Tue 31 Aug | Ninja | 'At this point of time, whether you accept it or not, they are in commanding position.' that is true, but... they would get more friends if they were more 'open' to the world. It is a bit sad that people learn english just because it is convenient (business/money) and do not learn more about the people. I would prefer people to learn english because they are interested in people and culture. mmm, maybe I am a dreamer....

Tue 31 Aug | ian | Simon, Sorry if I quoted you inaccurately, and perhaps I did, but in that case I even more strongly disagree with you. You said: 'English is one of the hardest to master entirely only because there are so many variations'. That English is one of the hardest to master, I can completely agree with. That it is because there are so many variations, I don't believe so. I believe English is hard to master because there are so many subtleties in word order, in appropriate use of colloquialisms, in choice of the correct word amongst a family of near synonyms, and other such matters. All these things make even standard English hard to master, whether it be British standard or American standard varieties of the language. I found your examples of working around the Pacific Rim very interesting, since this coincides quite closely with my experience. On my first visits to America, I sometimes found myself having a tremendously hard time being understood. It seemed that with some American listeners, as soon as they heard me speak, their brain shouted 'aaargh, foreign!' and switched off. Thereafter, nothing I said made any sense to them and I had to have an American friend interpret for me (all the while trying hard to keep a straight face and avoid rolling on the floor with laughter).

Tue 31 Aug | Curious George | While we are on the topic does anyone think that Spanish will replace English as the "official" language of America given that the hispanic minority will be a majority in the not too distant future given the US birthrates at present? Should the US make it a law that English be the official language?

Tue 31 Aug | ian | No, I do not think Spanish will replace English in America any time soon. The Spanish speaking population, however numerous, generally form a sub-class and have almost no power or influence amongst the ruling elite.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | Hispanic birth rates are much higher in the US because you get a bigger welfare check with more children.

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | ---'Hispanic birth rates are much higher in the US because you get a bigger welfare check with more children. '---- The kind of crap we've come to expect from you. A large proportion of hispanics are illegal immigrants who don't qualify for welfare or any other benefits. Birth rates are inversely proportional to income pretty well anywhere.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | Willfull ignorance is pretty much directly proportional to the minority population in most communities, too.

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | Yea, and you're in a minority of one.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | I hardly think so.

Thu 02 Sep | Elias | First. I assume that by 'Americans' you mean people bvorn in USA. To the rest of us lesser mortals, an American is anyone born in the American Continent. What about learning some Geography first?. Through my contacts in Internet & when I say that I am Spaish, I find that a very high proportion of respondents often ask WHERE IS SPAIN???????? As well as clasifying me as Hispanic. (Mexican??????) It must be remembered that the Spanish Language is the second language sppken in USA.

Thu 02 Sep | Fidel | Camarada Elias, ¡Eso que tu has dicho... está bien!

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | Elias - I can assure you that a majority of Americans know where Spain is. Also, sorry, but 'American' universally means citizens/denizens of the United States. Has for years, will for many years more. Otherwise you're Canadian, Mexican, Brazillian, etc etc

Thu 02 Sep | Fidel | So now the States is the Universe.

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | Hardly. But 'American' is a lot more convenient to say than 'United States Citizen' over and over. Quit being an ass.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Dear Muppet Your willingness to call anybody who knows something you don't an ass, would be endearing if you were about ten years old. In Spanish, if you say somebody is 'americano' it will be taken to mean that they are from Mexico downwards. If you wish to refer to somebody from the US you say he is 'norteamericano', which of course irritates the Mexicans no end as they are North Americans as well. A perfect mirror image of the situation in English where you use 'American' for US citizens, and South American for those Soutn of the Rio Grande, even if half of them are actually North or Central Americans.

Thu 02 Sep | Fidel | Stephen Jones, that is true. We spanish speakers are used to call nationalities according to the name of the country. (England- English, France - French, Cuba - Cuban, Chile - Chilean, China - Chinese, etc.) In the case of the USA citizens (EEUU (Estados Unidos) in Spanish), we call them 'norteamericanos' and sometimes 'estadounidenses', when we are lazy we prefer to call them 'gringos'. ¡que viva la revolucion!

Thu 02 Sep | Raju Patel | I have visited few countries, mostly in Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka etc.) and couple in Europe (UK and Holland), my experience is that when you talk about somebody or something "American" they KNOW I am talking of somebody or something from United States of America. I've so far NEVER seen any anybody refering to Americans and Canadians as "North Americans". Never.

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | No, it's true that spanish speakers use 'norteamericano', but it's essentially the same thing. These are folks who feel their penis size is linked to their country's relative political presence, and can't otherwise handle their envy of the United States as the singular superpower in the world. It's maddening to them, and so they lash out.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | You have a strange penis fixation muppet. Freud would be proud of you. Dear Raju The reason you have never heard 'American' refer to people from South of the Rio Grande is that your list of countries doesn't actually include any of the thirty-odd American and two European countries, where it does. But I am sure that in all the countries you list writing in all caps ALWAYS shows a lack of linguistic (and probably argumentative) competence :)

Thu 02 Sep | It's me... | Muppet; You are an Idiot. Got it! If not, let me repeat it again. You are an IDIOT.

Fri 03 Sep | Fidel | FYI: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22estadounidense%22 991,000 hits tell that this word is commonly used in the spanish/latam world.

Fri 03 Sep | Fidel | ooops! I forgot! I was talking about the word 'estadounidense'

Joel on Human Resources | Thu 02 Sep | Beth C.

I have devoted a post on: http://nobscot.blogspot.com to Joels views on HR. HR people need to hear this. Beth C.

Thu 02 Sep | redguardtoo | When I worked in a outsourcing company, they used to hornor some engineer with the title 'this month's best engineer' (like KFC). Actually, sometimes the company honored *the worst* engineer* in this company. For example, when deadline came, we found that the design of a project was so bad (actually, it breaks every design principle) that the whole system should be re-built. The project tech-leader (who is the ONLY designer) was cancelled and serveral SSEs were enlisted from other projects to fix all the bugs in code base. Then the ex-tech-leader is entititled 'the best engineer' because our boss said 'although he made a mistake, we should reward him because he worked so overtime (to fix his bugs, hehe)' After get the honor 'the best...', the ex-designer quit the job right now. redguardtoo http://www.d2ksoft.com

Thu 02 Sep | trollop | Who left the door open? Catbert's in the building, reeking of fish.

Thu 02 Sep | redguardtoo | My point is, a HR or a manager should learn some basic tech knowledge to *measure* an engineer's work. They should try to understand the engineer before they are given the right to reward (or punish) an engineer. Of course I am glad to understand a HR if the boss let me decide the bonus of a HR. Another story: On my first work days in an outsourcing company (Yes, many interesting stories happened in that outsourcing company when I worked there), our boss interviewed me , 'red, you are a good programmer. but most coders in our company are unqualified, they write dangerous codes (actually, he use building bridge as an analog, but I am unable to translate it). I was naive then, So I cheerfully went back to my team and gave lessons to my team members, 'you are un-qualified programmers! From now on, you shall *ASSERT* everything, you shall write error handle code as much as possbile!...' Contrary to my expectations, those 'un-qualified' coders were glad to take my lessons, 'thank you! red! No one in this company has ever taught us such useful knowledge. thank you ...' Ok, then I returned to my boss to report that at least my team members are qualified programmers now. 'Great', my boss said. Then came a Japanese out-sourcing project. Some *smart* Japanese SSEs invented a kind of profile tool. Our clients aksed us to use such a tool to caculate the code-coverage-ratio in the blackbox tests. The ratio *must* be greater than 70 percent. The QA team complained to my boss that *only* our team was hard to reach 70 percent. 'Something is wrong', I explained to my boss, 'we write so many assertions and error handle code. You know, it is hard to let assertions failed in blackbox test... I can explain all to the Japanese..' '*Only* your team failed with code coverage test. What the hell are asserttions? Delete all those rubbish now!', my boss said. It was my first and maybe my last project to use code-coverage tools. When the project was over, I quit from the company. Before my story is over, I want to thank those *smart* Japanese SSEs because they have successfully proved that some Chinese out-sourcing coders (I, for example) are too stupid to even take advantage of their delicate QA tools. redguardtoo http://www.d2ksoft.com

ASP resources | Thu 02 Sep | Patrick F

No, not active server pages. And please ... no ad links to your company. I am looking for resources on managing release schedules as a multi-tenant ASP service. i.e. What happens if clients 23 and 45 say I dont like this - it should work like x and client 12 says it should work like y. i.e. What do you do about regression testing across 100 clients. Do you open bookn the tests to convince them that version 2.35 wont break their data.

Thu 02 Sep | kc | Haha. We have the same thing except with about 10 *LARGE* clients. We use multiple instances and db's for each. One wants an upgrade/customization, so we come up with a price. We perform it and then show it to the others and offer it at 1/2 of the original price. Of course, in no time at all (about 6 months), we have 6 different versions each running a bit differently with different customizations... and the worst part is that the first version had ALL of the sql embedded in the pages with no error checking... SQL injections errors could happen any time. I'm working at cleaning things up and minimizing some of the differences, but it's a HUGE pain.

Eric's sense of humour. | Thu 02 Sep | JD

Eric thinks that his sense of humor is dry. But I find his writing very light and funny yet it conveys the message. Check this excerpt from his article on SCM Introduction. Second of all, please accept my apologies if my dry sense of humor ever becomes a distraction from the material. I am writing about source control and trying to make it interesting. Thats like writing about sex and trying to make it boring, so please cut me some slack if I try to make you chuckle along the way. I think that was hilarious! What you say? JD

Thu 02 Sep | Blah | Feeling a little insecure Eric? Errr.... I mean, JD?

Thu 02 Sep | OffMyMeds | Eric made another funny here: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?pg=pgDiscussThread&ixDiscussTopicParent=39&ixDiscussGroup=3&cReplies=4 I thought it was also quite funny.

Thu 02 Sep | Alex | Speaking of funny, Joel's new book is titled brilliantly!

Thu 02 Sep | Bob's your uncle | Eric is a pompus self-important bore

Thu 02 Sep | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | Bobs Your Uncle == Eric Even when hes trying to be self deprecating, hes funny!

Thu 02 Sep | Eric Sink | The 'Bob's your uncle' poster is essentially correct. I've been called worse. However, it's fairly obvious that I did not post that comment, since I know how to correctly spell the word 'pompous'. /me breaks out in a fit of maniacal laughter...

Thu 02 Sep | Forecastle | Just don't make fun of Eric's name. I learned the hard way.

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | Instead, make fun of the fact that his bio pic looks like a DUI mugshot.

Caching Theory | Thu 02 Sep | Vince

Ok, in my spare time, Ive started writing an application that allows uploading and categorizing of images, but with images able to exist in multiple categories. Im Using java/Tomcat, everything is pretty basic. Well, I feel sorta wrong if I dont at least try to implement some caching. So HOW exactly should I implement my caching? I could do it EJB style, where I always do a "SELECT id FROM table WHERE ...", then for each ID in the resultset, call a load method on my image objects (which first would check the cache before pulling the individual record from the db). Of course, this seems almost like a waste, unless I know for sure the majority of the records are already cached. Is there a right and wrong way when it comes to caching? Am I wrong in thinking that the fact that im retrieving BLOBs should change my caching strategy? Thanks in advance.

Thu 02 Sep | Dave | off the top of my head... I'm no expert, but my understanding is that caching really boosts performance under a few circumstances: *when multiple users are accessing the same set of relatively static objects. *the app is pulling db records across a network link *retrieving the records involves expensive SQL logic *you have lots and lots of ram My bet is that caching won't get you much. Client-side performance is gonna be limited by their bandwidth, not the responsiveness of the DB. Caching is just another optimization, and should be last on your list of things to worry about. Get the app working and monitor how people are actually using it. Then you can tweak it.

Thu 02 Sep | Dino | Yet another perspective ... A cache is what changes a high-volume memory storage from very_low_cost / low_performance to low_cost / almost_high_performance. The technique uses an associative memory (cache memory) which is low-volume / high-performance / high-cost. The ensemble makes a hierarchical memory. For example: the cache memory on your HDD or your layers of caches holding CPU instructions (RAM is the high volume storage in this case) In an application, your low-performance high-volume is the disk, while the RAM is the high-performance low-volume high-price cache memory. A map of key-to-data would normally suffice (things get complicated when dealing with changing data in distributed systems) If the DB already caches this information, no need to cache it twice - performance would only decrease due to the added overhead. Make sure though, the DB is not caching some other type of object which has little or nothing to do with your caching needs - e.g. records vs. queries/cursors.

Thu 02 Sep | Dino | And something else ... when the cache and new data needs to be cached, obviously, some of the cached data has to be dropped. Common algorithms to decide what data is uncached are: - last recently used (LRU) - least frequently used (LFU) - FIFO - LIFO - ... whatever gives you best performance - ie the best successful (data in the cache) hits / total hits.

Thu 02 Sep | snotnose | You might also look into creditte theory. The basic idea is that 90% of the time 50% of your memory isn't being used. So you put it into a banQ structure that you can draw on for those times when you need 110% of available cache. /ducks

Thu 02 Sep | Mike Swieton | Measure your bottlenecks first, of course. Chances are, you're not looking to handle anywhere near the load that would require caching DB requests. Remember, you'll almost certainly run out of bandwidth long before your database starts to become a bottleneck. Consider: a P133 will saturate a T1 with static pages. I bet a 2ghz proc can do the same with dynamic code. That said, I'll assume you want it to be optimized just because. Just like I would 8-} Normally, I'd say don't bother caching database records, because most apps won't be pulling enough similar data out often enough to gain. However, I think it'd be worth it for you to try (and profile!) because you're using BLOBs, meaning each row you get from the database is going to be in the tens of kilobytes, instead of the hundreds of bytes, as would normally be expected. As far as 'the majority of records are already cached', well, look at your data: how big is your collection? how much ram do you have? and how is popularity distributed? I.e. do most of your requests return the same 20 images, or is any one image as likely to be desired as any? Snotnose - banQ structure? My google search is turning up a lot of banks; do you have a pointer to a doc on it?

Thu 02 Sep | snotnose | The banQ structure is heavily fortified with encryption and such, and is used to hold your extra cache when you don't need it.....

Thu 02 Sep | d | I agree with Mike, you should definitely look at your usage before deciding what you need to do Vince. The chances are that either your load isn't sufficient for caching, and/or the requests for images aren't such that caching really helps. You could of course use complex calculations to determine if its worth putting an image in the cache but chances are, its unnecessary. If you have, for example a million images, and between the union of different users actual queried sets there is no overlap (and their sets very small at that, like 50 images each, and therefor not heavily viewed), caching won't solve much in your case. If you find that a certain small set of images get loaded constantl (and when i say constantly i mean to the point where its silly for them to be retreived from the database over and over) then you may want to implement some sort of caching.

Thu 02 Sep | snotnose | Dang. Years ago I read a spoof of cache memory, called credit memory. I just googled for that spoof without much luck, but actually found some links the original poster may find useful. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=credit+memory+cache&btnG=Search

Thu 02 Sep | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | >> Consider: a P133 will saturate a T1 with static pages. Can we retire this age old saying yet? Maybe upgrade it with a T2, T3, or some OC variant? I mean, who uses T1's anymore?

Thu 02 Sep | anon | Snotnose: Here's a link to the C-RAM joke. http://members.tripod.com/~saintsand/jokes4.html (search for C-Ram)

web services / 'thinish' client over web apps? | Thu 02 Sep | James 'Smiler' Farrer

Been thinking about some things I can do with my time now my placement year is over and uni will restart. Im fed up of using / developing web apps with the user interface limits they have. This has got me thinking in the past few days about developing software with web services and delivering all the data to a client app instead of a web interface. Now Ive obviously read Joels Microsoft lost the API war... etc... Does this make any sense to develop or a complete waste of time and I should really be sticking to web apps? Opinions? Thoughts?

Thu 02 Sep | Christopher Wells | I've been writing software for 20 years and have never in my life developed a web app. I've done drivers, servers, thick clients, console applications, and 'embedded' software (e.g. running on a GUI-less telephone switch). I guess I'm saying there's more to writing software than developing web apps. My current project involves a thick client talking to a server via a 'web service' protocol: the client is thick because it's creating graphs that the end-user can manipulate locally.

Thu 02 Sep | matt | I've done this for a couple of small apps with wxPython and some simple web services stuff. Yeah it's nice. You can even write one GUI client and one web-based front-end for the same web services back-end. Definately looks more impressive / costly to clients aswell, I think. If you present them with a custom-coded GUI app to twiddle their web database it looks a lot more impressive than some online thing. Just as goddamn boring to code though.

Thu 02 Sep | Egor | In my experience, clients who want web apps tend to have very firm reasons for them to be web-based and aren't likely to even consider a desktop client + server solution.

Thu 02 Sep | Joe | Microsoft refers to this as a 'Smart Client,' and the .NET platform provides at least some tools (like the DataSet) that can help you out there. Smart Clients are definately a good investment, as long as the features of the app made possible by using a thick client justify the extra hassles of deployment. Of course, there's also One-Click Deployment, which attempts to provide the best of both worlds. I disagree that most clients who say they want a web app want a web app for a specific reason. Most clients I get for consulting projects really don't know what they want...they've just heard various incomplete tidbits of information here and there. Unless you're targeting multiple OS's or a wide/unknown user base (which are the web's clear strengths), you should always give thought to both approaches and see which seems to better meet the project's goals.

Thu 02 Sep | Joe | PS -- I referred specifically to MS technologies, but Java has very similar capabilities too, as do other platforms I'm sure...

The Product Marketing Handbook for Software on Sla | Thu 02 Sep | Ann Onymous

Just read this book review on /. by a fellow named Dan Sheffer. This is a great, safe place to learn about marketing, distributing and selling software before putting your own time and money at risk; the Handbook includes comprehensive checklists to help manage the product-marketing process. (These lists are also provided on a CD that accompanies the book.) http://books.slashdot.org/books/04/08/24/1613223.shtml Looks like something I need, but would like to know if anyone here has read the book? Opinions? Has Joel ever commented on this book? Looks very comprehensive. Anyone read this other guys book, Stupidity? Looks interesting too and Joel wrote the foreword. Comments appreciated

Thu 02 Sep | Ewan's Dad | Joel highly recommends the book.

Thu 02 Sep | Ewan's Dad | http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/fog0000000102.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/04/16.html

.NET runtime delivery vehicle | Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you)

Here is something that will get the ball rolling http://www.atitech.ca/products/catalystcontrolcenter/index.html

Thu 02 Sep | kc | As soon as I saw 'delivery vehicle' I started thinking of missiles. Is that bad?

Thu 02 Sep | Dennis Forbes | Enough people will have 1.1 just in time for developers to start wanting to target 2.0... :-)

laser printers | Thu 02 Sep | Aint nobody here but us developers

Any recommendations for a low-cost laser printer for home use?

Thu 02 Sep | Aint nobody here but us developers | Oops, forgot to do a search first, so this thread can be deleted.

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | How many pages? Although the new Dell 5100cn has a $900 initial outlay, its TCO.is going to be hard to beat in many scenarios.

Thu 02 Sep | Jay Monkman | I'm happy with my Samsung ML2150N. When I was shopping, it seemed to be the best duplex printer for the price - around $350-400, I think. It has builtin ethernet, and works well with Linux. I've printed about 3000 pages and never had a paper jam.

Thu 02 Sep | a programmer | The Lexmark E232 is not a bad little printer, and it's pretty cheap (~$200) for a mono laser. If you want a faster network model, you can bump up to the 332n, but it's closer to $500.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | The problem with low cost printers of any kind are paper jams. You might consider why you want a laser printer for home use. If you refill the cartidges then inkjets are affordable, and you get decent color printing (color laser jets still come in at $600)

Thu 02 Sep | Adam Vandenberg | I've had an HP LaserJet 4L for the last 10 years. Works great, though it's only 4ppm, and, uh, they're not really in production anymore.

Thu 02 Sep | Brad Wilson | Had a Samsung ML-1710 that my wife took, and an ML-1740 that I just bought. Excellent quality, very fast printing, and not subject to HP's godawful drivers. Only paid $150 for it, and toner is only $80. Price/page is very low.

Thu 02 Sep | <sigh/> | Secon Brad. We just bought a 1740 and it's been a trooper. As an added bonus, currently rebates for something like $50 off, which means when all said and done, will have a nifty little laser for around $100.

Thu 02 Sep | Brent | I have a Samsung ML-1210 (which is not made anymore, i don't think.) It's terrible at printing graphics, but it prints text perfectly and very fast. I've gone through 4000 pages and haven't had a single paper jam unlike every HP printer I've ever worked with. I'd buy a Samsung again (thought I'd check reviews and make sure they handle graphics better) simply because the toner is relatively economical, and the page feeder isn't worthless like all low and mid range HPs.

Thu 02 Sep | pprint | I picked up a Samsung 1510 for just over $100. Small and neat , and ugly, but with a real paper-slot and USB interface. Wish I could afford a 'big one' with support for double-sided printouts but for the moment it does the job at a great price.

Thu 02 Sep | . | Okidata sells LED printers - same resolution as laser. What is good about them is that the toner comes in a $30 tube and the drum is good for about 20,000 pages then is about $150 to replace. Greatly reduces TCO if you do a lot of printing.

Thu 02 Sep | David (www.davesez.com) | I have a Brother HL-1850 that I love. I got it about a year ago refurbished for a couple hundred bucks. From what I read about it, the toner will last a long time. I haven't had to change it at all, but I don't print tons. Things I like about it - it's so much quieter than my old Inkjet. Also, I can keep it on and it goes quietly to sleep. It's way faster than an Inkjet. It prints duplex, which is very nice.

Is it safe to use VS.Net 2005 now? | Thu 02 Sep | Wayne

My companys foray into .Net will begin with ASP.Net for our web applications and I guess Ill have to install VS.Net 2K5 to do it, right? Since 2005 is just around the corner, is it safe to start using VS.Net 2K5 + ASP.Net 2.0 without expecting any major changes to the tools/framework? Thanks.

Thu 02 Sep | Brad Wilson | No.

Thu 02 Sep | Nemesis | I think you'd be mad to start development with beta tools, unless you were very clear on how you'd cope with changes to the tools. Unless you have good insider knowledge from MS, you cannot predict what will break when the actual code ships, so that's pretty much asking for trouble. I know someone whose 'ISV' didn't want to wait for the real VB6 to come out, so built a substantial product for a vertical industry with an early beta. It worked well, after they spent ages working around the bugs, so they sold it to lots of clients, shipping the beta runtime, etc. Of course, they thought it was cool, using the latest and greatest tools (so late and great they were still in beta), but things started to go badly wrong when they eventually got the 'real' VB6, as all sorts of problems came out of the woodwork. I would say that it is good to play with beta products like this and even use them for some prototyping work, but starting work on a critical project with them is not sensible. As always, YMMV and if you absolutely must have the new toys and don't mind all the pain that goes with it (now and later), then be my guest.

Thu 02 Sep | Dennis Forbes | I'd disagree with Brad, and presuming that you really, really can tolerate product slip (for instance can you tolerate the product being delivered mid to late 2005?) I'd start development using 2005. There'll be small framework changes, but it's unlikely there will be anything signficant. I'd take this further and say that I'd target SQL Server 2005, leveraging all of the improvements at the same time. Is there risk? Absolutely. On the flip side not leveraging available technologies is a risk of obsolete/redundant code.

Thu 02 Sep | Dennis Forbes | 'I would say that it is good to play with beta products like this and even use them for some prototyping work, but starting work on a critical project with them is not sensible.' Your example is hardly sensible - the guy sold copies of a product built in a beta product, and actually shipped beta runtimes? I actually don't think that is even legal with VS.NET 2005. However most projects have timelines that go for a year or more (that is if people live in the real world when making schedules) - I highly doubt the OP will be selling the product, or even releasing for significant internal use, before the real release ships. I also question any claims that there'll be overwhelming changes: This product is simply too substantial for there to be likely insurmountable changes. I'm not saying that there won't be, as obviously I don't know that, but we're talking about a product scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 2005.

Thu 02 Sep | Nemesis | I agree with Dennis, although at first glance it may appear otherwise. I think it'd be great to use ASP.NET 2.0, VS.NET 2005 and also SQL 2005, but you have to buy into the risk, not ignore it. There are two main areas of risk that must be mitigated. Firstly, the time factor. At the moment these products may appear next year, but what if it happens in December 2005, or even later (remember how many years late Windows '95' was). The second risk is the fact that the final products will not be the same as the beta versions, so you will have to re-test everything and probably make some changes. The danger, as always, is convincing the powers that be that you need a big chunk of time to re-test/fix when the new products become available. As long as you embrace this risk, i.e. by planning for it, rather than ignoring it, you will, as Dennis says, be able to leverage the new products.

Thu 02 Sep | Nemesis | Dennis, it was illegal AFAIK to ship products based upon the VB6 beta, but that didn't seem to stop them selling it, or their clients (household names, in UK) buying it.

Thu 02 Sep | Wayne | Is the IDE itself reliable? Can I still build version 1.1 applications without major pains? I use VS.Net 2K3 for building ASP Classic stuff right now and one of the main things I'm looking forward to is an updated IDE. (Hopefully it will stop adding ID/Name attributes when I copy/paste controls, my main complaint with it.) Also, ASP.Net 2.0 has Master Pages which sounds appealing.

Thu 02 Sep | kc | Rule of thumb: Never base your products on betas or v1.0 of a companies project. Corrolary: This applies double if the company is Microsoft.

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | Is Master Pages still in? Thought I heard it was out for the initial 2.0 release.

Thu 02 Sep | Nemesis | If Sir is right on that, this would be a good example of a fundamental change between beta and real product.

Thu 02 Sep | Dennis Forbes | http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/articles/default.aspx

Thu 02 Sep | Wayne | Okay, so what about just using the IDE then?

Thu 02 Sep | babe | No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful.

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | If you are targetting a Q4 2005 initial release I would be tempted. Aren't we always ;-).

Thu 02 Sep | Dennis Forbes | VS.NET 2005 is built specifically for building .NET 2.0 apps. VS.NET 2003 is built specifically for building .NET 1.1 apps. VS.NET 2002 is built specifically for building .NET 1.0 apps. (In so far as .NET development is concerned) To the OP, from your responses I would answer that you are unable or unwilling to accept the risk, so in your case I'd go with VS.NET 2003. Indeed, for anyone else reading what I said above, let me add the disclaimer - Of course there is risk. There is risk that the product might not be released until 2006. There is a risk that they might decide that it's all flawed and they'll rebuild it all on Python. There's a risk that a killer bug will exist in the first release of 2.0 (remember that much of .NET 2.0 is actually a v1.0 release) that will make it unusable. There is a risk that Microsoft will decide to get out of the software game. To properly assess whether you want to be an early adopter, you need to adequately assess your own ability to absorb these risks, and the benefits you would truly gain by being an early adopter. I have an associate that is developing a large scale web application and database back-end, and they are going with the 2005 platform - they understand and accept the risk, have a delivery that can absorb a fair amount of slip, and have built to adapt to change. On the flip side they have received a significant strategic advantage because of the code (and performance) that they are building off with 2005.

Thu 02 Sep | Dutch Boyd | While it's right around the corner, they keep moving the corner. So it might not be released as soon as you expect.

Thu 02 Sep | Joe | I'd say it's fairly safe if you have a release date of at least 1 year after the currently scheduled ship date of VS.Net '05, and if you avoid using bleeding edge functionality new to 2.0. Remember, 2.0 will still run 1.1 apps, so if you limit yourself to 1.1 functionality, you'll be 99% safe. But you do still need to budget time for work-arounds, fixes in response to changes in the Fx, and testing when 2.0 is officially released. Of course, doing that removes a lot of the advantages of being an early adopter. You do get the new IDE, which has some pretty cool features. And you can pick and choose which parts of 2.0 will really be time savers for you, and assess the risk before you use them (or wrap them, so you can change your implementation if need be). The above poster was correct in that '05 is for 2.0, '03 for 1.1, and '02 for 1.0, but you can also use 'redirection' to target a different version by modifying your app.config file (check out http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/changeinfo/default.aspx). Of course, once again, this assumes that your app doesn't use features found only in later versions of the framework...

errno and MSVC | Thu 02 Sep | VPC

Joels place may not be the best place to post this, but I cant think of any better. I need help related to MS VC. I need to use a library that has to be compiled with MSVC and then link it to my CodeWarrior project. (I have the source of the library, but its huge and is a mess of typedefs and #ifdefs). Library compiles fine with MSVC. My projects compiles fine with CW. But the linker reports three link errors. Maybe I solved them, but I dont like the way I did it. 1. _errno not defined: Header file errno.h that came with CodeWarrior has errno defined like this: #define errno (_GetThreadLocalData()->errno) On the other hand, in header files of MSVC, errno is just extern int if I am reading/preprocessing file errno.h OK. #if defined(_DLL) #define errno (*_errno()) #else extern int errno; #endif To solve my problem I changed both cases in msvc-errno.h to use _errno() function and then I defined such function in my CW project: #include _cdecl int *_errno(void) { return (&errno); } Now it compiles and links fine. 2. __ftol link error: I had no idea what it does, but then I found this code on the internet: void _ftol() { int r; _asm { fistp r mov eax, r } } (http://www.flipcode.com/cgi-bin/msg.cgi?showThread=00004002&forum=general&id=5) This code compiles and the linker is quiet now. The problem is, I dont know asm, so I can just guess that I did something useful. 3. __iob link error iob just screams IO Buffer. I found this somewhere and maybe VC uses _iob for similar stuff: #define stdin (__iob[0]) #define stdout (__iob[1]) #define stderr (__iob[2]) If I delete all printfs from the library (and replace them with i/o more appropriate for Windows (MessageBox, etc), would that solve my problem? But, the library here is using FILE structures, so maybe I just cant solve this. I still havent started with this third step. Somehow I feel that I should ask someone to tell me what the hell am I doing? Anyone with deeper knowledge with these pieces of VC? Should I forget about all this and try to compile this library with CodeWarrior? As it is now, CW compiler gives so many errors (already defined stuff, not defined stuff, nonexisting headers etc.) It could take even longer before I change it to compile with CW. What would you people do?

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | There are more things in heaven and Earth, VPC, Than are dreamt of in your visual C -Bill Gatespeare

Thu 02 Sep | AllanL5 | The bad news -- this sort of thing happens whenever you try to apply C or C++ across multiple platforms. Library inconsistencies, .H file inconsistencies, etc. The good news -- once you nail down what the inconsistencies are, and what the macro fix is for each, then you should be good to go. I tend to put this stuff in a 'globals.h' file, then #include globals.h everywhere. Then, at the top of globals.h, I will put a #define for each platform I want to support. I know there are default #defines for platforms, but I want more control than using the defaults. Then, I'll put the #ifdef lines as wrappers around any customizations needed. ftol -- I would think that's a 'float to long' conversion. It's not standard C library stuff.

Thu 02 Sep | Joe | As an alternative you might consider would be to compile the MSVC library into a DLL using MSVC, exporting the API you need in your CW app. Then include a header file to import the API in your CW app.

Thu 02 Sep | Brad Wilson | Having been down this road, I agree with the suggestion to use a DLL, exposing either plain C or COM. That's the only sane thing to do, unfortunately. Linking to libs, or trying to expose C++, is going to give you nothing but grief. Oh, and don't forget about the allocator issues. Memory allocated in one place has to be freed there, since the two things aren't sharing allocators.

Thu 02 Sep | VPC | > As an alternative you might consider would be to compile the MSVC library into a DLL using MSVC, exporting the API you need in your CW app. It's big - some 30 c files plus 20 h files. And it comes with make file!!! I haven't used make files for 10 years or so. I'll try to convert it into a MSVC project first and then into dll.

Thu 02 Sep | Christopher Wells | > Having been down this road, I agree with the suggestion to use a DLL, exposing either plain C or COM. Perhaps even that isn't always possible. For example, I had some code that was built using GCC to use the cygwin library: so I built it as a DLL, so that I could call it from an MSVC EXE. msvcexe.exe <-> code.dll <->cygwin1.dll The problem was that the Cygwin run-time library wasn't initialized correctly, unless the application was built using the Gnu compiler rather than MSVC (because, you know, the application has compiler-generated pre-main startup code that helps to initialize the run-time library). The only fix I was able to make was to build the code using MSVC instead.

Thu 02 Sep | VPC | > Oh, and don't forget about the allocator issues. Memory allocated in one place has to be freed there, since the two things aren't sharing allocators. Yes, that too. Over last few hours, I am more and more inclined to start converting this thing into a CodeWarrior project. It can't be that hard! It's mostly standard ANSI C except 5 or 6 sources with native Win32 code. Shuld be possible.

Thu 02 Sep | Joe | > The problem was that the Cygwin run-time library wasn't initialized correctly, unless the application was built using the Gnu compiler I don't know cygwin, but an MSVC project built into a DLL doesn't have this problem. In this situation I'd link with the static C runtime library to avoid any dependencies on MSVC runtime library DLLs. > Over last few hours, I am more and more inclined to start converting this thing into a CodeWarrior project. It's an option worth considering of course. But if the number of functions you need to call is reasonably small, and you have access to some MSVC skills, it would be very easy to go the DLL route. > Having been down this road, I agree with the suggestion to use a DLL, exposing either plain C or COM Plain C is what I was thinking of. If you want to go the COM route and don't trust the C code, you could create a DLL exposing plain C, then a wrapper (in the language of your choice) which exposes COM.

Thu 02 Sep | VPC | > and you have access to some MSVC skills... Heh! What I have is MSVC Introductory Edition that comes with Win32 books and I put it on my computer just two days ago. I hopped that maybe some of you guys have the real thing that maybe comes with full source code of the std C libraries. At least on Mac version of CodeWarrior I changed and recompiled the libraries few times over last 10 years.

Thu 02 Sep | Christopher Wells | > I found this somewhere and maybe VC uses _iob for similar stuff Yes it does.

Thu 02 Sep | VPC | >>... maybe VC uses _iob for similar stuff > Yes it does. Thanks Christopher, I was afraid of that. The library is using FILE structures and fopen () so this looks as if I'm toast. I could incorporate Microsoft's library that holds this things into first library but this could open other issues and more unresolved externals... Anyway, sometimes this childish hacking can bring you somewhere.

Thu 02 Sep | Tom_ | I suggest porting it to CodeWarrior, or porting your program to VC++. This kind of thing is tiresome, and can be time-consuming, but it's pretty straightforward.

Thu 02 Sep | mb | this is just the sort of thing DLLs can deal with. and COM at a higher level. of course, that's assuming the library doesn't actually export things like file handles as the return value from a function.

Be Safe | Thu 02 Sep | Yo

To all the Floridians that are in harms way of Frances, be safe. Leave early. Im outta here....headed to Buffalo, NY. Hope my house is here when I get back.

Thu 02 Sep | sgf | Mmm choice hurricane .. Buffalo .. hurricane .. Buffalo can't decide....

Thu 02 Sep | Yo | yeah...there isn't much choice there...but

Thu 02 Sep | GG | In Buffalo right now, no snow in the forecast until sunday. ;-)

Thu 02 Sep | Ged Byrne | I was in Orlando for Charlie. It was a little disappointing. Not one flying cow!

Thu 02 Sep | jedidjab79 | Lol .. I flew in from India just after the last one hit, was due to return this Sunday. I got my flight extended for a week yesterday :) As it turns out, there's actually a ton of work to do to fill the extra week ... but I'm curious to see what this hurricane produces. I've been through tons of snowstorms growing up but this is something different.

Thu 02 Sep | jedidjab79 | Oh - I'm in Ocala .. one of the places in Florida that always seems to escape anything bad.

Thu 02 Sep | Ewan's Dad | I'm in Tallahassee. The biggest disappointment here is the probable cancellation of the FSU-Miami football game on Monday.

Thu 02 Sep | Some don't like it hot | 'escape anything bad.' other than *being* in Florida...

Thu 02 Sep | Ewan's Dad | 'other than *being* in Florida...' Once you factor-out the hot weather, bugs, large reptiles, swamps, hurricanes, red necks and senior citizens erratically driving very large cars, it's not such a bad place.

Thu 02 Sep | Ged Byrne | Don't forget British tourists speeding up the wrong side of the 'divided highway.' Ooops.

Thu 02 Sep | sgf | And in the Orlando area, all manner of tourists seeking a goofy mouse with big ears...

Thu 02 Sep | Yo | 'Once you factor-out the....' Not to mention the stupid people that can't figure out how to vote.....

Thu 02 Sep | Hurricane Man | I'm supposed to be going to Tampa on Tuesday. Maybe not. :)

Thu 02 Sep | MT Heart | I just evacuated from the Space Coast (Melbourne area) to Winter Park. It's getting crazy out there...

Thu 02 Sep | Anomalous | Ewan's Dad, You're right about Ocala, but once you get to the coasts, Florida's really knida nice. I live in Tampa, and ther are not very many Rednecks at all, and it's not tooooo hot...

Thu 02 Sep | Ewan's Dad | anomalous, I live in Tallahassee. Tally Town is much different than much of the rest of the state (the median age is 26). I've lived in a number of cities in Florida and various places around the U.S., and, to be honest, I really like Tallahassee and most of Florida, including Ocala. But, the state is populated enough, so I try to do my part to discourage migration to Florida.

finger, the father of blog | Wed 01 Sep | Dennis Forbes

This thought (hardly a breakthrough correlation, but a bit of history for the kids) came to mind while playing a game of Doom 3. I was pondering what Carmacks perception of the release has been, and that reminded me that for years Carmack, and most other big industry names, kept up to date finger entries that were basically diaries, ruminations of programming, the industry, etc. Basically exactly the role that blog fills today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol Just a little flashback there. Sorry.

Wed 01 Sep | Angel | Dude, you spend too much time on this forum.

Wed 01 Sep | Captain Kirk | Dennis Forbes? He's harmless. Did a little too much LDS in the sixties.

Wed 01 Sep | worthless old hippie | LDS?

Wed 01 Sep | Captain Kirk | http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092007/quotes

Wed 01 Sep | dexlysia | LDS - drug of choice for dyslexics.

Thu 02 Sep | SW | Yeah. I overdosed on the Latter Day Saints the other day. A couple of 'em stopped by my house and wanted to chat about God and such. Silly kids! But more on topic. I actually think that's pretty cool. Thanks for the trivia.

Thu 02 Sep | heh-heh | Sally was the user name of our sysadmin in college. Like some pre-Bevis/Butthead scenario, we used to say heh-heh I fingered Sally...

Thu 02 Sep | Edward | When dyslexic addicts trip out, do they see Dog? Yep, it's time for bed.

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | Trivia? It's a frightening world, where 'finger' is considered Trivia. /misses GEnie

Thu 02 Sep | Michael Moser | Finger .... I guess finger got ditched, the main reason being that information would give clues for social engineering attacks. Now blogs are the same... i guess they will ditch blogs some day, due to the same reason.

Thu 02 Sep | old_timer | Finger was notoriously unsecure on some unix platforms. One of the first things I'd do when setting up a unix box was disable finger. What about 'talk' as the father of instant messaging?

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Tnanks for the Star-Trek link. I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing this scenario soon with our kids: faced with a 20th century computer] Scotty : Computer. Computer? [Bones hands him a mouse and he speaks into it] Scotty : Hello, computer. Dr. Nichols : Just use the keyboard. Scotty : Keyboard. How quaint.

Thu 02 Sep | L33t Hax0r | C0mpuS3rve 0wns joo!

Thu 02 Sep | Steve Barbour | Ahh, but you forgot the part where Scotty, despite using a computer with a voice interface all of his life is able to type approximately 100WPM using a keyboard he's never seen. Heck, if you could type that fast why would you waste time speaking to a computer anyway? Don't get me started on Scotty's knowledge of the either the keyboard commands for a CAD package he'd never seen, or his ability to code a CAD package from scratch in about 10 seconds on a computer he'd never seen. That movie burned out any trekkieness remaining in my then adolescent mind.

Thu 02 Sep | flamebait sr. | Oddly enough, the database table that stores my blog is named "finger" as a nod to history. My finger file went away when I discovered the web, back in the days of lynx and modems and before the September That Never Ended when all of you other folks found out about it.

Thu 02 Sep | Ward | >>> Don't get me started on Scotty's knowledge of the either the keyboard commands for a CAD package he'd never seen, or his ability to code a CAD package from scratch in about 10 seconds on a computer he'd never seen. >>> That movie burned out any trekkieness remaining in my then adolescent mind. What are you talking about? This is _Scotty_ you're talking about, the man who reads his engineering journals for shore leave. Of course he'd be able to use any imaginable computer, even a primitive one, and a 1980s-vintage CAD package would be so trivial compared to whatever he used to design/modify warp drives that 10 seconds would be plenty of time to master it. And typing 200wpm would be nothing compared to all the quick moves he routinely has to make to keep the engines from blowing on the Enterprise.

Thu 02 Sep | pb_canuck | How's this to tie this thread together: Did you know that James Doohan, actor who plays Scotty, had a finger blown off in WWII (at Juno Beach, I think).?

How Many Hats Do You Wear? | Wed 01 Sep | OffMyMeds

Me: Developer, DBA, care and feeding of dev boxes and production web servers, writing documentation, testing / QA, end-user support, and, recently, SQL Reporting Services simian. On one hand, the autonomy and exposure is cool. On the other hand, I want to go home occasionally.

Wed 01 Sep | AllanL5 | Ooh, you got SQL Services Reporting!? Man, that's the pits. There's NOTHING that people want more, and are more willing to change, than their reports. ESPECIALLY if they don't have to actually do it themselves. On the one hand, you've got job security. On the other hand, you never get to leave. AND it's a thankless task, no matter how well you do.

Wed 01 Sep | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | I don't wear any hats yet...but as soon as the hair starts to fall out, I'm sure I'll be looking...

Wed 01 Sep | Aussie Chick | Aren't they all the same hat? I used to work tech support, sometimes I would be doing bookkeeping, sometimes I played receptionist other times I actually got to do the tech stuff. Those are 3 different hats. DBs/developing/....all falls under the 'computer science' hat if you ask me.

Wed 01 Sep | Edward | My plumber friend says all those duties fall under the "office stuff" hat. ;-)

Wed 01 Sep | Aussie Chick | Yeh, good point. Perspective does count.

Thu 02 Sep | treefrog | Systems Engineer. Team Leader. Developer. DBA. but of course, when it comes down to it I'm just someone else's bitch for 8 hours a day.

Thu 02 Sep | BDKR | 'DBs/developing/....all falls under the 'computer science' hat if you ask me.' In theory or application? I agree with you for the most part, but once you get into it, many of these different areas can begin to diverge dramatically. Nevermind the fact that there are programmers out there that don't know UDP from TCP/IP or don't know the first thing about systems adminstration.

Thu 02 Sep | Bill Rushmore | I work at a small place so I do all that stuff and more. Sometimes developer , admin, help desk, manager, DBA, or whatever needs done. One day I even unclogged a toliet, seriously. I love the variety, it is much better than when I was pigeon holed into being just an EJB developer in a cube farm.

Thu 02 Sep | Kenny | mostly just coder. its a tight hat, but comfy. that's not to say i couldn't fit on other hats. graphic designer, project manager, dba, sys admin, web admin, qa, etc., can all fit, but i just don't like how i look in them.

Thu 02 Sep | Steve Barbour | I wear a lot of hats as well. To be frank, it isn't all the different jobs required that bug me so much as the constant context shifting. I find that the things I need to hold in my head while programming are generally much different from those that I need when writing yet another report. Maybe I'm slow, but I find it takes me a good 30 minutes to really get rolling, and usually by then someone else will be asking for something completely different. Still, I do like the breadth of experience.

Thu 02 Sep | Scott | OffMyMeds, I think we have the exact same job description.

Thu 02 Sep | devinmoore.com | art, music, computers and gym. I guess that makes 4.

Thu 02 Sep | Christopher Hawkins | All of them.

Thu 02 Sep | Me | Well boy do I feel stupid. I'm impressed that so far the consensus is that gosh yes one must do all those things. Me, I play at a lot of roles as OP but I never pretend to think that I'm ever really a sysadmin or dba or project manager or business analyst. I wonder if our receptionist opened up one of my application files and changed something, would she then be a developer? I guess so. I happen to think that a sysadmin, dba, project manager, business analyst, qa people, etc. should be FULL time jobs. I sure hope I don't see my kids pediatricain taking a scalpel to me when I go in for heart surgery. That said, a lot of companies can't afford people in all those positions. There are some people (very, very few really) who can do all those jobs, most of us here probably could. But when you have to do all of them in 8 hours, some role will get short changed. Also, even for those geniuses who can do all that, they cannot keep abreast of changes going on in each discipline. So I'm just a developer. Yeah, I do sysadmin, I do QA and requirements and dba and whatever else (and this because we have people who can hardly do the one job they were hired for) but I realize I'm just a developer and it would be better if we had people dedicated to those roles.

Thu 02 Sep | Erik | What I do: 1) Buildmeister 2) All of QA (I'm a department of 1!) 3) Creating development tools These are all fulltime jobs for sure. Then again, the company I work for is very small so this is to be expected.

Thu 02 Sep | no name | It's summer here and I don't wear any hats right now :) product planner proposal writer spec writer coder release manager help writer bug tracker :) project manager now imagine the product i work on :)

Thu 02 Sep | OffMyMeds | Me, you're exactly right, and that was the source of my frustration that spurred this topic. We are a small company who can't afford a whole person for each of those full time jobs, and something always gets neglected. See my post in the 'Best Disasters' thread -- I was doing end-user support and writing and UPDATE statement against production data at the same time. I probably don't need to tell anyone what happened. I said I wear the hat of a DBA; I never said it was actually my hat ;-)

Thu 02 Sep | Kenny | ++now imagine the product i work on :) FogBUGZ? (do i win a prize?)

Thu 02 Sep | Andrew Burton | No hats, but i do have a nice utility belt. ;) um... Q&A, IT, developer, Helpdesk, and DBA.

Thu 02 Sep | OffMyMeds | I should clarify when I refer to frustration, I mean specifically the frustration that certain things get neglected, that I don't have the bandwidth to be a pro at all those things. I love the fact that I get to do them all, and at the end of the day wouldn't have it any other way. I would imagine that goes for most everybody here, and that's why we do what we do.

Code for Windows crash reports? | Wed 01 Sep | Roose

We use a ton of custom internal tools for artists at our company (a game company). These tools are often unstable and crash. I want to be able to get crash reports in the field -- basically I guess the exception handler should send e-mails to some address with info on what happened. I would like to also get the PC name and user name. In additional, it is feasible for us to compile debug info (symbols) into the tools. It would be even better if the exception handler could include a stack trace with symbols. Is there any code out there that does this? All tools are developed and run under Windows. I basically want the microsoft crash dialog, but in a form customized to our needs and send to us and not them, obviously.

Wed 01 Sep | Roose | I found a couple at the Code Project website, but one of them doesn't seem to work when I run the .exe tests. Anyone have any direct experiences or recommendations in this area?

Wed 01 Sep | . | Your should hire decent Windows software engineers so that your applications don't crash in the first place.

Wed 01 Sep | Tom_ | COMPUTERNAME and USERNAME environment variables will tell you the username and computer name. http://win32.mvps.org/ looks to have exactly what you need in the stack walking department. (Also handy for operator new.)

Wed 01 Sep | Dan Maas | Check Virutal Dub (www.virtualdub.org). It has crash reporting and I think it even has a disassembler. It's open source.

Wed 01 Sep | Bob's your uncle | You're a 'game compnay' but you can't write programs that don't crash a lot? Wassup Wit Dat??

Wed 01 Sep | kc | Normally game code is written and a *MUCH* lower level than your run of the mill ASP, so crashes don't always just generate nice little error codes. Some just die.

Wed 01 Sep | . | > Normally game code is written and a *MUCH* lower level than your run of the mill ASP, so crashes don't always just generate nice little error codes. That's not an excuse. I write games. There is no excuse for either games or, in this case, artists' tools, crashing. No excuse. Also, artists' tools are much the same as general applications anyway.

Wed 01 Sep | PopCulture | I was just talking to a brilliant sysadmin about this the other day... the following link is to a MS product that hijacks the MS error reporting messages, send it to a secure machine on your network. And it does much more! http://www.microsoft.com/resources/satech/cer/

Wed 01 Sep | Game Programmer Bob | 'There is no excuse for either games or, in this case, artists' tools, crashing.' Artists tools crash all the time, what studio are you from?? Not only do the new guys/interns always end up doing tools, but nobody has the budget to spend money to QA a tool. And who's going to train the testers? It's a lot easier just to have them come get you if something like that happens (which they probably do, anyway). A stack dump or even the line of code it crashes on has rarely been helpful to me, in my experience. Usually you want to be able to quiz them on what they were doing and how you can recreate it. I think email type crash reports are only useful for a public beta. If you only have 10 or 20 users, don't bother.

Wed 01 Sep | Roose | Bob, these guys probably have probably never worked on a team of 60 or 100 people, shipping console games that sells millions of copies. Not even going to bother with these jokers -- go get a job in the game industry (no not writing code in your bedroom) and then talk. As for your comment about it not being that useful, the problem is supporting all the artists is more than a full time job. They don't always tell you when things crash, they come up with weird workarounds that may bite you later. I want to see what is crashing and how often, and focus on the most common ones. Often the tools crash on out of date source files (e.g. a format change), and the new guys can't figure out why while the old guys can recognize what data was bad or what they need to do a get on... much better to replace these crashes with some error messages. Thanks to all who provided links and info.

Wed 01 Sep | mb | and don't forget drwtsn32

Wed 01 Sep | GinG | A very old article on MSDN explains how to do this in detail: http://www.microsoft.com/library/images/msdn/library/periodic/periodic/msj/hood897.htm You may find a better version of this article with all related code sample in your MSDN Library DVD.

Thu 02 Sep | John C | I wrote a windows error reporting clone for some software a year or two ago and the best source of info was this article: http://www.codeproject.com/debug/postmortemdebug_standalone1.asp Basically, you override the default unhandled exception handler and get that to create a minidump file when a crash occurs. You then fire off a separete exe that packages that up and ftps it back to base (or emails it). Back at base you load the minidump under VS.NET 2003, check the build number of the exe that crashed, locate the debug symbols you build and stored for that exe (you did keep a copy didn't you?), and hey presto, you get a stack trace. Just read the article, or if you'd prefer to look at a working example, drop me an email and I'll send you the source.

Thu 02 Sep | John C | Oh, it's worth noting that you don't need to build your application with VS.NET 2003, you can build it with VC6. It's just that you need VS.NET 2003 to read the minidump file (although there are alternatives).

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | Microsoft already wrote most of the code for you (at least in XP and 2003). Look at the Windows Error Reporting stuff (start from https://winqual.microsoft.com/info/default.aspx ). The service is free, but you do need a Verisign Digital ID. See also http://weblogs.asp.net/chris_pratley/archive/2004/02/04/67276.aspx for some good info/pointers .

Thu 02 Sep | Peter | >That's not an excuse. I write games. There is no excuse for either games or, in this case, artists' tools, crashing. No excuse. If Everquest can get away with it, and they have some half million monthly subscribers, I suppose anyone else can get away with it. But then, the number of crashes went up about tenfold when they made everyone upgrade to DirectX 9. I don't know what else changed at that time, but that is when it went from occasional annoyance to crashing several times per playing session.

Usenet Web sites | Wed 01 Sep | Otra vez

Anyone know of any Web sites that allow you to post without displaying your real email address? Id like to avoid my email address being harvested by spammers.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | uhhh.. could you be slightly more vague?

Wed 01 Sep | Otra vez | Sorry, my bad, muppet, it's been a long week. Here's what I meant to write: Anyone know of any Web sites that allow you to post to a Usenet newsgroup without displaying your real email address? I'd like to avoid my email address being harvested by spammers.

Wed 01 Sep | GD | If you're posting to a web site, then the web site asks you to give it the email address, no? what's stopping you from writing a fake email address?

Wed 01 Sep | Otra vez | GD, what I'm looking for is a Web site that allows me to post to a Usenet newsgroup without displaying my real email address. There used to be such a Web site where you had to enter your real email address to use it but you could specify an alternate email address and that alternate was what ended up on your newsgroup message.

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. O | Make a temporary email somewhere like hotmail or mailinator, then when it says "what is your REAL email address", lie and give them the temporary one.

Wed 01 Sep | Tom_ | Why not use a usenet reading program? Every single one ever written will let you do exactly this.

Wed 01 Sep | Otra vez | Thanks Tom. Any recommendations?

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | Outlook Express.

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. Hat | Outlook Express

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. Hat | SECOND!

Wed 01 Sep | Bob's your uncle | Outlook Express is the suck. Use Forte Agent.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | I've used a hojillion Usenet clients. Despite being a Microsoft product, OE is probably the best one I've used (though it lacks some features I'd like to see implemented well).

Wed 01 Sep | _ | Try groups.google.com. From the Posting FAQ: '4. I don't want my email address to be published on the web, but I still want to post. How can I hide my email address? We require a valid email address to post to Google Groups. If you don't want your normal email address to be listed, we encourage you to sign up for an anonymous account with one of the many free email services available on the web and to post from that account.'

Wed 01 Sep | OffMyMeds | Don't use the groups myself, but Mozilla Thuna'bird is a newsgroup client. It positively rocks as a POP/IMAP client, so maybe it would be good as a news client too.

Thu 02 Sep | AMS | Thunderbird is a good news reader -- basically the same thing that was in Netscape Communicator 3 (but that was good too -- usenet has been around a long time).

Thu 02 Sep | www.marktaw.com | I like XNews. I found it easier to use than Forte, maybe just because I found it first. Most ISP's supply access to usenet, you will need access in order to post.

Thu 02 Sep | no name | slrn

Thu 02 Sep | Throwaway | Microsoft Communities? http://communities2.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx

Thu 02 Sep | Egor | Another option is to use me@privacy.net as your email. It's an official, technically valid address for those not wishing to reveal their idenity.

Thu 02 Sep | ronk! | Mailinator.com. Its designed precisely for just such things.

Thu 02 Sep | Tom_ | Outlook Express is OK. Make sure you mess about with the maintenance options if you're into offline reading, though, lest it delete unread posts after 7 days. Microplanet Gravity is also OK. It used to be commercial, but is now free, and supported on and off by one of the original programmers (or something like that). Agent is OK too, but seems mainly designed for binary newsgroups. List of newsreaders here, along with some indication of how well they fare in the netiquette stakes: http://www.xs4all.nl/~js/gnksa/gnksa-evaluations.html

Baby coming, Changing cars... | Wed 01 Sep | Hockey Player

My wife and I have a baby coming, so Im considering changing cars. I currently have a 95 Miata, which I love, but it cant hold all 3 of us, and there isnt a deactivation switch for the passenger airbag, so Im considering selling it. Anyone have good suggestions for a replacement? I enjoy having a convertible, but there arent that many convertibles that also work as family cars. My dad is selling a Contour SVT, which is a high performance version of the Ford Contour. It is in great shape, fast, seats 5 and is decent looking, but it doesnt excite me. Im tempted to buy a 3-series BMW, but it will be close to $25k for a recent convertible in nice shape. Anyone have good experiences with a convertible that seats 4? Im also considering getting a newer Miata that has a switch for the passenger airbag, but that doesnt solve the 2 seats issue. If I dont get a convertible, Ill be looking at the 3-series BMWs, the Audi A4, and maybe the Subaru WRX. Suggestions on other cars to consider?

Wed 01 Sep | AllanL5 | The classic answer: Minivan? The Toyota Sienna is very nice...

Wed 01 Sep | Almost Anonymous | As parent, I highly recommend getting 4-doors. Of course, I suppose if you have a convertable you could just open the roof -- it's probably not ideal. You want to have lots of room to squeeze the kid in and out. And you want to have a minimal of fuss.

Wed 01 Sep | Sassy | 5-Series Bimmer.

Wed 01 Sep | genius | http://www.hubcapcafe.com/ocs/pages01/buic4105.htm

Wed 01 Sep | Blah | Why not keep the Miata for your own commuting and fun? Than buy something that is really suitable for the whole family. I have been trying to find a vehicle that will be fun to drive and at the same time practical - without much success. RX-8 is a sports car that has (almost) 4 doors however I would be really concerned about the posibility of flooding the engine and getting stuck somewhere with a small baby

Wed 01 Sep | TheGeezer | If it were me, I'd go for something German. Either an A4 Avant Quattro or a 3 Series Touring would fit the bill. Ask yourself whether you really want a 2 door car for transporting your newborn child around? I suspect the answer would be no. :-)

Wed 01 Sep | Caveat | If your budget accomodates a 3 series Bimmer, I'd check out the Saab 9-3 and new Volvo S40. Mmmm, meatballs.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Medium size SUV's are what you want. You need four doors so you can easily place your child in his seat in the back. Also, SUV's are big enough to change your child's nappy and things like that in the back.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | 'I'm tempted to buy a 3-series BMW' If you're over 6' 1' then be prepared to eat your knees. My wife has a 325i and every time I drive it it's like I'm in a go-kart it's so tight in there (I'm 6' 4').

Wed 01 Sep | YouWillEventuallyAnyway | +1 for get over it and buy a minivan.

Wed 01 Sep | Gerald | I traded in my 2000 Miata two months ago for a Saturn VUE for similar reasons, been happy with it so far though I miss having a fun to drive car from time to time.

Wed 01 Sep | trollop | You wouldn't believe the amount of paraphenalia that travels with a baby. You'll curse a 3 door body inside 3 months or do yourself a hernia. If you're not ready to be a Mr Suburban, have a look at a Merc or BMW station wagon, or a Subaru, something with a rear hatch yet accessable from the inside. Fetching needed items from the boot (trunk?) at night in the rain beside the road is no fun. Then there's the second child to consider ... life becomes so much simpler with a van. Keep the current car to remind you of the day the world changed forever (and the very best of luck).

Wed 01 Sep | Aaron F Stanton | I'm thinking a minivan is the next vehicle of choice for us. No SUVs allowed here.

Wed 01 Sep | Sid | How about an Audi S4? Four doors and fast. Don't give in and get a minivan!

Wed 01 Sep | kc | One of my coworkers has a wife with a baby on the way (T-6 months) and has a 3 series BMW which is a 4-door. He's seriously considering going for the 5 series for the extra space.

Wed 01 Sep | Budi Saputro | Toyota KIJANG !!! the best car in the world.

Wed 01 Sep | lrig | Minivan. You can speed and smoke weed, and the cops won't ever notice you.

Thu 02 Sep | cuzi | I suggest GAZ or ZIL (made in USSR) ;)

Thu 02 Sep | <sigh/> | SAAB 9-3 Ragtop. Swedish bathtub will keep you safe AND let you drop the top. Highly recommended. Don't know how far back you want to go, but if you stay away from about 94-97/8 model years and you'll be happy.

Thu 02 Sep | Yo | 5-series wagon.... or a Yukon

Thu 02 Sep | Yoey | Almost Anonymous says it best: 4 doors. It is a royal pain in the ass to have a 2-door vehicle when putting in and taking out your child from his car seat in the back.

Thu 02 Sep | Yo | especially when they outgrow the seats that snap into the holder in the car.....

Thu 02 Sep | Roysker | Get an accord. The trunk is cavernous, you can't beat the reliability, and it gets good mileage. As for keeping the miata for yourself--don't forget that your main vehicle will occasionally need service. Consider that you'll want both vehicles to be able to transport the bambino in a pinch. And congrats!

Thu 02 Sep | muppet | Get a Volkswagen Jetta or Passat. The trunk is cavernous, you can't beat the reliability, and they get good mileage. As for keeping the miata for yourself--don't forget that your main vehicle will occasionally need service. Consider that trying to maintain two vehicles needlessly will probably drive you bankrupt, and dealers have loaner cars for a reason. And congrats!

Thu 02 Sep | Bill Rushmore | I have four small kids and been through a couple of cars. Your car choices are all good for one or two kids. Volvo's are also very well suited for kid mobiles, I would vote for a V70. Look for cars that have the ISOFIX and will make your life easier with putting in car seats.

Thu 02 Sep | Flasher T | V70 T5 or R. Fast, safe, and absolutely bloody enormous. Muppet, a Miata isn't really a Ferrari - if he only does a few thousand miles a year in it, it shouldn't cost much money to maintain. Hey, here's an idea: Sell the Miata, buy a big car and a Lotus 7 replica for the weekend.

Thu 02 Sep | Hockey Player | Thanks for all the suggestions. We live in Denver, and go to the mountains frequently. My wife has a CRV, which is our mountain car and will be our usual family car. I'm inclined to agree with the 4 door advice, my current theory is that anything with more than 2 seats should have more than 2 doors. I commute to my current client on bike, so the Miata is current getting only 4k/year (I drive it to hockey once a week and some summer time trips to the mountains). As for fitting into a 325, I'm short enough to fit in the Miata comfortably, so I'd have no problem with the BMW (except for the price tag). Flasher, I'd love to have a Lotus 7, but I don't want 3 cars until I can add another bay to my garage. You're right about not spending much on the Miata, I've had it 5 years and 35k miles with zero trouble! I think I'm going to buy the Contour SVT from my dad and sell the Miata. The Contour is in great shape, has 4 doors, and handles well enough to enjoy the mountain roads or take it autocrossing. If I'm dying for a convertible in a year or two, I'll buy something else then. Anyone interested in a '95 Miata in Colorado? Black paint, top and interior, and snow tires on separate rims. A great car to enjoy Colorado's 300 days of sunshine.

Thu 02 Sep | trollop | convert it to RHD, ship it out and I'll consider it - my kids have grown up and I've always wanted a Maz.

Thu 02 Sep | Joe Autoworker | Buy American!

Thu 02 Sep | Data Miner | Dodge Magnum

Thu 02 Sep | Zekaric | pt cruiser is now in a convertable

Evaluation support emails | Wed 01 Sep | Chas Emerick ( http://www.snowtide.com )

The first people to come into contact with our product are likely developers, who are typically very touchy folk (I should know, as I am one). Ergo, we dont want to piss them off. In an effort to accomplish this, we dont require people to give us 14 pages of personal demographic information before they download a trial copy of our product. However, we do give everyone the **option** of providing their email address when they download PDFTextStream if they want to be contacted by our support people in the course of their evaluation period. We figured we could get by for a few months sending these emails out manually, but weve had such a response that doing so is just counterproductive. So, weve got a script ready to go into cron that will send out messages that can be scheduled to go out to people who have downloaded our product X days ago. Were thinking of the following schedule: 7 days after the download: send a nice, friendly hows-it-going sort of email, reminding the recipient where they can find support info and documentation, and maybe include a short, introductory usage example. Nothing heavy-handed, as most people havent even bothered to look at what theyve downloaded yet. 21 days after the download: send a more serious email, asking if any questions or problems exist, and include a more advanced example that would make the advantages of PDFTextStream more concrete. Make some mention of any promotions were running at the time, and again inquire after any questions or problems that might have cropped up. 45 days after the download: send a pure sales-driven email that talks about the products advantages and features compared to its competition, mention of benchmark data that shows our product in a very favorable light, and include some top-level information about purchasing that the recipient could either use or forward on to the purchasing agent they might need to work through. That would be it -- 3 emails seems to be a reasonable place to stop. Any thoughts on this overall strategy, and/or the content, timing, or intentions of the three messages? Does anyone have direct experience with such followup support/sales email campaigns?

Wed 01 Sep | no name | 'Nothing heavy-handed, as most people haven't even bothered to look at what they've downloaded yet' Not sure about other folks but generally I check something out as soon as I'm done downloading it. If you find that a lot of other people do this as well, you might want to send an email with basics/tutorials as soon as they do the download.

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. O | As long as you tell them their email will be used for sales purposes, it should be fine, but they need to have an opt-out or they'll just give you a fake or temporary one (which will probably happen anyway).

Wed 01 Sep | Ewan's Dad | From a prospective customer's standpoint, I think three email messages is probably too much, particularly if any of the messages are marketing oriented. If I've downloaded your software, then I know how to get to your site and that's where I'd expect to get more product information. If I were you, I think I'd stop after one or two messages. I've received messages from companies promoting their products (because I'd downloaded a demo) and I almost always delete the messages without completely reading the message. I'm more interested in trying the software than I am in reading stuff the company sends me. If I need more info, I'll go to the company's site or I'll email the company.

Wed 01 Sep | Chas Emerick ( http://www.snowtide.com ) | 'Not sure about other folks but generally I check something out as soon as I'm done downloading it.' I seem to remember a study done by some marketing group that over half of the people that download a piece of software end up never trying it. I can somewhat relate, as I will occasionally come across something interesting, 'download it for later', and end up forgetting about it completely until 3 months later when I finally get around to cleaning out my downloads folder. Mr. O: I forgot to mention that an opt-out is included with each email. It goes without saying these days, I guess.

Wed 01 Sep | . | Truespace has, or had, a free older version of their modeling tool that you could download and play with. Since downloading this I've gotten probably a dozen emails from them pimping the latest version, basically whoring the price down more and more. It's actually rather funny, and reminds me of x10. _ONE_DAY_ONLY_SUPER_MEGA_SALE_ACT_QUICK!_

Wed 01 Sep | Edward | Of the group that never did try the product, how many would have tried it, if gently reminded via email? Of the group that did try it, how many were put off by the emails, and decided not to buy? I have no idea what the answers are, but I suspect that one at 3-7 days might be enough, and wouldn't put off potential buyers too much. One extra comment: be sure to put in a direct link to the download page in the email. Often I download stuff and immediately forget where I put the darn thing. Of course, this link would bypass any 'free registration' hurdles that I've already had to go through for the original download.

Wed 01 Sep | Ricardo Antunes da Costa | I think it should be no more than 2 e-mails: 1st just after the download, with tips and link for basic documentation (maybe a 'Getting Started'). 2nd a few days before the end of the trial period, to make a little of marketing and maybe showing some special offers.

Wed 01 Sep | Fred | >> Ergo, we don't want to piss them off. Then, personnaly, here's what pisses me off when I'm checking out a product I don't know anything about: - No two-line explanation as to what each product does in the Products section. I don't have time to go through marketingspeak to figure it out. Just tell me what it does, and what benefit it brings me. If it looks interesting, I'll read the user's guide - Don't ask me to provide an e-mail and demographics: Just a link to the EXE. I know where to find you if I need more help (and send the check :-)) - Unless it's an expensive product, subject to changes depending on who's buying it, make the Prices list obvious so I don't waste time evaluating a product that is way out of my budget - Provide a good FAQ section, along with a no-brainer forum like JoS. I'm sick and tired of PhpBB

Wed 01 Sep | Fred | Oh, and I forgot: Very few sites display a feature sheet, to make it a snap to know what I'm missing if I'm buying the entry-level or mid-level version instead of the Enterprise version. Don't make me think :-)

Wed 01 Sep | sucker | PDFTextStream PDFTextStream PDFTextStream PDFTextStream PDFTextStream PDFTextStream WOWIE!!! I'll buy one of those!!!

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. ISV | 'Don't ask me to provide an e-mail and demographics: Just a link to the EXE. I know where to find you if I need more help (and send the check :-))' GIMME GIMME GIMME, FOR FREE... then COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN! ISV's love you, Fred!

Thu 02 Sep | Steven | I would say the two e-mails sound good. If they haven't bought it after 45 days then they're either not going to buy it or they're not ready to buy it. You should have the marketing info on your web site and perhaps have a link to that in your two e-mails (it helps when the tech guys try and sell it to managers etc.) Whenever I'm trying to figure out whether I'm going to buy tool xyz I am most worried about a) Does it do what I want, b) Can I make it do what I want without too much difficulty. If you have easy tutorials, maybe sample source code (if appropriate) then that will help. I would make the first e-mail arrive sooner than 7 days though. Also consider making your documentation in HTML format as well as PDF.

Thu 02 Sep | Steve Barbour | I agree with Paul, but I would temper it by adding an interstitial page asking the person to register, but make it all optional. And send an email in about a weeks time, in text format. Few things are worse than having to dig through all the pretty graphics to try and figure out what the email actually says. Plus, quite a few spam filters give a higher spamminess weight to html emails.

Testing Taking Too Long | Wed 01 Sep | Stimulate

It takes a long time to test the systems that I work on. (I work in ASIC hardware design, which is basically software development.) Running a modular regression batch takes about one day, and running a system level regression batch takes about a week. (Its run over a distributed simulation farm.) As a result, its impossible to fully test any changes before commiting them to source control. Given this kind of restriction, how would you deal with testing? Over here, its just a big chaos. Mostly people just release code without testing at all. Any tips/hints?

Wed 01 Sep | son of parnas | It's really the same issue as system testing large software projects. * test components in isolation as much as possible * see if you can speed up the testing by having a larger farm, bigger iron, or faster tests * determine if certain tests can be dropped for certain types of changes * can the asic be generated in a way that makes it simpler to test?

Wed 01 Sep | Mark Bessey | The ASIC company I worked for at one time used a variety of different techniques, including leasing a really expensive hardware simulator (some kinda FPGA-based monster, I gather). If your chip is strictly digital components, you might be able to use something similar. Your EDA tools vendor can probably put you in contact with a simulator supplier. On the not-spending-a-million-dollars-a-month front, your existing simulator presumably has hooks to call out to native code routines. You could make a test harness that replaces the parts of the chip that aren't being changed/tested with fast libraries that do the minimum to test the changed functional block. You don't need to simulate the whole thing if parts of it aren't changing. Other than that, it's just good software engineering principles. 1. Don't try to be too clever at first. Make each functional block work correctly, then optimize. 2. Don't change stuff you don't understand. 3. Code review is your friend. At least two people should look at any changes before they're committed to source control. 4. Avoid unnecessary coupling between blocks. Of course, you're designing hardware, so this might always be very practical advice. One thing I've heard of, but haven't seen used, is translating the HDL to C code and compiling/running it on the development workstations, or vice versa. Google 'HDL to C translation' for some starters.

Wed 01 Sep | Dino | Milestones every 10 days or so ?

Thu 02 Sep | Peter Ibbotson | Hmm sounds about right. System level testing on ASIC designs has always taken all day. When I last did any ASIC design the toggle coverage and stuck at fault modelling took all day to run even on the monster simulator that Toshiba had attached to their mainframe.

Web based bug trackers | Wed 01 Sep | snotnose

We have to use Test Track Pro here at work for our bug, errr, defect management. IMHO, this thing sux some major ass. The database and other backend parts seem fine, the user interface... Yeeech. It sucks in so many ways I dont even want to get started. To be honest, the only thing they did right was to keep the little box with the x in it in the upper right corner to close the window. So, is it me or does TTPro truly suck? And is Fogbugz any better, seeing how its also web based?

Wed 01 Sep | OffMyMeds | You can try FogBUGZ free for, like, thirty days. I thought the UI on it was excellent, and the features, workflow and robustness were all great. We ended up going with Flyspray for other reasons though -- mainly simplicity, decent UI and the fact that it's free.

Wed 01 Sep | Sassy | We use Rational ClearQuest, thing looks like it was put together by blind infant gorillas.

Wed 01 Sep | Bonzo | >We use Rational ClearQuest, thing looks like it was put together by blind infant gorillas. That's offensive. We are *fully grown* blind gorillas.

Wed 01 Sep | Frank "Grimey" Grimes | We never upgraded to TTPro, we're still using the fat client version 2.0. If the UI of this version is any indication of your version, then I sympathize. It truly suffers from having too many fields and features, and lacks the ability to clean those things up. We stick with it because we haven't had a lull in development that would allow us the time to do a transition. Plus the cost of a new system hasn't justified it yet. As for free stuff, we've peeked at Bugzilla, but that previous poster mentioned flyspray, which I haven't heard of before. To convince the boss though, we'll have to reassure him the system is stable, i.e. not submitting bugs for the bug tracking software. Talk about dogfooding.

Wed 01 Sep | fw | Bugzilla, or a more lightweight solution would be bugin (both are GPL).

Wed 01 Sep | kc | Mantis.

Wed 01 Sep | GenX'er | In the past I have used (been forced into using): Test Track Mercury Test Director Peoplesoft QMS Test Director was pretty decent. Test Track was OK. Peoplesoft was a Piece O' Trash. (Test Track is light years ahead) I can't understand why Oracle would want this crap.....

Wed 01 Sep | Kappy | We have used FogBugz for several years now and it works great. It is simple and well thought-out. I know this looks likes a shameless suck-up, but I really do like it. The thing that I like about FogBugz is that it doesn't get in the way of what you are trying to do. That is, there aren't 20 irrelevant fields to fill in just to work on a bug. I find that our developers and techs use it a lot because it is so fast and easy to enter something. If it was much more complex, I don't know if we would get as much use out of it.

Wed 01 Sep | TheGeezer | +1 for FlySpray. The good thing about it is that it's easy to use and free.

Wed 01 Sep | Chris Winters | JIRA (http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/) is quite sharp, comes with source, and the company has a great policy of providing the software to open-source projects for free so they can gain some exposure. Good stuff.

Wed 01 Sep | :) | Does every Java-based program *have* to start with a 'J'? At least it tells you what software to avoid.

Wed 01 Sep | saberworks | We also use Mantis. It's not perfect, but the interface is okay, it's free, it's easy to install and easy to use.

Thu 02 Sep | jedidjab79 | My vote goes for Mantis as well

Thu 02 Sep | Christopher Wells | > So, is it me or does TTPro truly suck? And is Fogbugz any better, seeing how it's also web based? I haven't used TTPro. FogBUGZ is good enough for me. As well as its having a free trial, there are screenshots of it at http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/HowFogBUGZWorks.html

Thu 02 Sep | Bill Brown | I had my first experience with ClearQuest a few weeks ago. It is now my reigning champion example of software gone wrong. It uses Java applets for every form field instead of the HTML elements. It's frame-based and the menu gets replaced when you go into an editing section with the action buttons for that editing content located in a different frame. Worst. App. Ever. (and we also use the help desk system Magic)

Thu 02 Sep | Me | I went to the Jira site. It looked good. I was curious about the price. I have to register to enter their software center where maybe I have to allow a salesman to call me ... who knows. Is this stupid or what am I missing here? About Mantis. Just don't ever try and change anything. I found the thing a MESS ... but it's usable as it.

Why buy tech support with software? | Wed 01 Sep | Christopher Wells

Im thinking of buying a license for Borlands Together for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, because its the only product Ive found (barring Rationals XDE, which I havent evaluated) that can reverse-engineer Sequence Diagrams from C# source code. The cost of a license is $200. With that, you can also buy a $1000 Quality Assurance license, that entitles you to 3 incidents and one years-worth of upgrades. During my 15 day free trial evaluation, I discovered 7 missing features thatd like, and 5 outright bugs, that I posted to the borland.public.together.edition.msvisualstudio forum. My question is whether to buy (or why it would be worth buying) the relatively expensive Quality Assurance license. $1000 would seem to me worthwhile, if and only if: * An incident entailed Borlands actually fixing for you any bug that you report * And/or, Borland will release more than 5 new releases in the coming year, each at $200, all of which I want * And/or, one new release within the year, if the price of this next release increases to over $1000. Does anyone here have any insight into Borlands support practices, or know where (apart from here) I can ask this question? Im also concerned that if I found 5 bugs in a 15-day evaluation (4 of which werent previously reported on the newsgroup), then having only 3 incidents may not be enough. Is Borland interested in having bugs in their product reported to them, no matter that the source of the bug report? And/or do they have they have a policy like Microsofts, that an incident which is caused by a bug in the product and not caused by user error counts as a free incident?

Wed 01 Sep | devinmoore.com | i'd buy it if I ran into a problem that was going to cost me more than $1000 to figure out -- do you have the option of not buying it until you run into something, or is it "up front or never"?

Wed 01 Sep | Herbert Sitz | Something is screwy in that Software Assurance pricing. Borland typically offers 1-year of SA for 20 to 25% of the cost of the full license. For some reason Together for VS.NET is only $200 while all the other versions of Together are $2k to $6k. I think the SA price must be meant for the more expensive versions, not for the VS.NET version. Not sure that's the error, but I'm sure they aren't intending to charge $1k for 1-year of Software Assurance for a $200 product.

Wed 01 Sep | Jan Derk | I would be positively surprised if official Borland incidence reports get your bugs fixed. Borland recent track record for fixing bugs is rather poor. Just browse their newsgroups to see plenty of frustrated users. Borland's management seems to think that adding more fluff with enterprise type acronyms brings home more money than caring for their core products. They could well be right.

Wed 01 Sep | www.marktaw.com | Why buy 'extended warranties' with your washing machine? Because on the off chance that you'll actually need it, the department store makes out like a bandit. Thousands of people spend $50 each and only 0.000003% of them ever need any warranty work done.

Wed 01 Sep | xyzzy | 'Up front or never?' If so then in this case it seems to me that if later you decide you needed the $1000 support you could buy another license for $200, and on that one spend the additional $1000. (Wastes $200 later rather than $1000 now).

Wed 01 Sep | Bob's your uncle | Here's the code that comes to mind: if (you pay $1000 for Software Assurance License) then you == moron endif

Thu 02 Sep | AbFab | I think the code should be if (you == moron) { (yourBankAccount = yourBankAccount - 1000) }

CEOs being paid to outsource | Wed 01 Sep | T. Norman

This does a lot to explain why companies are in a mad rush to outsource, even when it doesnt really save anything for the company: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=6108458 Chief executives at U.S. companies that shipped jobs overseas won a 46 percent pay hike last year, more than five times the average CEO raise, while ordinary workers paychecks barely budged, a study showed on Tuesday. Seems like the real way to save would be to cut the CEOs salaries -- looks like all the savings from outsourcing are going into the CEOs pockets. The study noted the pay for CEOs who outsource was about 3,300 times the pay of an Indian call center employee or 1,300 times that of an average Indian computer programer.

Wed 01 Sep | ceo | It still saves a lot of money for the company.

Wed 01 Sep | Nemesis | '... a study showed ...' Just goes to show you can use statistics to prove whatever you want.

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | Err.. are you trying to say it's unlikely that an average CEO makes 1,300 times what an Indian computer programmer does? I have no trouble at all believing that.

Wed 01 Sep | Paulo Caetano | 'Just goes to show you can use statistics to prove whatever you want.' While I don't disagree with your assertion, it does seem that they proved what they set out to prove. Perhaps you can show data (or maybe even another study) to disprove them, i.e., showing that companies that outsourced gave a their CEO a below-than-average 'raise'.

Wed 01 Sep | kc | The company will end up getting theirs when they realize that they've shipped all of their IP overseas to people beyond their legal influence who are guaranteed to have zero loyalty or interest in the company or the legal/political/etc system in which it is based. For companies who sell closed source products, how easy in the long term is it from them to convince their shareholders that although the hosting nation has ZERO respect for IP laws, their investment will be protected. I work with an Indian programmer (in the US) who was told to investigate building Gantt charts online. His response.... he ripped a copy of MS Project and planned to post it to our website for any and all of our users to download. I stopped him, but he didn't see anything wrong with this. MS Project 2003 ($600) * 80 users...

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | Many healthcare companies who sent private personal data overseas are already getting theirs in the form of civil suits.

Wed 01 Sep | a cynic writes... | Muppet - funnily enough sending personal data overseas without adequate safeguards is illegal here...and the US counts as somewhere without adequate safeguards. Ah the joys of the global village...where one person's amusing nickname is another's regional insult.

Wed 01 Sep | a cynic writes... | ...and since that wasn't so much a pop at you as a general observation: in one eastern european country my organisation's acronym is a minor swear word - as we found out when one of our members ran into porn on google.

Wed 01 Sep | Pongo | And, the Chinese guy named Fuk Yu was in for some real surprises when he arrived in the U.S.

Wed 01 Sep | Indian | KC, There are a lot of hackers/crackers in the US. Does that mean all US programmers are hackers ? Don't judge every Indian like your idiot Indian co-worker.

Wed 01 Sep | example | >>'Chief executives at U.S. companies that shipped jobs overseas won a 46 percent pay hike last year, more than five times the average CEO raise, while ordinary workers' paychecks barely budged, a study showed on Tuesday.'<< Most likely this is because they reduced costs significantly by outsourcing. A separate issue, like KC says, would be the lack of understanding on the board's part of the fact they just gave away their IP by sending significant work outside the company.

Wed 01 Sep | Pongo | 'Don't judge every Indian like your idiot Indian co-worker.' Several years ago, I read an article about Vietnamese workers in Silicon Valley during the 1980s, the first wave of Vietnamese workers were very good. They were smart, had a great work ethic, and they were easy to assimilate into workplace. Because of the success of the 'first wave' of Vietnamese immigrants, companies began hiring more Vietnamese workers. As it turned out, the first wave of workers was from the upper echelon of Vietnamese society; they were well educated and motivated. However, after that first wave, it was discovered that the quality of the Vietnamese workers was much lower than expected because many of the second wave (and beyond) were poorly educated. I wonder if history won't repeat itself.

Wed 01 Sep | Fred | >>For companies who sell closed source products, how easy in the long term is it from them to convince their shareholders that although the hosting nation has ZERO respect for IP laws, their investment will be protected. Long term? Who cares about this when you only keep shares for a few months anyway? :-)

Wed 01 Sep | Noname | 'Most likely this is because they reduced costs significantly by outsourcing.' Or led the board to *believe* that they reduced costs significantly. As others have pointed out before, it is quite easy to spin the figures to make outsourcing look like it saved money. Just compare the wages, leave out the hidden costs, and pretend that a project would have required the same amount of time and people and produced the same quality (or lack thereof) if it were done locally.

Wed 01 Sep | one programmer's opinion | Does anyone really need to read this article? I thought it was common knowledge that most senior managers working for large corporations have been able to boost their pay via downsizing and outsourcing. Back in the early 1990s, a lot of software projects that I worked on resulted in significant job losses. In fact, that was the whole point of many of those projects. I think it is a safe bet to say that whomever sponsored many of those projects did so because they were attempting to make themselves look good to their boss and of course become a little richer. CxOs living and working in the United States are grossly overpaid. This is a fact and not just my opinion. In many other industralized countries such as Japan the average CEO salary is only 10 times the amount of the average worker. In the U.S. it is something like 500 times larger.

Wed 01 Sep | kc | When I asked my Indian coworker 'why in the world would you think you can just distribute MS Project online?'. His response was 'well, why wouldn't I? I did it at my last company.' Most of his prior career was in India. Even if he is the exception - which I think it highly unlikely - companies who depend on closed source software take an inherently HUGE risk whenever they send significant portions of their source code to other countries with different legal systems. There are risks with giving this code to *anyone* - domestic employees included - but there's a big difference when the developer lives in the same city/country.

Wed 01 Sep | kc | 'CxOs living and working in the United States are grossly overpaid. This is a fact and not just my opinion. In many other industralized countries such as Japan the average CEO salary is only 10 times the amount of the average worker. In the U.S. it is something like 500 times larger.' Is that the fault of the CxO or the company? If there are multiple companies going for the same person, salary & benefits are ways to compete. This is the market system.

Wed 01 Sep | redguardtoo | KC: seems it's your HR's problem. How could your HR find such a *talent* from so many indians? redguardtoo http://www.d2ksoft.com

Wed 01 Sep | Saprasadecceio | redgaurdtoo, you have such great wisdoms that I cannot believes great good intelligence. I too am thinking about HR's and Indians.

Wed 01 Sep | Mastering the art...Thank you...for helping me out. | redgaurdtoo; Don't respond to this thread. I will tell you one thing, I am in my early 20's. As any other young person, one year back, I use to react on each and every rude or insultive statement targeted at me. Saying, How can any one say this to me, I never did or thought of doing wrong to them!? I end up hitting and abusing that person in return. Keep on thinking about that issue for long, filled with anger. But then I was taught by my teacher, the line I can never forget: Never-ever give the REMOTE-CONTROL of your life in another person's hand. That's it. And do you know, I am mastering this art here. :-) Anyway, I didn't posted the earlier comment by the name 'Indian', and this is my first and last comment on this thread. Take care, bye.

Wed 01 Sep | kc | redguardtwo, Read my ACTUAL message: 'companies who depend on closed source software take an inherently HUGE risk whenever they send significant portions of their source code to other countries with different legal systems.' That applies whether it's India, China, Mexico, England, or Romania.

Wed 01 Sep | Kenny | >>However, after that first wave, it was discovered that the quality of the Vietnamese workers was much lower than expected because many of the second wave (and beyond) were poorly educated. I wonder if history won't repeat itself. in some cases, the poorly educated leave their country first... eg. America was founded by such. its hard to make blanket statements about this because each situation is unique.

Wed 01 Sep | the artist formerly known as prince | Here is what I find ludicrous about this whole debate: OK so the CEO shipped jobs to india, salaries are saved earning increase (lets say), the story line shouldn't be: CEO gets HUGE pay raise, the story should be dividends increase for share holders. America has forgotten that management teams ARE NOT THE OWNERS OF THE COMPANY, they should not be entitled to proceeds from cost reduction, that money belongs to share holders (if, and I am unsure about this, real cost savings actually exist). Part of the problem with corporations today, is there is pressure to lie about earnings, wehn the real pressure should be to delier dividends, because if there are no dividends, baseball cards are a better investment!

Wed 01 Sep | Peter | >Most likely this is because they reduced costs significantly by outsourcing. If you think you are saving money by outsourcing (or for that matter following any business fad), it is because you are measuring only some of the real costs. The word 'externality' should be considered an obscene insult instead of some justification why you can dump your real costs off on other people. Outsourcing is the lastest fad in business. Like ERP, MRP, TQM, business process re-engineering or 6-sigma, it will stampede onto the stage and run amok with all the me-too companies. You might find a company or two who saved money with any of the past fads, but you can probably find some manager who can save money with the 'tongue depressor management method.'

Wed 01 Sep | phil jones | ' The company will end up getting theirs when they realize that they've shipped all of their IP overseas to people beyond their legal influence' I wonder if the willingness to offshore actually suggests that companies don't really regard code / design as really valuable IP? Could it be that 'brand' is far more important? Is world domination by Free Software imminent?

Wed 01 Sep | Noname | Shareholders care about IP being lost because of its effect on dividends and real value. A CEO who is going to claim a big bonus next year because of outsourcing has much less of an incentive to care about the effect of lost IP on the long-term health of the company. Especially when they get golden parachutes and protected pensions anyway if the company sinks. However, nowadays shareholders have far less influence on the board than they used to. There are some regulations being proposed for making the boards more accountable to shareholders, but CEOs and boards are fighting against them tooth and nail.

Wed 01 Sep | Sassy | ' Part of the problem with corporations today, is there is pressure to lie about earnings, wehn the real pressure should be to delier dividends, because if there are no dividends, baseball cards are a better investment! ' No one is really interested in dividends. Large investors are not looking for a small but safe return on their ownership. htey get that by virtue of diversification of holdings. The thing invetstors are looking for is the share price to rise. That's it. If you can make the share price rise, shareholders can get their 12% returns and all is happy. Cash in the bank is just a fundemental, and as we all know many investors don't look at fundementals. For a CEO, the outsourcing move has the following effect: * reduce costs, thereby increasing profit * increased profit = increased share price. What most large SV software corps did was freeze hiring, offshore jobs, and lay off workers. This had the net effect of stopping the share price slide after 2000. Today, we can see that the share prices are still sliding, because sales are slowing, the economy is soft, and demand for IT is weak(ish) It's a short-term gain because cost reduction can never substitute growth.

Wed 01 Sep | I am Jack's statistician | [It just shows you can use statistics to prove whatever you want.] Nonsense. You are only saying that because 82.6% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Wed 01 Sep | I am Jack's Mortician | >>'You are only saying that because 82.6% of statistics are made up on the spot.' Killer statistic!

Wed 01 Sep | Sgt. Sausage | ==>CxOs living and working in the United States are grossly overpaid. This is a fact and not just my opinion. And should I take it as fact, that if someone offered you a $400K a year job, you'd decline? Come on now, be *honest*. Bump it up a bit. What about a $900K a year job? What about a $1.5 million a year job. At what point (*honestly*) would you say: 'Damn, you're paying me too much. I'm not gonna take the job -- sorry, I'm gonna take this other job that pays me $80K, 'cause I don't think I'm worth more than $80K'. Enquiring minds want to know! Give us your number! Most of the BS I see about making too much money is simply jeolosy -- you can't get a job that pays that much, ergo, nobody should have a job that pays that much. Grow up.

Wed 01 Sep | the artist formerly known as prince | Yes sassy, but even if youre right, then increased profits should be put into the treasury of the company and not the CEO's pockets. Again management teams are not entrpeneurs, they are employees of the corporation, and if they increase profits they should be rewarded like other employeess: a pat on the back, and getting to keep their job. As it is they are allowed to raid the company for all its worth, and often not even report it to the shareholders in the form of financials (Executive Pensions, Stock Options, 'loans' that are later forgiven...)

Wed 01 Sep | Ken Lay | >> 'As it is they are allowed to raid the company for all its worth, and often not even report it to the shareholders in the form of financials (Executive Pensions, Stock Options, 'loans' that are later forgiven...)' I don't understand why you have a problem with that.

Wed 01 Sep | Kenny | ++At what point (*honestly*) would you say: 'Damn, you're paying me too much. I'm not gonna take the job -- sorry, I'm gonna take this other job that pays me $80K, 'cause I don't think I'm worth more than $80K'. lol. point goes to sgt. sausage...

Wed 01 Sep | the artist formerly known as prince | Wrong kenny, You need to negotiate for your pay, wheras most CEO's get to decide their own (being the most boards/compensation comittees are yes men).

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. O | 'Most of the BS I see about making too much money is simply jeolosy -- you can't get a job that pays that much, ergo, nobody should have a job that pays that much. Grow up.' No, Sausage, it's the stockholders saying 'why should we pay that guy $10 million a year, when we have others willing to do it for $500K a year?' Those $50- and 100-million dollar bonuses (times ten executives) is money out of the stockholders' pockets, life savings, and retirement accounts.

Wed 01 Sep | Noname | Kenny = Ken Lay?

Wed 01 Sep | Sassy | 'You need to negotiate for your pay, wheras most CEO's get to decide their own (being the most boards/compensation comittees are yes men' This may be true in a macro sense but the reality is not so cut-and-dry. Most C-level execs have employmeny contracts reviewed and approved by the compensation committees of the BOD. Assuming: * the BOD represents the majority shareholders * the BOD is *satisfied* with performance (share price increased in past xx months) Then it's easy to pay out xx% of gross revenue to the management team. Ethics aside, I think many are confusing revenue performance with share price. If we had a market where fundementals really mattered, then SP would reflect the fundementals and the management compensation would be directly tied to performance. But as it is today, SP is determined as much by macro / social factors as it is by the bottom line, and we all know of plently of loser companies which have grossly inflated market caps, even today. The blame has to be held, to some degree, by the average shareholder who continually seeks a fast buck, gets cold feet at any sign of bad news, buys and sells on recommendation of a press release, and basically is dramatically out of touch with their investments.

Wed 01 Sep | Noname | 'Most C-level execs have employmeny contracts reviewed and approved by the compensation committees of the BOD.' Who are also yes men, often on the boards of each other's companies. Shareholders don't have as much control as they used to, and are fighting against the boards and CEOs to regain that control. If the boards and CEOs were so dedicated to 'shareholder value', they wouldn't be fighting the shareholders.

Wed 01 Sep | Sgt. Sausage | ==>You need to negotiate for your pay, wheras most CEO's get to decide their own (being the most boards/compensation comittees are yes men). Irrelevant to my question. The question still stands: ++At what point (*honestly*) would you say: 'Damn, you're paying me too much. I'm not gonna take the job -- sorry, I'm gonna take this other job that pays me $80K, 'cause I don't think I'm worth more than $80K'. Emphasis on *you* -- at what point would *YOU* draw the line. BTW: 'most CEO's get to decide their own' is assumed to be false until you provide evidence to the contrary. My question requires no evidence. It's your opinion. Again, give me a number ... I'm waiting ... It's *your* number.

Wed 01 Sep | Kero | Your point would be valid sarge if CEO compensation was controlled by a free market, but it isn't or CEOs of companies that don't perform wouldn't be given raises. No one is saying that a CEO should say 'no, not that much' what is being said is that CEO compensation is ouf of wack and there probably isn't a lot that can be done about it but carp until stockholders regain control of the companies they own from the board, or worse until the govt. decides "something must be done" which will, if history is any kind of teacher, make things worse.

Wed 01 Sep | Sgt. Sausage | ==>No one is saying that a CEO should say 'no, not that much' what is being said is that CEO compensation is ouf of wack And by 'out of wack' you mean exactly 'not that much'. Who are you to define 'out of wack' when you won't even tell us what your personal 'out of wack' is. Who are you to say 'He makes too much -- it's 'out of wack''. ==> until the govt. decides 'something must be done' which will, if history is any kind of teacher, make things worse. Something we can actually agree on. This would be the *worst* possible solution.

Wed 01 Sep | the artist formerly known as prince | So we do agree Sassy, my earlier point was that if todays investors were investing based on potential futre returns (dividens or dividend potential based on reinvested capital), rather than based on the belief that there are greater fools willing to buy paper which will never pay them a single cent, they would be more concerned about Mgmt stealing money from them, and we would not see 100,000,000 CEO compensation packages, right?

Wed 01 Sep | Sassy | 'So we do agree Sassy, my earlier point was that if todays investors were investing based on potential futre returns (dividens or dividend potential based on reinvested capital), rather than based on the belief that there are greater fools willing to buy paper which will never pay them a single cent, they would be more concerned about Mgmt stealing money from them, and we would not see 100,000,000 CEO compensation packages, right?' We agree in spirit but there is a critical distinction. 'potential future returns' does not necessarily mean dividends or dividend potential. Potential future returns means 'Buy low, sell high'. As long as people believe that they can sell at 20x the price they paid there is no incentive to worry about anything other than the share price today, and the potential of the company to raise the SP. In an ideal world performance would be directly tied to the SP but this is not the case. Mom & Pop Shareholders do not view the corporate coffers as their cash. They are focused on the movement of the share price. Look at Microsoft : * stable, lots of cash , weak price potential So they pay a dividend, meaning 'we don't expect much to happen from here on out' so many investors are looking for the next big hit that will push their investment 100 or 200x. This is antithetical to any real sane logic but it has happened enough times that the lure is real.

Wed 01 Sep | the artist formerly known as prince | Nope no difference, I agree with what the reality is, but at some point it will come crashing down (tulip anyone?)

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. Roboto | Read Barbarians at the Gate - story about the LBO of RJR Nabisco. Ross Johnson (the then CEO of RJR Nabisco) pampers the board so much the board OKed all of the compensation/benefits of the CEO and his cronies.

Wed 01 Sep | the artist formerly known as prince | Usually the board isn't pampered, they are in on it. Most boards are made of of executives from other companies.

Wed 01 Sep | jm | > Could it be that 'brand' is far more important? Is world domination by Free Software imminent? There's a good story in Forbes about how Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank over open source. Also, if open source does become more prevalent, there will be a realisation in a few years time that there are no longer people developing new products, or even with the skill to do it. At that time, there will probably be a high demand for real software developers.

Wed 01 Sep | Lixap | >> 'Also, if open source does become more prevalent, there will be a realisation in a few years time that there are no longer people developing new products, or even with the skill to do it. At that time, there will probably be a high demand for real software developers. ' Dude, it's time to take your medicatiion.

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. Roboto | TAFKAP - the board members of RJR Nabisco at that time also came from other prominent companies.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | The real robbery comes when the CEO or chairman is a significant shareholder. Take a look at the Hollinger versus Conrad Black case. Among those facing possible criminal charges for being on the take are Richard Perle. Kissinger it appeared got a clean bill of health though.

Version Control : Open Source | Tue 31 Aug | Ramu Karyat

I am looking for a open source version control system for Multimedia files (flash, JPEGS etc. ). It should be accessible across different geographies and version control should have a web interface. The view interface for these files (flash, JPEGS etc ) through a browser is important. Do you know the best match for this requirement ?

Tue 31 Aug | Mike Swieton | The problem with putting those types of files in version control is that binary diffs just plain aren't very meaningful. Pretty much every SCCS will handle binary files somehow, but I think you'll wind up with a complete copy of the file for each revision. If you have the disk space, you should be fine. I know CVS and Subversion can both handle binary files, and I've found them reliable enough for text, at least.

Tue 31 Aug | Brad Wilson | Binary diffs are possible. Subversion does them.

Wed 01 Sep | kc | Go with subversion and if you're on Windows, get Tortoise SVN. Both are available from tigris.org

Wed 01 Sep | Tom Payne | Subversion handles binary files. It stores only the differences between revisions, unlike CVS which stores a complete copy of each revision. However, as has been said, binary diffs aren't very meaningful. In fact, with compressed files like JPEGs they are particulatly meaningless. You can inspect Subversion repositories with a normal web browser, and there's also a web interface (WebSVN http://websvn.tigris.org/ ). We've been using Subversion for a few months and are very impressed with it. Recommended.

Wed 01 Sep | Vladimir Gritsenko | Besides the already mentioned CVS and Subversion, there is GNU arch: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/

Wed 01 Sep | Sgt. Sausage | ==>Binary diffs are possible. Subversion does them. Possible, ut not very useful (except to save storage space) to a human. Go ahead. Look at the diffs on, say, a quicktime file and tell me how it's different? FYI -- this is not a flame on Subversion. I like it. We've recently switched from VSS to Subversion and I like it a lot.

Wed 01 Sep | Fred | >> Possible, ut not very useful It's easier to versionize pictures using the same tool as source code, instead of manually creating directories named after the date the files were last changed by the in-house graphic designer.

Wed 01 Sep | Sgt. Sausage | ==>It's easier to versionize pictures using the same tool as source code, instead of manually creating directories named after the date the files were last changed by the in-house graphic designer. Agreed -- that scenario would be a nightmare -- and you'd be surprised how many folks out there use that very method of versioning -- but I'm stressing the 'not very useful' point based on the Diffs argument. Humans looking at a binary Diff. Not very useful.

Wed 01 Sep | TheGeezer | Just this week I flipped a coin over source code management systems for a new project and decided to go with Subversion. I've used CVS in the past and whilst it's good, it still has some limitations. It's easy to use with the WinCVS interface but I've since decided to use TortoiseSVN with Subversion because of it's simplicity and power. There's also a front-end call JSVN (http://jsvn.alternatecomputing.com/) but it looks a little alpha'ish for my liking. Just one thing - having used Visual Source Safe on and off, does anyone else agree with me that it's the biggest piece of turgid dogshit that you could ever have the misfortune of using?! :-&

Wed 01 Sep | Tayssir John Gabbour | For binary diffs, you might want to consider a tool which can write them to something readable. (I guess XML is the common choice, and it's pretty easy to convert from XML to something even more readable.) In that way, comparing binary versions is a matter of piping the versions through your tool. It's just a good technique in general. I used it once for the flash vector format. Of course, I don't know if it's feasible for every binary file thing you do.. it won't necessarily help you to know that pixels x...y are now red, but certainly for some things it's important. Especially since binaries are only performance optimizations.

Thu 02 Sep | Tom Payne | > Just one thing - having used Visual Source Safe on and off, does anyone else agree with me that it's the biggest piece of turgid dogshit that you could ever have the misfortune of using?! :-& I haven't used VSS, but I can't imagine that it could possibly be worse than PVCS. On converting images to text and back, have a look at: http://sng.sourceforge.net/ The advantages of using such a tool are lossless compression (JPEG quality will degrade after a few save/load cycles) and sensible diffs.

Outlook client with open source exchange server? | Tue 31 Aug | newToOSS

What would it take to make Outlook clients compatible with OpenXchange or Evolution groupware/mail servers? No one has done it yet. Im figuring it must be too hard or too risky.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | But withing 2 years you will have a name in the industry.

Wed 01 Sep | Chris Altmann | http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/outlook/

Wed 01 Sep | Christopher Wells | My first guess is that Outlook (not Outlook Express) clients use an API, named MAPI, to talk to Exchange. So to make it compatible with other servers, you would add a MAPI interface to those servers (i.e. write a DLL that implements the MAPI interface). Outlook Client <-> YourMAPI.DLL <-> AnyServer

Wed 01 Sep | Stefan | I think you may want to take a look at: http://www.toltec.co.za/ http://www.sourcextreme.com/ Also, http://www.kroupware.org/ and http://www.kolab.org/ have some coverage on that matter. Best regards, Stefan

Wed 01 Sep | Mike | Scalix already exists and does what you want.

Wed 01 Sep | newToOSS | Thanks for the resources folks. Regarding Scalix, I just took a look at their web site. I swear, that for the past year, I have read on multiple occasions of IT professionals passing on alternatives to Exchange because there is no compatibility with Outlook. I find it strange that no one heard of Scalix. Is there something I am missing, or is it a simple lack of marketing and getting the word out?

Wed 01 Sep | newToOSS | Ahhh, I see. Scalix is not free...duh.

Wed 01 Sep | Mike | I hadn't heard of it either, until this last issue of Forbes.

Thu 02 Sep | Nate Silva | There is also Bynari Connector, which is similar to a product that Toltec makes. It lets Outlook talk to an IMAP server as though it were Exchange.

Sharing a nifty trick | Tue 31 Aug | Ogami Itto

The thing I miss the most about Linux is wget. That little nifty app that works as a commandline download manager. Point an URL to it, and let it go. Network went down while getting Windows XP Service Pack2? Just do wget -c . When I formatted my harddrive and got rid of Linux, I thought I was going to miss wget. Until, lo and behold, someone ported it to Windows ( http://allserv.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/#download ). Grab the 300k executable, put it on c:\windows and Bobs your uncle. A full featured download manager without the annoying GUI. (This post is just to share this little thing thats making me mighty happy).

Tue 31 Aug | snotnose | Yeah? Well this puppy extracts the least significant bit: lsb = bits ^ (bits & (bits - 1)); :)

Tue 31 Aug | Almost Anonymous | I have a full directory of ported Unix tools for Windows. wget is included and so is grep, ls, etc. I totally forgot where I got them all, but a simple google search should find them. They do not require cgywin.

Tue 31 Aug | Chris Tavares | I suspect you're probably thinking of these: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ As far as wget is concerned, the port to win32 is dead easy; I ported it myself once in about three hours. I then got rid of my version when I found out somebody else had already done it. :-) -Chris

Tue 31 Aug | PopCulture | I just install cygwin then include 'C:\cygwin\bin' in my system path. Then you get all the goods (ls -l, grep, bash, perl, pretty much everything) right from the cmd prompt.

Wed 01 Sep | Dutch Boyd | Does anyone know the origin of the phrase "Bob's your uncle."?

Wed 01 Sep | blargle | 'Bob's your uncle - This term may come from the Irish politician Balfour who in 1887 was unexpectedly promoted to the vital front line post of Chief Secretary for Ireland by his uncle Robert, Lord Salisbury. This stroke of nepotism is said to have inspired the term. The phrase is used as if to say 'and so it is done'. e.g. 'You just turn on the power, hit the switch and Bob's your uncle'. If anyone knows of any alternate origins I would love to hear them.' from http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/bobs.html

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Ogami, thanks for the trick. You're an amazing magician.

Wed 01 Sep | Ogami Itto | Oooooh, amazing little anonymous poster at it again. I'm soooo giddy..........

Wed 01 Sep | Bob's Uncle | Wassup!!!

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Ogami, anyone can use whaterver name, it won't make him non-anonymous.

Wed 01 Sep | Ogami Itto | I called him anonymous because he has no name, not because he has a fake name.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Ogami, do you have a fake name?

Wed 01 Sep | Ogami Itto | More than one.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Pathetic looser.

Wed 01 Sep | Ogami Itto | I think it's "loser" and not "looser".

Wed 01 Sep | I am Jack's Uncle Bob | My uncle IS Bob. You mean you weren't talking directly to me about MY uncle? result = Me.Ego.Deflate( ByRef selfawareness )

Thu 02 Sep | no name | Ogami, do you think spelling make a difference in your case?

Work Intlligence | Tue 31 Aug | aartist

Any thing which is not in specification and done by you, is your intelligence. Example: If you are asked to keep font as Arial but size is not given, it is upto you to determine the appropriate size. Now that is your intelligence. As a developer, (For that matter any field) we routinely develope such intelligence. If we can recognize these, we may list many items. Which of these items you consider towards higher level of inteligence..

Tue 31 Aug | no name | oxymoron

Tue 31 Aug | fartist | If only we could spell...

Wed 01 Sep | AllanL5 | Maybe this hit me wrong, but what you seem to be talking about is mind-reading. Mind-reading is when you are just 'supposed to know' what the user wants, without the user having to tell you. This is fine if you are really good at mind-reading. Unfortunately, while humans would love others to be very good at mind reading (after all, I can read my own mind fine) they tend to be very bad at it themselves. If you sign up for being a mind-reader, this does not mean you are a professional. It means you have bought into a very risky area of development, one in which you are now responsible for producing results the customer will only pay for if you've correctly read his mind. It IS part of a professional's work to recognize when this syndrome has taken hold, and take steps to clarify the desires and assumptions of the customer. This clarification typically takes the form of screen shots and prototypes where the developer can show the customer what the developer understands of the customer's needs. This gives the customer an opportunity to provide further clarification, and provides a more detailed specification for the developer to build to. To the OP -- You could be a customer, or manager, trying to use this criteria to judge those around you. You could be a developer yourself. I just wanted to point out that your statement is unrealistic for use in judging the quality or intelligence of a developer.

Thu 02 Sep | Peter | I worked at a place where the customer, let us call her CFL (crazy french lady) was always changing her mind. She drove my boss (the project manager) so crazy that he let her talk directly to the development team. CFL: make me a dohickey. Me: OK. (couple days later) CFL: BLUE? BLUE? what sort of idiot makes a blue doohickey? Me: Umm, ok, what color would you like it? CFL: Green! (couple days later) Me: here is the doohickey. CFL: GREEN? GREEN? what sort of idiot makes a green doohickey? Me: umm, ok, what color would you like it changed to? CFL: Any idiot would know that blue is the corporate standard. Me: umm, ok. Yes, reading minds would have been so useful around her. 18 solid months of 'move the couch a little to the left, no move it a little to the right.'

Thu 02 Sep | Kenny | its time to start charging $200 per hour to make post-developmental changes at your company...

Best Disasters | Tue 31 Aug | Actively Disengaged

OK guys, the previous thread makes me think that our disasters could be very entertaining. Whats the worst/funniest thing that has happened to you in your computer career...

Tue 31 Aug | AllanL5 | Classic 'disasters': 1. The Denver airport baggage handling facility. They estimated two years, they were 'given' one year. They finished in two years. 2. The IRS 'Modernization' effort. 3. The FAA 'Modernization' effort. They tried to make a 'paperless' process for tracking planes. The controllers needed their flight strips. I've been involved in an interesting situation or two, but it would do my career no good at all to mention them. Once I retire, you can read my memoirs, I suppose.

Tue 31 Aug | Y2K was so much fun! | Here is a (not so) funny one that is hardware related. There was a very important legacy server running around the time of the Y2K horror fest. The company was contacted by the motherboard vendor to indicate that the bios was not Y2K compatible about 2 weeks before the end of the year. New bios was ordered and shipped priority mail as the Y2K flip over loomed. With much trepidation I shut down the box hoping more than 2 disks in the raid array would not bind after being active for so many years (disks tend to accumulate materials and work fine when continuously spinning but when power cycled they like to die). The bios chip was really bound in the socket and, lacking a chip puller, my fat fingers were used. Needless to say the chip finally released and impaled into my finger. Now bleeding, I also noticed that a number of the pins were totally separated from the chip! Muttering under my now labored breath, I prayed that the new chip would work because there was no going back. I inserted the new chip without incident and booted the box.... it did not post. Now the blood pressure started to rise, on the phone to the vendor and they had no ideas what the problem could be. In an act of desperation the old bios was loaded onto a floppy and the new bios was flashed back to the old version (since destroyed with some of its pins still imbedded in my bleeding finger). Of course this flash operation is a one time affair and if anything went wrong the 'new' bios would also be destroyed. The flash completed and the system posted and booted without error. A huge sigh of relief but now we were back to square one with a system that was not Y2K compliant. This is enough to convince management that a new box is required and one is rush ordered. The system migrated to new hardware without incident. Y2K comes around and IT (no joy on new years) is huddled around waiting for the sky to fall and the box, now with no production load, WORKS PERFECTLY FINE. Even the date flipped over correctly. Ahh…. the joys of 1999-2000!

Tue 31 Aug | no name | Today's episode of Eric Sink Sw Factory with SP1. Sorry Eric :)

Tue 31 Aug | Pakter | Once, I ran a SQL script on the wrong server. I realized this just as the script finished. Needless to say, it dropped all the tables on the production server. Needless to say, there was no recent backup. Needless to say, we could not recover the logs. This was not truly a disaster : fortunately, there wasn't much new data (and that wasn't vital data). It seems that nobody really noticed. You might call that a free lesson.

Tue 31 Aug | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | @pakter: Free lesson?!? I was the poor chap whos data you sacked! I was fired a short time after that because your screwing around threw me off my deadline!!!

Tue 31 Aug | Pakter | Sorry if that recalls sad memories, but apart from the white colour on my face, there was no such bad side-effect in my case ;-)

Tue 31 Aug | anonymous for this one. | This was a combined hardware/software disaster. A rendering device was being created. I looked at the spec for the underlying chips and realized (even though I'm 'only' a programmer) that the device would be at least 10 times too slow. That is, it wouldn't just run slow, it would not run at all. I went to the engineering director and told him this. He said, as about that at the next joint meeting with our department and the people in charge of the device. I did. The designer of the boards just shrugged and agreed, like there was no problem with this being true. For unknown reasons work continued for a few months. Then, mercifully, I was transferred to a better project and I got to watch the old one shrivel up and die. I was new at programming then and was amazed such waste could be tolerated. Besides the 'opportunity cost' of being an extra year late to market.

Tue 31 Aug | snotnose | I was testing the charging code for a handheld device, going through all the permutations of the device is on when the charger is plugged in, device is off when charge plugged in, device is off and powered on via the power key, etc. Thought I'd nailed it and found a new problem, the device always powered off when I removed the charger. Always. Even in the middle of running a program. Crap. Took about 3 hours of debugging to realize, wait for it.... The damn battery had died.

Tue 31 Aug | TheGeezer | Some of the biggest disasters I have witnessed tended to be related to massive projects which involved building a replacement for legacy systems using leading edge technologies. I should also add that more often that not that clueless consultants from Andersens had stuck their finger in the pie and produced reams of documentation which was nothing more than unintelligible, tautological wank to keep the client happy. Invariably, those projects were either abandoned or drastically pared-down.

Tue 31 Aug | TheGeezer | >> I should also add that more often that not that clueless consultants from Andersens D'oh - it pays to review before posting. What I meant to say was: 'I should also add that more often than not, clueless consultants from Andersens...'

Tue 31 Aug | Voodoo | I work at a bank. I wrote the bug that changed customers' buy orders into sells!! NOT BAD!!! It happened one night............ THE CLIENT MESSAGE: THE CODE: TRDMSG *msg = getMsg(); int side = getSide(msg); if (4 == side ) { doBuy(); } if (5 == side ) { doSell(); } THE TESTING: WELL. A BUNCH OF BUYS CAME AND A BUNCH OF SELLS CAME & TEST EXECUTIONS WERE SENT BACK. I DIDN'T CARE WHICH WAS WHICH. WHO WOULD? SORRY BOSS. THE SURPRISE: 4 is a sell.

Tue 31 Aug | Neil Hewitt | I once bungled a mailer script that was supposed to send out an email containing their username and password to several thousand users. The mail component I was using did not clear its address and body buffers after sending. Neither did I. The first lucky person on the list got the email as expected. The second person got the body for two emails, containing both his/her details and those of Person #1. Oh, and person #1 got a copy of that second email, too. You can see where this is going. By the time I stopped it, around 35,000 emails had been sent out. Quite a few were stuck in the mailer queue; some did not send because you can't have 35,000 addresses in the To field. Some were rejected by the receiving servers for all kinds of reasons (this was before the age of spam, so no spam-filters, not that this mail was spam anyway). Still, a lot got through. One poor guy got 633 emails, with ever-increasing numbers of usernames and passwords in. And one guy phoned us in a blind panic because the username and password he'd used for our Web discussion board was the admin password for his entire company network. All this for two lines of code. Surprisingly, I didn't get fired. Needless to say, I have never, ever been cavalier again about anything that sends email out. Ever.

Tue 31 Aug | braid_ged | This is a well known story in Aus. A software company had been contracted to build a battlefied simulator for the army. Looking a bit like a Real Time Strategy game it allowed the military guys to move around the scene, watching tanks roll across the landscape and the solders running around etc. The day came to present it to the minister of defence and the top brass. Somone at the company thought that they should add a bit of polish and make it a little more visually exciting for the big day. Late one night (surely it must have been late one night) a programmer added some images for animals and to save time he used to same objects for the animals that he had been using for the soldiers. Well he must have forgotten to disable something because right in the middle of the presentation, with the minister and the generals, a hellicopter flew across the battle field spraying it's machine gun. A group of passing kangaroos immediately hit the ground and returned fire.

Tue 31 Aug | Erik | One company I worked at had a statistical analysis program. The lead developer was a funny Russian character with a very sadistic streak in him, especially with badly formed data sets from users. One day I got an email from a user stating that the following error appeared on his screen: 'Your calculations are doo-doo!' It amazes me to this day that he didn't get fired. There were other nasty messages buried in the code as well, that were hastily removed as a result.

Tue 31 Aug | Kangaroo Jack | 'Roo Power! Yeah, baby!

Tue 31 Aug | redguardtoo | One year ago, a Japanese team asked a Chinese company to help them solve a tricky bug. Their system (12~15 lines of C code) will crash when debugged in GDB and they could not find any clue after two days hardwork. it was my first work day in that Chinese company and the boss let me take the task The key point was that the Japanese team REFUSED to show me the source codes and our company could not provide any information to simulate the environments. At last I found the bug is caused by a GDB's bug. The bug only happened in DEBUG version of the system. redguardtoo http://www.d2ksoft.com

Tue 31 Aug | no name | Last year we outsourced a module of our core product to an Indian "CMM Level 5" company, then not only did our engineers spend a huge amount of time trying to get them up to speed, we got back a huge pile of poo that not only didn't work, but their code actually contained a function with 80,000 lines of code (i.e. instead of a simple for-loop that reads in an element from a data file and calls a function with that as a parameter, they wrote 80K function calls with each element hardcoded as a parameter).

Tue 31 Aug | Rick | 'The FAA 'Modernization' effort. They tried to make a 'paperless' process for tracking planes. The controllers needed their flight strips.' I was part of that project (AAS), which was started in the late 80's before the whole fad of actually talking to the end user. The air traffic controllers had this system where they'd make notations on a strip of paper to remind the assistant controller to make a computer entry to update the database, so we Information Science experts simply computerized that whole task. Five billion U.S. dollars later, we presented them with a robust, thoroughly-documented system where the controllers had to make computer entries to remind themselves to make computer entries to update the database. And for some reason they didn't like it, so just scrapped it. Oh well, at least we got paid!

Tue 31 Aug | At least it didn't run as root. | I didn't do it myself, but I worked at an investment bank in the 1990's where another programmer had put some batch shell script that got into production (yes programmers updated the production systems), and included a line something like: rm -rf /some/random/temp/directory /* Notice the accidental space after 'directory'. Oops. I got the support call at 2 AM.

Tue 31 Aug | Minister for Defence | > A group of passing kangaroos immediately hit the ground and returned fire. MEMO One of the journalists saw Project Roo-Surprise in action. Please issue a press release explaining it was a 'programmer error.'

Tue 31 Aug | sgf | At one job I had, system admin was split among several of us engineers, being too small a place for an IT department. We managed to get an Exchange server running for email OK. But one day it crashed and for some reason my boss performed smoe kind of restore operation after rebooting. The net effect was that all of the email we had received for 6 months was resent (it kept arriving for 2 days) AND all the email we sent for 6 months was resent. Which of course triggered may 'What the hell is this?' replies. Totally bogged us down for 3 days......

Tue 31 Aug | braid_ged | Don't remember the details but a lecturer when I was at university used to write code for a heart 'defibrilator' (sp?). A pace maker type thingo. Well, they had to prove all the code correct and do so much QA it wasn't funny, as you would expect. Well... there was a bug somewhere and very occasionally the thing (it was now out-there... inside people), would malfunction, something to do with temperatue sensing or something. The companies reaction was that people shouldn't panic but alas doctors started removing the thing. Twice as many people died in the operations to remove the device than from the malfunctionings of the device. The company was sued, crashed and burned. I guess that's the sort of project problem you cant be too cheerfully philosophical about.

Tue 31 Aug | Bobby Knight is laughing | TheGeezer nailed it. Any implementation of PeopleSoft will fit the topic of this thread nicely -- like this one: http://www.idsnews.com/subsite/story.php?id=24282

Tue 31 Aug | trollop | Here as well: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/0,39023166,20279146,00.htm

Wed 01 Sep | John Murray | Back in the old DOS 3.x days, as a joke, I patched COMMAND.COM changing the string 'Bad Command or Filename' to 'Try Again You Stupid Twat'. . . . Several weeks later I got a call from the lead partner of a large law firm that I had installed and configured machines for, she was not amused . . .

Wed 01 Sep | indeed | http://digilander.libero.it/chiediloapippo/Engineering/iarchitect/stupid.htm Search for Autodesk. They had some nice context-sensitive help that reads 'Click this to display an overview of this dialog box, idiot.' Shipped to many thousands of people. :)

Wed 01 Sep | James U-S | We had a web script that send out an email christmas card a few years ago for a client. It was a really basic thing that looked in a database for the email addresses and sent them all a common message. Took about 5 minutes to write and worked perfectly. Was intended to be used once and deleted. But after running it we forgot to delete the script off the server. Somehow Google found it a few days later and the bot kept hitting it, and ended up sending a lot of people a lot of Christmas cards! It was a week or so before anyone thought to tell us that they were getting lots of cards, and people ended up with about 15 cards each! In hindsight we should have put it in a password protected area, or just deleted it quickly afterwards like we had planned to all along.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | A long time ago, in a life far far away, I was responsible for daily backups of the company's production db. The process was the usual n revolving backups, in our case using huge disk packs. In order to start the backup one had to remove what was already on the backup disk. One time I did this and wiped the live db instead. Oops. Luckily we had a good DRP and restored from previous backups and the day's transaction set. I did sweat for several hours while we did it though!

Wed 01 Sep | SC | The Kangaroo firing military sim story is true but it isn't as embarassing as the popular legend that brain_ged mentioned. http://www.snopes.com/humor/nonsense/kangaroo.htm It was an intentional piece of fun rather than an inadvertent programming mistake. Makes a good story though.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Around 1995 I installed Linux and created a swap drive. Unfortunatelly I specified a wrong partition. The bastard didn't nofity me before making the main partition a swap. Since that I do not touch Linux.

Wed 01 Sep | Aussie Chick | >It was an intentional piece of fun rather than an inadvertent programming mistake. Makes a good story though. Now that sounds more Aussie!

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Beware of marsupials carry beachballs.

Wed 01 Sep | Vladimir Gritsenko | 'Since that I do not touch Linux.' If you can't stand the heat, get out the kitchen. And starve.

Wed 01 Sep | Freddie boy | My favourite is the Mars Orbiter disaster: http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/mystery_of_orbiter_crash_solved.htm Reminds me of last week's thread on resistance to SI units....

Wed 01 Sep | ohLardy | Wrote a website inhouse. It was our first one as a team. We were very proud of it so we gave it to our director to present to the board. We developed on IE, he had Netscape on his laptop. Someone forgot to schedule the no-frames work, and our stub read your browser was written by poofs I do swear, flames were coming out of his eyes when he found me. We did go live in the end.

Wed 01 Sep | example | Military mistakes are always fun. Here's one hardware and one software: The SRT (Standard Remote Terminal) my workcenter used to maintain had a disk pack where the heads were driven by a 35 pound (16kg) linear motor. A maintenance technician at a UK airbase commanded one to do a random seek test during a preventative maintenance inspection (PMI). All was fine, the heads moving in and out, seeking randomly, until the feedback control circuit either died or hiccupped. The head assembly was driven out the back of the drive through the drive casing and a layer of sheet metal, and stuck, quivering, in the wall behind it, with all it's wires dangling from it. This was bad enough, but what was worse was the drive was at crotch height, and it missed the airman's family jewels by only a few inches. The other story I heard, ocurred during development of the F-16 flight control software (the F-16 can't fly without it's computers -- it's inherently unstable). The pilot was in the flight simulator, and decided to fly to South America. As soon as he crossed the equator, the plane flipped upside down. A little odd... He crosses back into the northern hemisphere (flying inverted), and the plane flips right-side up again. A bug was found in the software, of course.

Wed 01 Sep | Frustrated | > Surprisingly, I didn't get fired. The story is told with varying amounts and different characters: An executive makes an error that costs his company twenty million dollars. He goes to his boss and says, 'I'm very sorry. I expect you wish my resignation.' 'Resign, hell no,' the boss says. 'I just spent twenty million dollars educating you.'

Wed 01 Sep | Actively Disengaged | Excellent stuff guys, very funny. Now, where was Muppets story?

Wed 01 Sep | I was Jack's formerly FAT intelligence | The head of our journalism department came to me and wanted me to look at the NT box they used for video editing. It had become slower and slower and it was thrashing like crazy now whenever they edited anything. I immediately suspected it was due to the disk having become severely fragmented. I estimated they generated and edited a few GB of video every day and the lack of any sort of maintenance had finally added up. I never played with NT before. I had only heard of it and knew it bore some resemblance to other windows. NTFS then, was completely foreign to me. When I couldn't find a defrag utility anywhere in the menus, I cleverly remembered that the machine had a dual boot option. I rebooted to DOS and ran defrag from there. I was so smart! It ran perfect. Nothing on that machine probably EVER worked again, but I wouldn't know because that teacher NEVER asked for my help again either.

Wed 01 Sep | devinmoore.com | This story comes from opera, not the browser, but the real thing. A famous singer made his entrance to deliver the line, "hark, I hear the cannons roar". In rehearsals, they had used timpani drums for the cannons, but this was a major production, and to the delight of the packed auditorium, they had REAL cannons. So the guy walks out there, and KABOOM! go the cannons... he bellows "HOLY S***!" and hits the deck! whoops!

Wed 01 Sep | | I'm sure muppets story will probably start off something like this: ...'One day, while I doing my Christmas shopping online at work instead of, you know, actually 'working'...

Wed 01 Sep | muppet | Well you've already got it wrong because I don't shop for Christmas.

Wed 01 Sep | xyzzy | I was working a job for a contractor to Anheuser Busch (Bud Lite beer company). We were moving pallets of beer on an automatic guided vehicle in a demo system. Me and the guys I worked with were all Mormons and knew little about beer or their advertisements. We thought it would be clever to have the load IDs alternate between 'Tastes great' and 'Less filling' (from a recent popular beer commercial. It was a great idea and we were proud. Until the vice presedent of Busch pointed out that Miller Beer (the competitor) ran the 'Tastes great' ad.

Wed 01 Sep | δ | And he's NOT jewish either.

Wed 01 Sep | devinmoore.com | I have another one for you... this comes from my 4th grade, where a super-hacker friend of mine rigged the o/s on the schools' computers to say "suck mine" (sp) instead of any of the regular command-line error messages. Well, things got pretty interesting for him when the programming class rolled in and he forgot to take it off...

Wed 01 Sep | OffMyMeds | About five weeks ago I ran an UPDATE statement on a production database. I got distracted while I was writing the query, and ran it before I added the WHERE clause. Suddenly the web-based application that hits the database was displaying several thousand records for each user. We only lost about two hours work, but I had to call about fifteen users to tell them I lost their work and they were going to have to re-enter it. It's hard to describe the feeling you get when you see '11,237 records affected' in the results pane of Query Analyzer, but I guess everyone who has posted autobiographically in this thread knows what I'm talking about.

Wed 01 Sep | genius | We had developed a proof-of-concept of a web-based intranet content managment application to let people upload collateral for some 100 products made by the company. It was deployed on our team's little Sun box running an unstable application server that needed to be bounced every 30 minutes by a cron job to ensure continued operation. Good enough for prototyping... Anyway, the application was pretty cool, so our boss gave a demo to the company COO, who apparently liked it. He liked it so much that he sent out a company-wide email to the effect of 'here is the latest greatest thing since sliced bread, use it NOW!!!'. Our 'proof-of-concept' got 25,000 hits in one day. Funniest thing was, it handled it just fine :)

Wed 01 Sep | trollop | Q: Frogsdabble, how do you change ownership of a directory to bob? A: chown -R bob * Q: from root? A: Noooooooooooooooooooo ...

Thu 02 Sep | Woodentongue | We had a system running a production line, storing the locations and statuses of thousands of products and components. The system was a bit rubbish and we were in the process of replacing it, but it worked ok if you knew what you were doing. I was the system manager and I used to get lots of calls. One night, I had a call from one of the production engineers who said that the system had crashed, but it was OK, he'd restored the database and he was so proud of himself he had to ring and tell me (at 1am). The system basically ran on three servers, one live, one live backup and a standby. The 'live' backup software actually ran up to 40 minutes behind the live database (I did say it was a bit rubbish). The backlog in that process often caused the system to slow up or, in user parlance, 'crash'. Alarm bells ringing yet ? At 2.00am I had another call to say that the system was corrupt. I arrived on site at 2.15. The support guy had 'restored' the 'live' backup over the live database and the status/location information for thousands of peices of work in progress was subtly wrong in 80% of cases. Just wrong enough, in fact, to create absolute perfect chaos which took nearly a week to clean up. When I asked how he'd found the password for an account with enough access, he pointed to a peice of paper taped on the wall with all of the passwords for the system written on it. Question 1) In this scenario, who gets fired and who gets training ?

Thu 02 Sep | aBitNervousEverSince | Our companies' website keeps track of how many online reports each of our customers view (for billing purposes) in a database table which used by several stored procedures. Well, I got careless with SQL Server's export utility to upload the latest version of a stored procedure from development to production and left the 'include dependencies' option checked, therefore replacing the production table with the older development table. Luckily, the previous night's backup was successful so we restored okay, but everyone got free reports for a day. Later that day I learned that another employee of the company was being fired for 'screwing up too much'.

Thu 02 Sep | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | @WoodenTongue: I believe the answer to your question is, "fire them all and sort it out later".

Thu 02 Sep | I am Jack's reluctant admittance | aBitNervous, I've done that. It wasn't important because I was moving procedures from production to a test db. It still made a few beads of sweat pop out and now I always think about paying closer attention to it in the future. In our defense, that is a poorly thought out default.

Thu 02 Sep | Peter | Working as a contractor, the development server had a hard drive failure. We discovered that the back-up people had not been backing that server for about a year. The code between the dev server and the qa server was between 1 week and 8 weeks different. Since we used Visual Studio, and that keeps a local copy of the code you were working on, I told everyone they were going to take a long lunch break. I got them to write down their passwords, and leave for about 3 hours (the head of the dept agreed and approved). I ran to the local computer superstore and bought a USB cd burner (which were kind of rare at the time, and I wanted an excuse to buy one for myself anyway), came back, copied what everyone had, and managed to recover *most* of the lost files. We figured it saved about 18 person-weeks of effort. So... guess who gets laid off the following week because they know other people's passwords?

Fear the power of Shell_NotifyIcon | Tue 31 Aug | Alex

Quicktime added a gratuitous icon to my tray. Java pops the crappy coffee cup. Why does everyone need to feel important?

Tue 31 Aug | hoser | Lamery at its finest

Tue 31 Aug | no name | The greatest is when you look at someone's computer and they have so much crap installed on it that the tray has about 35 icons in it and spans more than half of their screen width. Interestingly enough, I've found that the more 'cluttered' a person's tray is, the more likely they have viruses/spyware/adware on their machine.

Tue 31 Aug | Shell Notify Icon | ph33r me!!

Tue 31 Aug | Bored Bystander | >> Interestingly enough, I've found that the more 'cluttered' a person's tray is, the more likely they have viruses/spyware/adware on their machine. I've done a little freelance desktop support this year and it's amusing to me how the average person who has all this CRAP on their system simply does not grasp that it drags down the speed and increases the startup time. The average consumer just clicks and installs and clicks YES to every message box like a mindless robot. Then you ask them 'how did all this get on there' and they are absolutely clueless.

Tue 31 Aug | LDAP is fun! | Acrobat should add one like Java. Once you load it embedded in a browser, the process never goes away and eats 30 Megs of memory.

Wed 01 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | Yep, the Acrobat reader is one of the worst polluters out there.

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | Wha takes up the memory with acrobat are the add-ons. If you disable them then it loads pretty quick. A while back somebody recommended a little program that would disable them for you. As for Bored's point, has he ever considered that the reason people click yes to things they don't understand is that they have learnt from experience that if you click no to what you don't understand you don't even get round to installing an operating system.

Wed 01 Sep | Bored Bystander | Granted, it's Pavlovian conditioning. The click through agreements for scumware/crapware are designed to look as staid and righteous as the ones for Microsoft products, upon which they're modeled. So an unwashed end user has no idea if they just clicked Ok to replace their entire Windows OS with an adware simulacrum... But I mainly blame end users because they *DON'T READ*. They just assume that all verbiage is not meant to be read or understood. Another phenomenon is the family computer and subteens who are self righteously faux knowledgeable, who have limited shallow knowledge but who rush into crapping up the PC. I've run into systems where many of the core Windows DLLs have been removed and the system rendered unbootable because some kid thought he was outthinking the adware or virus.

Thu 02 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | Stephen, I don't care which part takes up the memory, I want that process gone when I close that document.

Thu 02 Sep | Stephen Jones | Dear Justme Two separate points here - the first is not to load the add-ons in the first place. You are extremely unlikely to need them, and if you do they will load on demand anyway I believe. The question of programs and processes staying in memory after the process or program has terminated is a thorny one. Many MS programs are famed for this. On the whole it does lead to a better user experience, but I have found, particularly with XP, that the other resources the programs are hogging, handles, user objects and GDIs can cause the machine to become unresponsive. Another thing I have learnt to do when waiting for a .pdf file to show in the browser is to change Acrobat Readers priority from normal to below normal as it is a CPU hog.

Coding on Widescreen Monitors | Tue 31 Aug | Scot

The new iMac is very attractive. However, I have to wonder if a wide screen is well suited to coding. Right now I have a large square screen and notice that ofter only the left two-thirds of it are used when putting the code editor in full screen mode. What are your experiences? Do you typically code in full screen mode or with multiple windows open? Do you use a widescreen? How has that worked out?

Tue 31 Aug | James U-S | I have a widescreen laptop, and you're right, the right hand half - 2/3 of the window tends to go unused. Since I develop primarily web applications I keep an IE window open on the right and can therefore refresh and watch my changes without losing sight of the code.

Tue 31 Aug | Mat Hall | I've only used a widescreen monitor a couple of times, but I found it somewhat akin to using a dual-monitor setup. All the important stuff -- editing window, form designer, etc. -- got put on one side, and the "less important" stuff -- palettes, debug and watch windows, object browser, file manager, etc. got put on the other side. The extra screen real estate comes in handy for dumping things you want to look at but don't really need to deal with, in the same way that with a dual monitor setup you can stick them all out of the way and still leave enough space to work...

Tue 31 Aug | Rob Mayoff | Programs are taller than they are wide, and programmers want to see more of their programs at a time, so taller windows, and therefore taller monitors, are better. I have a 16x10 aspect ratio monitor that lets me get two 80x56 windows side by side with a decent font and almost but not quite enough room for a third 80 column window. I'd rather have two 80x100 windows and no space left over.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | +++I keep an IE window open on the right and can therefore refresh and watch my changes without losing sight of the code+++ Edit-and-continue development. Pathetic.

Tue 31 Aug | kc | I have a monitor (at home) that displays at 1600x1200. I normally display documents in two-page mode if possible or have the code on one side and the docs on the other.

Tue 31 Aug | Sombebody Fetch Me A Cinema Display | Programming on wide monitors leads to wide programs, which don't fit in most computers. See, for example, Longhorn (http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1581842,00.asp), which is so wide you need to fold it into eighths in order to install it.

Tue 31 Aug | devinmoore.com | if I had the ideal IDE, I imagine two monitors - one for the toolbars and one for just a big code window - would be ideal. Unfortunately, it is time consuming and expensive to set that up.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | rotate the monitor and install a sw which rotates the screen 90 degrees.

Tue 31 Aug | Egor | +++Edit-and-continue development. Pathetic.+++ How else are you supposed to develop a web app?

Tue 31 Aug | Andrew Cherry | Edit-and-continue development? Are you sure that's not XP?

Tue 31 Aug | no name | Edit-and-continue is really an agile method with 1-minute iterations.

Tue 31 Aug | Clay Whipkey | I have a widescreen laptop and for some apps (like web browsers) I just resize the window to a normal 1028x764. When using an IDE, the widescreen allows me to have utility panels open and the code window is wide enough to see a good amount. As far as a designer making a GUI too wide because they used a widescreen, that is the problem with the designer not using their brain, not the screen. Guns don't kill people, people operating guns in illegal fashions kill people.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | +++How else are you supposed to develop a web app?+++ The word 'develop' do not make too much sense in your sentence. Probably it do not make too much sense in your job as well.

Tue 31 Aug | Scot | Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Tue 31 Aug | Egor | +++The word 'develop' do not make too much sense in your sentence. Probably it do not make too much sense in your job as well.+++ So come on, enlighten us all, how one should be developing instead of that dam 'edit-and-continue'. We'll excuse yor bad English.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | dam or damn? just to practice my english.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | enlightenmentcomes from your inner head/soul and not from my mouth

Tue 31 Aug | bah_humbug | Only rotate LCD monitors. three screens == heaven. One for the editor window, one for the toolbars and stuff, one for the help file

Wed 01 Sep | Ian Cheung | Egor, It's best to leave the trolls to play with themselves. Especially those who can't leave their name.

Wed 01 Sep | Kenny | bigger = better normal screen size = bigger widescreen size = smaller bigger != smaller therefore, widescreen != better

Wed 01 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | 'Edit-and-continue is really an agile method with 1-minute iterations. ' But does it up the build number?

Thu 02 Sep | Jon Hendry | I have a 1600x1024 17' monitor. I find that I'm only really comfortable reading text that's more or less right in front of me. If it's too far to the left or the right, the slight distortion caused by my viewing angle is kind of wearisome. Turning my head doesn't help, because the screen at the sides isn't perpendicular to my line of sight. As a result, I end up editing in a window that takes up the half or third of the screen in front of me. I don't really use two windows side-by-side when I'm doing much reading or editing. (It is good for diffing files or image editing.) I think that for text editing, multiple smaller monitors might be better, because each could be turned to be perpendicular to my line of sight when I face its screen. That way the oblique viewing angle issue wouldn't be as significant. Big honking monitors like Apple's 30' LCD don't seem like they'd be very good for editing text.

New take on "practicality" of Comp/Eng degrees | Tue 31 Aug | Bella

I did a Comp.Sci degree, and although I never used much of the theory explicitly, (Automata, sorting algorithms, Big Oh, etc), some was used implicitly. While I was a programmer, I often felt my degree was a waste of time, b/c I ended up being a GUI/DB type of programmer...and totally self-taught on language specifics.... However, later in life, I think it was somewhat indirectly beneficial, b/c it opening my brain up to an entire new way of processing and analyzing. I think being a Comp.Sci major developed my sense of efficiency, and ability to view things logiclaly and in a structured manner. That, in the context of ANY career, is helpful. As a result, when a young person asks me what major they should choose, I keep in mind that *most* people do not get a job in their major anyway. If youre major is totally irrelevant anyways, you might as well take one that will expand your brain capability. History, English, PolySci, .....you dont need to pay $25k a year to read books and debate. Communications, marketing, advertizing, I dont even consider those real majors. Id rather do an internship to learn about those areas. With that, I feel I can legitimately advise someone who has no intentions of being a programmer to major in CompSci. Anyways, with my premise, of reccomending a major solely to expand ones mind, and NOT worrying about career direction, what *Engineering* majors out there ALSO fall into this category (Ones that may be practical, or in a convoluted sense, may help their analytic ability in any career)

Tue 31 Aug | devinmoore.com | I regularly praise the merits of a fine art degree for the same reasons. However, something you neglect is that the student makes the major as much as the classes do. If you want to blow off a major, you can probably still get the piece of paper. However, if you apply yourself and learn instead of just memorizing, you will gain a greater understanding of and ability to function in life.

Tue 31 Aug | jedidjab79 | I've also taken a Comp. Sci. degree, and while I haven't been out in the real world nearly as long as Bella (I graduated five years ago), I'm not sure I can see the usefulness (yet) of taking such a degree without the idea of going into the field or a related one. I do agree with the portion about not using sorting algorithms, O(n), etc. as a programmer, and yes - you do end up learning new languages on your own. At the same time, I don't think going through a Comp Sci degree helps people become more organised or logical although what it may do is help people who _already_ think in that fashion further hone their skills.

Tue 31 Aug | Me | I don't think a Comp Sci degree is that useful as a general education. Same for engineering. Those courses are full of what I now see as tool type courses. (I did one.) For intellectual training, I think law, history or economics would be more useful.

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | Of course, it depends on the kind of programming you want to do. If you explicitly want to take up a job that requires a lot of theory, like AI, ALife, operating systems, new computer languages, etc., I don't see how CS can be avoided. Then there are fields in 'real' programming which require CS, like graphic engines, audio/image manipulation (depends on the manipulation, though). And finally, there's plain, old academic research (Turing isn't famous for nothing, ya know). If you explicitly want to get a job in your major, you'll try to do that and avoid ending up with GUI/DB jobs. Otherwise, it's an indicator of personal apathy towards the subject ('well, computers are computers everywhere, aren't they?'), which has little to do with the practicality of the degree. Perhaps, if one only wants to broaden one's horizons and improve one's thinking methods, it's better to learn math (and not just a branch of it, like CS is) or philosophy?

Tue 31 Aug | trollop | Studying fine arts, philosophy, or (gasp) classics, music or divinity would have the beneficial effect of staving off their slow decline. Even History is threatened. Focusing on the practical application of pure vocational education to exclude of all else will destroy democracy. I kid you not.

Tue 31 Aug | muppet | Democracy's already stone dead. It's just latent nerve conduction causing it to keep twitching around like it's been.

Tue 31 Aug | Kalani | It's about people and personal motivation, not degrees.

Tue 31 Aug | Tayssir John Gabbour | 'With that, I feel I can legitimately advise someone who has no intentions of being a programmer to major in CompSci.' One day, it will become even more of a real major: applied philosophy rather than mathematics. If you read Knuth's Lectures on Computer Science, he talked about the fight it took to make CS its own department. I suspect this fight perverted it into having an overemphasis on mathematics, which means it's essentially accounting. Fortunately it's not all like that. There is some interesting mathematics, with the complexity theory and halting problems Chaitin covers. But a growing number of people, including Alan Kay and some people I know personally, find it obvious that CS hasn't produced anything interesting for decades. Not because it can't, but because it won't.

Tue 31 Aug | Kalani | >... Chaitin ... *meta* mathematics ;) Anyway, I think that CS is related to mathematics in the sense that its research end has to do with the search for basic principles pulled from a particular class of concepts (like Euclid's 'Elements' for computation). However, it's also distinct in that it provides another means of analysis for other fields which before used 'traditional' mathematical analysis, as predicted by this quote by Richard Feynman: 'So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the checker board with all its apparent complexities.'

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | Meanwhile we have string theory and all it's brethern. Yeah, what a nice 11-dimensional checkers board ;-)

Tue 31 Aug | Kalani | But there are people who think that those aspects of string theory are a modern version of epicycles. The phenomena of nature are complex, but God favors a short and simple algorithm. In this respect, I'd think that all programmer/CS types would be more interested in discrete computational models of the world (www.digitalphysics.org).

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | 'God favours'?... does he have a marbles game with Satan to decide or something? Anyway, it's nice theorizing about our universe being a huge Turing Machine, but that doesn't mean that it's instruction table (or whatever the technical term is) is in any way as trivial as a ruleset for a checkers game. Epicycles or not (and we'll see how string theory and it's counterparts fair in empirical tests), it's all going pretty much downhill now.

Tue 31 Aug | Kalani | >'God favours'?... does he have a marbles game >with Satan to decide or something? > >Anyway, it's nice theorizing about our universe being >a huge Turing Machine, but that doesn't mean that >[it] ... is in any way as trivial as a ruleset for a checkers >game. My friend, you seem to strongly dislike analogies. ;)

Tue 31 Aug | Ron | 'But a growing number of people, including Alan Kay and some people I know personally, find it obvious that CS hasn't produced anything interesting for decades.' I would certainly consider the Internet, and especially the search and indexing capabilities of Google and the like 'interesting.' And CS has certainly produced a lot more than History, or Philosophy, or Literature ever has. And what has Mathematics or Physics given us these past decades, for that matter? Quantum theory's been around for over 80 years now. Boring!

Tue 31 Aug | Raju Patel | The whole purpose of education (regardless of the major) is to get you thinking right in a structured way so that after graduation you don't buy into stupid ideas such as "god" etc. You rather deal with the realities effectvely because you are educated.

Tue 31 Aug | Jim | 'God favors a short and simple algorithm' No he doesn't.

Tue 31 Aug | I am Jack Bombeck | From a different perspective, what if my head is already analytical to a fault? What degree to take then? Psych?

Tue 31 Aug | Peter | One of the more important things you learn in college is 'how to learn.' Many of the tools and techniques you learn will help you analyse problems in the future. It is my experience that some of what you learn in college for a CS degree are 5-30 years ahead of industry. Things like SQL first started as an 'ivory tower' idea/paper about a decade before it became a commercial product. Some of the resistance to new ideas in CS has come from the anti-college crowd. Most of resistance to new things come from the 'what the heck are we going to do with THAT?' and 'we don't have time for THAT' crowds. Which is why folks look for silver bullets, since they don't have the time to slog thru the swamp to get it done the first time. Metrics were first written about in the 70s, but most companies and practitioners don't use them at all.

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | 'I would certainly consider the Internet, and especially the search and indexing capabilities of Google and the like 'interesting.' And CS has certainly produced a lot more than History, or Philosophy, or Literature ever has. ' The point was that while offshots of CS have made something (very exciting things, in fact, like Tierra), there has been no real progress. A lot of the really exciting work was done decades ago, and now there is a sort of stagnation. Well, at least that's the claim. But there are many problems still waiting to be solved, like NP-Completeness. 'And what has Mathematics or Physics given us these past decades, for that matter? Quantum theory's been around for over 80 years now. Boring!' Math? Fermat's Last Theorem was solved. SOLVED! QM? Quantum Gravity. MUHAHAHAHA!

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | 'My friend, you seem to strongly dislike analogies. ;)' 'Analogies? We don't need no stinkin' analogies!'

Tue 31 Aug | Stephen Jones | ----'might as well take one that will expand your brain capability. History, English, PolySci, .....you don't need to pay $25k a year to read books and debate.'--- You pay the $25K to fiind the right books to read, and more importantly, to have the best people to debate with. And why is it, that those who claim their degree make them think logically are so easily prone to make completely illogical statements about other people's specialities that they know nothing about?

Tue 31 Aug | Tayssir John Gabbour | > I would certainly consider the Internet, and especially the search and > indexing capabilities of Google and the like 'interesting.' Go to Silicon Valley and make some friends. You'll find out soon enough there's a long distance between inventing something, and commercializing it. Commercializing something means finding and tapping a market. And hiding your sources (at least to the public, not other engineers) so it looks like you invented it. On your point specifically, look at the most recent Cringely article: 'Networks, graphical computing, hypertext, the mouse -- Doug's the guy behind all of those in one way or another... He's still showing us, still pushing a vision that he first conceived 54 years ago. And though he has the data to prove his points and the growing pile of awards recognizing his genius, Engelbart is still hungry for people to really understand his ideas.' http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040826.html Most people in our profession get trapped in our own marketing, because they didn't learn our history.

Tue 31 Aug | Vince | Most Computer Science majors shoulnd't even be cs majors. What makes you think we should get more people to pollute the already crappy classes? Already I hear over and over "man I hate programming" from my fellow CS students, and get frustrated because the teacher has to go over pointers/refrences AGAIN in 3rd year classes. We shoul dbe trimming the fat not adding it.

Tue 31 Aug | Bella | > Things like SQL first started as an 'ivory tower' idea/paper about a decade before it became a commercial product. IBM invented SQL in the 1970s shortly after Dr. E. F. Codd first invented the concept of a relational database.

Tue 31 Aug | Bella | So, anyone feel like answering my original question? Again, I'm looking for specific Engineering degrees out there that would really help a teenager sharpen their analytical and logical skills... Again, not for practical application, but something that would prove more rigorous than History, PolySci, Religion (which at the college level, usually entails regurgitating and synopsyzing existing reference material. ie: Monkey work) And not 'False business' majors like Advertizing, Communication, Marketing.

Tue 31 Aug | Christopher Wells | > So, anyone feel like answering my original question? Again, I'm looking for specific Engineering degrees out there that would really help a teenager sharpen their analytical and logical skills... Mathematics: it isn't engineering, and it may not teach anything except logic and analysis, but it will teach those. Myself, I might have been better off learning more about people than about logic and analysis.

Tue 31 Aug | indeed | 'So, anyone feel like answering my original question? Again, I'm looking for specific Engineering degrees out there that would really help a teenager sharpen their analytical and logical skills... ' One thing I like to do when I'm surfing company web sites (tech and non-tech) is to check out the management team backgrounds. The CEO, CFO, etc.--what they did, where they went to school. I think this might be a nice way to empirically discover 'the best' engineering degrees (or at least get a good data point on it). Just take a survey of a broad range of companies that have engineering-degreed upper management, and find out which degrees are the most common. From casual observation, I think it's BS EE. That's not too surprising IMO, but I could be wrong.

Tue 31 Aug | Tom Vu | Math here too. I work in the financiial industry and no one at my firm, AFAIK, has a non- mathematics or science degree. We look for people who can think abstractly and see many alternatives; math, science, comp sci graduates seem to be the best bet

Tue 31 Aug | Kalani | What about evaluating a candidate's actual work to determine whether or not he/she is appropriate?

Wed 01 Sep | Me | > And CS has certainly produced a lot more than History, or Philosophy, or Literature ever has. And, pray tell, what do you use the internet to read and play, you moron?

Wed 01 Sep | Me | I think I'll read another source file now. Mmm ...

Wed 01 Sep | Bella | > From casual observation, I think it's BS EE. That's not too surprising IMO, but I could be wrong. Or you could attribute that to EE being the most popular Eng. major. (I think)

Wed 01 Sep | Bella | Again, my premise is that MOST majors are random b*llshit that won't be related to your career anyways, so what is the most rigorous academic exercise, and one that stretches the brain the most. Yes, pure Math could be another reccomendation. For the record, I did both those majors. Computer Science and Mathematics.

Wed 01 Sep | trollop | The sharp end of Industrial Design. Applied mathematics and material science, creative flair ... good jobs only for the very best, so pick the right school to go to. Architecture can involve engineering, but it's tough gaining acknowledgement of that from those guys.

Wed 01 Sep | I am slow at judging but here I am an exception. | --------If you're major is totally irrelevant anyways, you might as well take one that will expand your brain capability. History, English, PolySci, .....you don't need to pay $25k a year to read books and debate. Communications, marketing, advertizing, I don't even consider those real majors.------ OH, you missed it! Why didn't you go for rocket engineering at the very first place. All other engineering are b*llshit. Sorry to say, including your computer science degree. You end up living a dull, bore, and a life without life. How can you ever choose to stare a screen for so long!? This is the last thing I would have expected from my life. What a b*llshit course you have choosen!? Now keep on 'expanding you brain capabilities'.

Wed 01 Sep | Iconoclast | 'I think this might be a nice way to empirically discover 'the best' engineering degrees (or at least get a good data point on it). Just take a survey of a broad range of companies that have engineering-degreed upper management, and find out which degrees are the most common.' That only finds out what the 'best' degree is if you define best to be 'most likely to get you into upper management'. I don't see why that's always the case - many people have no desire to obtain such a position.

Wed 01 Sep | I am slow at judging but here I am an exception. | Every person is unique and different. And has his/her own way of seeing at things. So don't try to force your thinking onto other's claiming to be the *best* and *right*.

Wed 01 Sep | I am slow at judging but here I am an exception. | Previous comments----for Bella ( OP )

Wed 01 Sep | indeed | 'I don't see why that's always the case - many people have no desire to obtain such a position. ' Yes, but I'd argue that most people who have the gusto and skill to reach that level of upper management, can do pretty much anything in the working world. It's just a heuristic, anyway.

Wed 01 Sep | Peter | Codd's first paper on relational databases: 1969. Chen's paper on entity relation modeling: 1976. First prototype SQL database by IBM 1974, called System/R, abandonded and then reintroduced in 1978. First prototype of Ingres came out in 1974 also. Abandoned in 1982, it was reintroduced in 1985 as Postgres. Oracle was the first commercial product to be made from SQL/relational databases. First version of Oracle released in 1979. 'Ivory tower' paper: 1969. First commercial product: 1979. One decade: check.

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | Dear Bella, I don't know what two-bit shops your acqaintances studied History, Literature or Philosophy in, but I can assure you that they are rigurous disciplines at any university worth the name.

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | The reason for the gap between the theoretical underpinning of the relational database/SQL model and its being put into practice was hardware related. It wasn't until the beginning of the eighties that you could get hardware capable of running relational databases.

Wed 01 Sep | Bella | Hey guys, here's my last try: What are considered the "most difficult" engineering majors?

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. Roboto | Bella, I think it's control systems. At least it's the most difficult branch of EE.

Thu 02 Sep | indeed | 'What are considered the 'most difficult' engineering majors?' At the (southern, primarily Engineering) university I attended, Nuclear, Aerospace, and Chemical. Followed roughly by Electrical, Computer, Civil and Mechanical. Then maybe Comp Sci, if that's really engineering. :) I'm not sure where Industrial Engineering would fit on the scale.

Last laptop related post - I promise | Mon 30 Aug | Bob

Anyone own/use a widescreen laptop? I am in the process of configuring a Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop and I am not sure which screen resolution to choose. I have three choices: * WXGA (1280x800) * WSXGA+ (1680x1050) * WUXGA (1920x1200) I am thinking of choosing the WSXGA+ screen display, however, I read that that virtually all notebooks produce the clearest images only when running at their native resolution -- in my case it would be 1680x1050 -- and that you tend to get blurred images/text when you need to lower the screen resolution (i.e. 1024x768). Has anyone experienced this problem? The reason I am asking this question, is that I am worried that various text/images might be too small to read at the native resolution and if my mom decides to lower the screen resolution she is going to get readable but blurry text showing up on the screen! Question 2 Since my mom doesnt plan on fragging any aliens, I was thinking of sticking with the default graphics card option which is: 64MB DDR ATIs MOBILITY RADEON 9700 AGP 8X Graphics Should I spend the extra $99 for 128MB of graphics RAM? My thinking is yes, although the only justification I can come with is you never know what the future might bring.

Mon 30 Aug | Dennis Forbes | That video subsystem is already a gross overkill - you absolutely don't need 128MB (and don't bother buying for the future - right now you can buy laptops for less than $1000 that are more powerful than $2000 laptops a year ago. Buying for the future is a bad idea on desktop PCs, but it's even worse with laptops). Regarding the resolution, if your mother wanted to drop to 840x525 that would look fine, albeit pixelated (because it uses 4 pixels acting as one, but on the flip side doesn't have to do any dithering/aliasing). Otherwise, unless you only want to use a part of the display surface, aliasing is inevitable and does look like crap. Assess your true screen needs (I have a WXGA on my part-time laptop, and I love it) rather than overspending on something that just turns into a liability.

Mon 30 Aug | Mr. Tech Support | Yes, you'll want to set it to native resolution for the sharpest image. If the text is too small, within the web browser go to 'View/Text Size' or similar and make it larger. For dialog box and desktop text, right-click the desktop, go to 'properties', then the 'appearance' tab, and increase the font size. Your mother doesn't need a 128MB card, so don't bother.

Mon 30 Aug | Bob | Hi Dennis, I hear what you are saying. I am purchasing a desktop replacement notebook (think boat anchor) and not something you would use for college study or casual use (i.e. browsing the web and word processing). While this laptop is going to need to run some multimedia software (video on one monitor and grahpic charts on another), I doubt that this stuff will be comparable to running something like Doom III.

Mon 30 Aug | trollop | Dennis is right on the money - if you use 4 pixels to do the work of one, you won't have the dither/wonky look pixel interpolation brings. Best way to decide is to test the apps on the gear before you buy ... ooooops, it's a DELL. So go down to Officeworks and roadtest their display systems. Take your mom. What do you mean your mother won't be fragging aliens? Isn't that a wee bit UnSomething?

Mon 30 Aug | Bob | Hi tollop, What I mean by not fragging aliens is that she doesn't plan on playing any retail games on this laptop. That said, this laptop is very similiar to the Dell Inspiron XPS which is a gaming notebook. The Inspiron 9100 is a high-end multimedia notebook and the software she needs to run on it has some fairly demanding 'recommended computer requirements'. * 3 GHz or higher CPU * 50-60 GB hard disk for video recording and processing * SVGA graphic card or higher (1624x768) * 512 MB or more of RAM

Mon 30 Aug | trollop | Now I am frankly fascinated. What software has those specs and yet requires a user to employ a tech rat to go shop for a platform? Visual Studio? Macromedia? Tivo? Super8 Home Movie Desktop Editor? Heavy iron and low res together. Do tell. You need a CRT if you want to acceptable viewing at all available video resolutions rather than the very few integer divisions of native resolution offered by LCD technology.

Tue 31 Aug | Christopher Wells | I think it's an EEG recorder, isn't it? Lots of signal processing/number crunching.

Tue 31 Aug | vigor | That's gotta be a type: SVGA graphic card or higher (1624x768) Should be 1024x768 (SVGA).

Tue 31 Aug | James U-S | I have an HP Compaq nx7010 widescreen notebook. The screen is 15.4' and the res is 1280 x 800, which is it's native resolution. Anything else doesn't look ideal, but this looks fantastic. As for the graphics card I feel inclined to agree. 64Mb is fairly low these days and 128 would help to future-proof the system. It might come in handy for MS's Longhorn UI which seems like it will require substantially more graphics power, if you're ever likely to upgrade to that. But if the cash is an issue it's not worth worrying about too much.

Tue 31 Aug | AMS | By the time Longhorn actually ships today's laptops will be doorstops.

Tue 31 Aug | Bob | Thanks for all the help people! Hi trollop, Christopher Wells hit the nail on the head. This laptop will be hooked up to an EEG machine (measures brainwaves, heartbeat, etc.) as well as an external 17' monitor (paid $300 for a NEC LCD 1712 at outpost.com). The software that will be running on the laptop does a whole lot of cool stuff. One of the neat things it allows a patient (someone who is hooked up to a bunch of sensors) to do is manipulate video and graphic images using only their mind! EEG machines tend to be used in a lot of sports clinics. Also, researchers and pychotherapists use them as well. Looks like I will wind up saving something like $292 off the sticker price for this laptop. While I know this isn't the best deal DELL has offered on this particular PC this year, I simply can't wait forever just to save another $100 or more on the price. I decided to take Dennis' advice and trimmed down my selection: * 2.80GHz CPU with HT Tech, 15.4-in WXGA LCD instead of a 3.2GHz CPU with a 15.4-in WSXGA+ LCD * 512MB RAM instead of 1 GB RAM * 64MB RADEON 9700 instead of of 128MB RADEON 9700

Tue 31 Aug | Brad Wilson | To be pedantic: 'Should be 1024x768 (SVGA).' SVGA is 800x600; the resolution above is actually XGA. What is the actual requirement? Either way, I think for a non-power user/developer, the WXGA (1280x800) is probably the best choice.

Tue 31 Aug | trollop | Hi bob, extra benefits in using a laptop are quietness, portability and internal batteries to bridge shorter power interruptions. Consider a security tether and maybe a UPS if power continuity is an issue. Good work!

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | A laptop battery should last three hours. Why on earth would you want a UPS?

Thu 02 Sep | trollop | Power outages can last more than 3 hours. Yes, you can go completely bonkers about security and continuity and acquire a portable generator, fuel for the generator, ... or simply rig up a personal alarm ... OTOH, if the equipment is purely for amusement value, don't bother.

Incentive Pay Considered Harmful - so instead. . ? | Mon 30 Aug | Timothy Flechtner

i am the manager of a software development group at a largely informally run trading company. i am cursed with the dilemma of having several developers who report to me who are very bright, hard working and a pleasure to work with. to make matters worse, my boss is open to non-traditional ways of rewarding such things. this sort of leaves me holding the bag. i thought about buying them all ponies (after all, Joels article isnt titled Incentive Ponies - Considered Harmful), but im not sure that is really the best way to go. i have been until fairly recently a full time developer (now im both a full time manager and full time developer, thus being able to under-deliver in two capacities!), so i like to think that my world-view is not too dissimilar from those i have the power to (dis)incentive. speaking for myself, while a pony is always nice of course, money is pretty cool too. if i gave myself a raise tomorrow, in appreciation for all the hard work id done for me, i think id be pretty happy. on the other hand, a lot of what Joel wrote about incentive pay not being such a good idea resonates. what i didnt get from his article, is what to do instead. from what i can infer in his writing, his answer might be something along the lines of: 1. create a truly amazing work environment (office space, hardware, etc) 2. give everyone six weeks of vacation 3. only hire A developers, who merit #1 and #2 while i suspect these all serve him wonderfully well, i am not in a position to offer any of these. as i said above, many of those i work with rate (in my book) as an A, and no one is worse than a B, but i am not in a position to clean house and slowly accumulate only As (nor am i sure i would want to, even if i were able). also, i am *not* going to be able to raise vacation from our very pedestrian 2 weeks (3 at three years), at least not any time soon. finally, our office space is pretty well fixed, at least for the next year or two. nevertheless, i have been given the go-ahead to look into other forms of compensation / incentive / quadruped. i am really interested to hear what has worked (and what hasnt) elsewhere. if you are a developer, what was the most and/or least effective thing management ever did to try to recognize your brilliance? if you are a manager, what have you found worked the best and or worst in this arena? thanks! -tim

Mon 30 Aug | muppet | Isn't it amazing that all these fanatastic companies "can't afford" to pay their employees well.

Mon 30 Aug | Timothy Flechtner | i don't think salary is an issue. according to (my take on) 'Incentive Pay Considered Harmful', the rewarding of high performance through bonus/raise doesn't work so well. its not a matter of not having the resources to reward achievments, but how to reward achievments in a way that is effective (a way that does what bonuses are theoretically intended to do).

Mon 30 Aug | Timothy Flechtner | oh yeah, and where are you quoting "can't afford" from?

Mon 30 Aug | Clay Whipkey | Timothy, Have you read PeopleWare? That is a good place to start to gain understanding on *why* a typical incentive program can be ineffective. My understanding is not so much that all incentive pay programs are 100% bad. Its just that the way most are set up will usually give the employee the feeling that they are a Pavlovian dog. Such a good boy! Here's a treat. The best results come from paying people for *consistent* demonstration of quality and skill. Essentially, you want people on your team who's primary motivation is their own pride in their work. People who only care about doing good work so they can get more money are a red flag. You want people who have a passion about the quality of their work, and then you should pay them enough so that they don't have to be distracted from doing quality work by thinking about how they aren't paid enough. I'm not talking about lowballing anyone. Just that you want people to not be worrying about money while also not bankrupting the company. As far as alternatives to the cheesy awards and incentives, have you tried talking to your team? Ask them as a group what kinds of things they would like to see as rewards for singular accomplishments, or morale building, comraderie, etc. Then ask them each privately to see if they have different answers than the others. People are different. The worst thing to do is treat a group of people as if one thing is equally valuable to all of them. Allow them to feel that it is OK to be different, and that their hard work will result in good things that are good specifically for them.

Mon 30 Aug | the artist formerly known as prince | Do you have authority to spend money on incentives?

Mon 30 Aug | the artist formerly known as prince | If you do why not computers/monitors/software/massage chairs... instead

Mon 30 Aug | kc | There were four of us working for another division within our company a couple of weeks ago and they wanted to show their gratitude.... During one of our LONG meetings that was going to span lunch, they left us in the conference room and told us to wait. They came back in with a completely catered lunch with drinks (non-alcoholic unfortunately) and expressed their thanks. It was a relatively small gesture that made us feel good about the whole thing...

Mon 30 Aug | the artist formerly known as prince | Also If you have to authority to give vacations, do you have authority to give comp time?

Mon 30 Aug | Boofus McGoofus | Give them a secret day off each month. By secret days off, I mean don't tell management and don't record them as vacation. If anyone asks about Joe, he's at an off-site training. Let each person pick his day (though you should be sure that the team coordinates having only 1 or 2 people out at a time). Time away from work is the best reward you can give to workers.

Mon 30 Aug | Mr. Fancypants | Hookers and blow, man, get them hookers and blow.

Mon 30 Aug | mackinac | Speaking as a developer... First consider the ponies. A pony costs X dollars. You can either pay your employees an additional X dollars or you can spend the money to buy them a pony. The basic reason they work for your company is to make money to spend as they choose. Giving them a pony just eliminates a choice for them. It is closer to an insult than an incentive. CW writes: 'The worst thing to do is treat a group of people as if one thing is equally valuable to all of them. ' An example: At a previous employer, a manager decided to buy a small number of tickets to the local baseball games and distribute them by drawing of names. Of course, the people who had no interest in going to baseball games were automatic losers in this scheme. Later, tickets to concerts were added. Eventually the whole thing was dropped. Vacation: Two weeks is rather puny. You were rather adamant about not being able to increase that. Why? Are you sure you aren't giving up too easily on this? If it can't be paid vacation, then can you let them take off an additional week or two of unpaid vacation. There was a thread on JoS recently about GM allowing its employees to buy additional weeks of vacation. The referenced article said that the employees were quite happy to get the additional time off. One more thing on vacations. Be sure to let people take vacations when they have them scheduled. If a deadline gets dropped right in the middle of someones vacation plan, don't tell them they can't go. You write: ' what i didn't get from his article, is what to do instead. ', and a couple of lines later list most of the things you need to do instead. It looks to me like you know what to do, but for some reason don't want to do it. Or are making up excuses for why you don't do it. But Joel was talking about creating an environment for 'A's, and it sounds like you might not really be interested in that anyway.

Mon 30 Aug | Vince | If someone isn't generously compensated for their hardwork, they will eventually get pissed and leave. MOST good programmers I know are ambitious in the sense that in 3 years they want to be doing much better for themselves. I know a few who are content to have an easy 9-5 job that gives extra vacation and pays the industry standard with little to no upward mobility, but most are looking for more $$$ among other things. If someone is really an A person (and I mean someone who knows what they are doing and really GOOD at it, not just someone with the right experience), they should be paid so well that an extra incentive is not even an issue.

Mon 30 Aug | Jeremy | On a practical level, if there's something that the employees would value there can be tax advantages to giving them stuff instead of bonuses. So don't overlook that. It can sometimes cost the employer less and be more valuable to the employee than the net of the bonus after taxes.

Mon 30 Aug | Tom Vu | You work for a trading firm and you think incentive pay is considered harmful. I work at a trading firm and the whole idea is to make money. Bonuses are a main attraction in keeping people from leaving.

Mon 30 Aug | anon-88 | I can't give any opinion as a supervisor, I can as an employee. 'Show me the money' If it's bad for me to recieve this an an incentive, I might be able to find a way to live with it. Although having better equipment is nice, when I leave(voluntary or not), it stays with the company. I'm not saying I shouldn't have the right tools to do my job, but not having a 20' LCD it not going to kill me. Training would also be good, but only if I can take it during company hours. But what are my options if I don't need/want it? Do I loose out? Extra vacation time would be great, but if there are strict rules about when and for how long, then what's the point? Pay is better as an employee since I have greater freedom deciding on what to do with it. I might be able to upgrade my vacation when I'm allowed to take one, Buy myself that 20' LCD, take night cources, pay for things not covered by insurance or whatever. If you do appreciate the work I do, say it with some meaning. Don't do it condicendingly or not mean it. I had a suporvisor that had a horrible attitued, that would 'say' all the right things when upper management was around. Moral always tanked afterword. If you can't do anything, please be honest and treat me like an adult. The worse experiance was a CEO that always promised bonuses and couldn't deliver. I have no clue why he did, as the IT staff we generated the financial reports and knew the exact financial state of the company before it was delivered to his desk! Well that's my 2 cents :)

Mon 30 Aug | mackinac | >>>finally, our office space is pretty well fixed, at least for the next year or two.<<< Only a year (two at most)? It's time to start planning now. >>> nevertheless, i have been given the go-ahead to look into other forms of compensation / incentive / quadruped. <<< Who gave the go ahead? What do they expect to acheive? Whose idea is this? The more I read the OP the more I sense an inconsistency. You want to give incentives, then tell us you can't give them anything important. Maybe you should just give them a raise.

Mon 30 Aug | Timothy Flechtner | wow! lots of thought provoking thoughts in the time it takes to take the train home. thanks! let me try to address several questions raised above: Clay Whipkey: yes, i've read PeopleWare (great book), and what it (and you) say about incentive plans not really being applied 'correctly' rings true. tafkap: yes, i have authority to spend money on incentives; we already do pretty well from a computer hardware point of view, but i find the idea of cool chairs and such intriguing. . . i have limited authority to give comp time; since we are a trading firm, it is fairly important to be around during trading hours. KC: food is something i personally really enjoy, so this makes sense to me. i'll try to think up something appropriate for culinary thankyous. Boofus McGoofus: cool idea! Mr. Fancypants: it is a trading firm, i'm not sure they'd notice this. mackinac: i agree. it sure seems to me that value(pony) <= value($$ equivalent of pony), but there is a fair amount of literature that puts forth the claim that money is not as effective as well done (and there's the rub) personalized thank you's, hence my original question. as far as not being interested in A's, i don't believe that is the case; i've been a manager a fairly short time. i don't think i understand enough about what is going on yet to really understand what an A employee is. so far, the people i think are A's have very similar virtues to what i aspire to. weird, huh? :) its not a matter of me wanting to give the right sorts of incentives/rewards, its a matter of me feeling that i understand what those things are. i was given the opportunity to compensate people as mentioned above by the people i report to. the limitations in vacation and office stuff are relatively short term, as you point out. nevertheless, i wanted to explore other approaches as well. vince: everything you said makes sense, but i'm not starting from zero and hiring people; i've entered into an existing situation, where people were hired prior to my all-wise presence. making salaries commensurate with contributions is certainly part of my job, but i believe that part is relatively easy (for me, since its not my money to assign), and my company is farily generous when it comes to salaries. i'm more concerned about trying to create an environment which will keep the high achievers, once the economy again makes it easy to switch jobs. anon-88: good points. :) i certainly will try to deliver. i don't envision that being my problem. thanks everyone!

Mon 30 Aug | Bongo Drums | Instead of incentive pay, pay them properly in the first place. KC, you're cheap if a catered lunch impresses you. If anyone did that to me I wolud throw it in their face.

Mon 30 Aug | Wisea** | Mr. Fancypants, I like the way you think, but I'll have to pass on the blow, I can't afford to destroy any brain cells.

Mon 30 Aug | John | 'KC, you're cheap if a catered lunch impresses you. ' He might just be used to a boss like mine, who holds mandatory lunch-hour meetings, then at the end his secretary brings in a single pizza (for the eight of us), a liter bottle of Coke, and a stack of paper towels from the restrooms to use as plates, while HE ducks out to go to lunch.

Mon 30 Aug | ; | Stress relievers are perhaps a good option. Things such as arcade games at our workplace are nice. I can go play a quick game of Joust or some other older game for 10-20 minutes once a day, to clear my head.

Mon 30 Aug | Boofus McGoofus | If you're in a large urban area, there are companies who will come in and give everyone in the department a chair massage (just neck and shoulders -- no need for exposing naughty bits) -- if there's a tight deadline coming, this might be a nice stress buster for your staff.

Mon 30 Aug | anon | Give Alfie Kohn's work a read starting with, 'Punished by Rewards' http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0618001816

Tue 31 Aug | Sapporo | Tim, There's plenty of articles out there like Joel's that say that pay for performance is a big mistake. True professionals work for intrinsic satisfaction of working. It is a mistake to remardgood performance. Etc. One thing all these articles have in common is they are written by business owners. Tell you what. You believe that people should not be paid for performance because it is a principle of human behaviorism that that doesn't work. Great. So you go off and with your stsock traders their remove their commissions and bonuses. Just do that. You come back here in six months and tell me if you got better results. If you did, then sure, go ahead and apply these principles to the developers as well. Looking forward greatly to your response.

Tue 31 Aug | Christopher Wells | > True professionals work for intrinsic satisfaction of working. At the same time, it's nice to know that I'm earning more in my present job than I am likely to be offered on the 'open market' if I were to look for another, or entertain offers from headhunters: it saves me from the distraction of looking elsewhere merely for more money. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=money+hygiene+factor

Tue 31 Aug | Sapporo | Oh my first Paragraph is a regurgitation of the common wisdom. which is wrong. In point of fact, True Professionals work for cold hard cash. It is amateurs who work for intrinsic satisfaction. That is the definition between professional and amateurs. For those thinking that people will work with no incentive, I quote from one of the reviews for the above mentioned book: > The book would certainly have been much better if Kohn didn't selectively discuss, at great length, the small minority of studies that imply any support for his theories at the expense of the vast majority of peer-reviewed studies that contradict what he is implying. In fact, when used effectively, arranging 'rewards' (using reinforcement) for appropriate activities may increase these activities without any detrimental effects. Interestingly, while bashing the use of rewards to influence what others do, Kohn offers very little in the way of concrete strategies to increase the likelihood that individuals will study more, work more productively, be nice to one another, etc. He seems to suggest that the natural goodness in all of us will flow from an environment without any contingencies. How very groovy. Unfortunately, Kohn's assertions are not supported by empirical research. Just take a look at some of the research on laissez-faire (permissive) parenting by Baumrind to see what I mean.

Tue 31 Aug | Antti Kurenniemi | 'yes, i have authority to spend money on incentives; we already do pretty well from a computer hardware point of view, but i find the idea of cool chairs and such intriguing. . .' Whoa there, this is a thing you should think twice on. Notice how you say '*I* find ... intriguing'? It's not about you, it's about your workers - if someone tried to 'reward' me with a cool chair, I'd almost take it as an insult (I got a new chair a year ago and it's worse than the old one, but much more expensive so probably someone thought they were 'rewarding' me - I just don't know who to be pissed off at ). Whatever you do, make sure you talk with the people you are rewarding. Everyone needs and wants different things. Also, make sure it isn't a one-time thing: people need attention just like old automobiles. Talk with them every now and them, ask what's on their minds, make sure you know if anyone has anything they'd want to be addressed, and then act on it. My boss always asks me if I need or want anything when he's ordering stuff - little things, but I haven't spent any money on computer hardware in over two years. And he never forgets to ask, which is really nice. Good pay and being noticed and thought of, that feels good IMO.

Tue 31 Aug | Simon Lucy | Read up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs its much more fundamental than all that 'read my latest management technique' bollocks. Everyone has their own hierarchy, the basic elements of food, shelter, protection of family and so on will be quite common (though not universal, young single males have quite different hierarchies), but the higher levels will tend to deviate wildly. So Incentive/Reward schemes should be tailored to the individual. This is difficult on an industrial scale or for short term workers but is feasible on a departmental level for skilled and valuable workers. Jealousy between workers should be minimised if the scheme really has been tailored to their needs and if they feel they are being justly treated. In practice its actually the feeling of being treated in a just and fair way which is the hardest to accomplish.

Tue 31 Aug | Bongo Drums | There are two issues. Firstly, if some small additional pay is attractive, then the people are not being paid properly to start with. Secondly, if you have incentives, you have to create criteria, and that is very hard. Are you going to reward lines of code, freedom from bugs, meeting the deadline? Whatever you define, you distort the process and probably wreck the work, if professional work is at stake. That's why it's better to just pay professional people well to start with.

Tue 31 Aug | Steven | Hi, Incentive pay. This is a little like having sales. You get a short term gain, but then everyone starts expecting it. I guess it depends on whether you think people should get different amounts from year to year or everyone should get the same each year. If it's the latter, then how about an selection of things. Money, club membership (whatever, could be gym), tickets to sporting events or whatever. Everyone is going to want something different. So it might be worth either finding a few things so that everyone will want to do at least something. Maybe you can organise some bulk discounts with those places. Or, offering to pay for them as company benefits. That way the company and the employee receive more benefit (no tax to pay!).

Tue 31 Aug | xyzzy | Reward them with more work. Unpaid overtime builds character. If they do a good job, let them rescue other teams who do not program so well. At the same time, give praise to a job well done to the project manager who really didn't do anything. That is what most companies do. If it works for them, won't it work for you?

Tue 31 Aug | Clay Whipkey | 'In point of fact, True Professionals work for cold hard cash. It is amateurs who work for intrinsic satisfaction. That is the definition between professional and amateurs.' When one's only motivation is cold hard cash, the only thing that's important is that you *appear* to have done a great job. As long as management thinks you are a superstar, that is the only measurement of being professional, because they give you more money? This philosophy opens too much motive to cut corners and sweep crap under the rug. As long as things are not visible to anyone who signs paychecks, you are still a pro. Chrome-plated dogsh*t. If you have the wool pulled over the eyes of the keepers of the purse-strings, what is the motivation to do the little things that take extra effort and make programs efficient, scalable, maintainable? Those things are very often overlooked and overshadowed in the eyes of management, and its only your own pride in your craft that will motivate you to do those things right. There is more to a good working environment than making a ton of money. Yes, we should be paid for the true value of our knowledge, and that we can do what others need and can't do for themselves. But you need more than just the love of money to be an 'A' player. The quote sounds like it comes from someone who is not making a ton of money yet, and hates his job, and thinks that if he was making great money that would make it all better.

Tue 31 Aug | Sapporo | Clay, sounds to me like you're the one who is insecure about his pay. I do fine myself. Where did I say boatloads of cash are required? I do require market rates. Professionals work for cash, the satisfaction of a job well done comes with that as well. Amateurs have only the satisfaction of a job well done. That's well and good, but it does not give you the breathing room to really focus on your craft and do well because you are always hustling to get by. Who has more time to practice their art? Professional baseball players or amateurs? Professionals! They are paid well for what they do. To say as you are saying that being paid and requiring pay incentives as a precondition to working for others means that one does shoddy work is crapola of the most sublime variety.

Tue 31 Aug | Boofus McGoofus | Bottom line: Consistent pay => consistent work Spikes in pay => spikes in work If you have really studly people, pay them as much as you can afford. Then wander around every couple months and ask them what else you can do to make them happy. Training? New computer for home? Gym membership? Time off? Whatever they ask for (if it's reasonable), find a way to do it. You success depends on these people's brains and their brains will be more productive if they're happy (and if they stay with your company).

Tue 31 Aug | Clay Whipkey | 'To say as you are saying that being paid and requiring pay incentives as a precondition to working for others means that one does shoddy work is crapola of the most sublime variety.' Except.... that's actually *not* what I was saying. I said that people should be paid fairly. My main point is that money is not the only factor. Your first post about professionals being defined by seeking cold hard cash just gave off a wrong impression, but your last post indicates that you do understand there is more than just high salary that makes a programmer good. That's all I was shooting for. 'That's well and good, but it does not give you the breathing room to really focus on your craft and do well because you are always hustling to get by.' I made this same point earlier. I said you want people who have a passion about the quality of their work, and then you should pay them enough so that they don't have to be distracted from doing quality work by thinking about how they aren't paid enough. Sounds like we are on the same page now.

Tue 31 Aug | Ron Porter | Well, I don't know about 'incentive' pay, but in a business relationship, regular infusions of cash tells me you care. Every time I've been offered incentive pay, I got screwed, but an extra hunk of cash or x$/month that I get to spend as I see fit counts for something. I couldn't care less about some fancy chair for the office or BBQ for home. What I really want is a new doohickey for whatever hobby currently has my attention or whatever home repair is next on the list. Note that in Canada, just about anything the employer claims as an expense that goes to the employee (including training, in some cases) gets counted as a taxable benefit (I have to pay tax on the thing just as though you gave me cash instead).

Tue 31 Aug | Chris | Timothy, If I worked for you I'd want you to capitalize your "I's". It's quick, easy and free, plus it gives the people you communicate with the impression that you care enough to press a few extra keystrokes.

Tue 31 Aug | Timothy Flechtner | ah ha! chrIs, I care, and so henceforth, all I's that I send to you wIll be capItalIzed.

Tue 31 Aug | I am Jack's motivation (or lack thereof) | First, I didn't read every post so sorry if I'm regurgitating, it happens. I think it was B.F. Skinner (the behavioural psychiatrist that made 'skinner' boxes) that established some performance vs. reward basics. It is interesting that the absolute worst ratio of performance to reward he found was with 'fixed-interval positive reinforcement'. This is your paycheck. Anyway... on to a useful suggestion, I hope. Everyone loves to feel useful and intelligent. Depending on personalities, it is probably great to ask them questions you know they can answer. Then act amazed when they do, even though you may not really need/care about the answer. I'm a young developer so I know these things... :) Just ask a question. Giving an answer can make someone feel special. Encourage your senior developers to do this with junior developers. It really does matter, especially to younger people who tend to seek validation of their presence in the workforce more. With tangible rewards, I think it is best to change the reward so that its value cannot be known to those vying for it. This allows for larger incentive to be had from smaller overhead overall. I would also suggest not rewarding solely performance, but reward based on performance versus perceived potential. I would advise against negative reinforcement with programmers as a general rule. On the whole, I think many of us are our own worst critics. Even though many of us sport massive egos, our chosen level of narcissism requires an equal level of self-introspect. As a prize, if my workplace offered a sort of free-work-time that would be awesome. I would love to have some set interval of time that I could observe and just ask our other employees about their jobs so I could then come up with efficiency-improving processes. For that matter, I would love it if my whole job were like that... Go to a company, observe their business for a month or more. Describe benefits of processes that can be built that would save (wo)man-hours or somehow add value. Then let my boss pick what they want done and I get paid to do it. Any idea where one can find something like that?

Tue 31 Aug | Andrew Cherry | A time-and-motion man? Hehe, you'd be lucky not to get lynched by the local union... More seriously, look into something like the term 'business process analyst' off the top of my head...

Tue 31 Aug | Peter | Does your department have a "library?" Do your programmers spend around $200 per month each on books keeping current?

Tue 31 Aug | Pakter | Kudos for taking the time to think about rewards. - Days off should be widely appreciated (it does not have to be a lot of days, in my opinion. We were quite pleased when we were offered 5 days off. Two or three days off are nice, if you can choose them). - Books should be appreciated by people really interested in improving (but this will not cause crazy enthusiasm). If you are really happy with the way they work, you may ask them what they would like to have (or to suppress) - without promising miracles of course. Back on the topic, an _unexpected_ bonus can be OK, in my experience. This is quite different from 'incentive pay'.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | > A time-and-motion man? Hehe, you'd be lucky not to get lynched by the local union... 'Time and motion' studies provide data on the extent to which people are being overworked and over-supervised. They are welcomed by unions for use in court cases.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Clay Whipkey, you sound like the type of guy that thinks it's "not professional" to ask how much the recruiter is getting. Ever heard of the term: "sucker?"

Wed 01 Sep | Andrew Cherry | anon - time and motion studies were also used in industrial settings in the highly unionised UK 70's, to find areas where people were dong jobs in more complex ways than neccesary, and where efficiency savings could be made by changing the processes. This often resulted in a slimming down of the workforce. There are (Google?) accounts of time and motion studies being actively blocked, and strike action threatened, by unions unhappy at the possibility of redundancies resulting...

Wed 01 Sep | anonyman | A great book that discusses, among other things, a solid logical approach to tying incentives directly to performance is this one, from John and Pamela Caspari: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0471672319 I think that the approach outlined, even though it involves a reward mechanism, is sound and doesn't suffer from the breakdowns seen in other approaches, like those described in the article the OP is referring to.

Wed 01 Sep | Interested human | If I recall correctly, in the 80s, Tandy would ask potential hires to commit to working there before seeing their salary offer. They wanted employees who believed the company would treat them fairly and compensate accordingly, not people who were there only for the money.

Wed 01 Sep | Honu | An idea I just read about ( in a Tom Clancy Novel of all places) is to have a major player (i.e Vp of IT, someone high in the company hierarchy) take the deserving person/team to lunch. Look them in the eye and tell them that their hard work is being noticed and appreciated. Nothing boosts morale more than knowing that your work is having an impact. Of course the person making the acknowledgment has to be sincere, any kind of smarmy condensending 'praise' will backfire. Any way, sounds good on paper....

Thu 02 Sep | Confused | >commit to working there before seeing their salary offer Once more, the B.S. to imply that if you are programmer, this isn't your job, it's your priestly vocation. Maybe that was true when computers cost a ton of money, but now I can get programming jollies for $500 at WalMart plus a $15 a month internet connection. You can bet your ass that the VP that thought that idea up spent weeks negotiating his employment contract. PS: Haven't heard much from Tandy lately.

SQL Server Reporting Services | Mon 30 Aug | Scott Stonehouse

Im having problems with reporting services, and Im looking for some help. My report is a very simple matrix. 1) Exporting to PDF or Tiff results in lots of blank pages. 2) Exporting to Excel ignores the background colours I set for totals. The total label cell is coloured properly, but the actual value cells in the total column or row is left white. Anyone have any ideas? You can see my problem here. I need to print the reports. If you cant print from the report manager, and the rendering is messed up in the PDF, tiff and in Excel, what am I supposed to do? I posted this in the Microsoft newsgroup, and as usual got no response. Ive had better luck here. If there are lots of people using reporting services (and I can see from the Microsoft newsgroup there are), someone must have an answer. Because if there was no answer, nobody would be using it!

Mon 30 Aug | no name | Write to Scoble, he can direct you to someone.

Mon 30 Aug | Bizarro Philo | Have you looked at Crystal Reports lately?

Mon 30 Aug | Duncan Smart | Possilble answer to 1) - make the report narrower - the blank page you are seeing are likely the "overhang" of an over-wide page.

Mon 30 Aug | Scott Stonehouse | That's exactly what it is - a pagegrowing too big. But I'm sure it's a reporting services bug. The matrix is inside a list (of course). When the matrix grows, the list also grows. But the matrix fits the page, the list shoots onto the next page. Even though the list is supposed to be the same size as the matrix. The only way to get rid of the blank page is to shrink the matrix so that it only fills 3/4 of the page or something. That's no good when you are trying to develop a report. You end up with a tiny font and a whole bunch of whitespace.

Thu 02 Sep | Brian Welcker | Most likely the blank pages in PDF are caused by the matrix growing too large horizontally. Note that any items to the right of the matrix will get pushed horizontally as the matrix grows. The Excel color issue is probably related to the fact that colors get mapped to a limited Excel palette. We currently don't support custom palettes so you might have to try a slightly different color.

UML | Fri 27 Aug | .

UML is one of the current silver bullets - Every application manager (not the people actually developing, but the people looking to herd the developers) talks about looking to start using UML. I have talked to at least 6 of them making this observation. Worse still, it is the most inane diagrams that seem to get attention, like the worse than nothing use case diagrams (these things are such spectacular wastes of space that it boggles the mind). Yet we all pull an anoop and nod our head in agreement. This industry is such a fraud.

Mon 30 Aug | Leonid | I think the author made common mistake: he confuses UML with Unified Process. UML is language intended to describe design of system. It is good - because it gives you are COMMON language to describe design between number of people without saying - this box is class -and box inside box is sub system and e.t.c. Unified Process (Rational Unified Process - RUP) is methodology of designing software. It needs a lot of training to get used to it. Sometimes it successful but sometimes not…

Mon 30 Aug | Dino | Turn your diagrams into code, make the code work and then get your code back into diagrams. See what's changed and more importantly why it's changed. Then you'll have pertinent comments on UML diagrams. Including on the limitations of the UML. This industry is not a fraud; it's just incomplete or inconsistent :-) PS Joel would describe it as a leaky abstraction.

Tue 31 Aug | Amon | When code needs to be written, someone has to carry out the analysis and design. I do not find use case diagrams particularly useful because I have to type in the description anyway, it is easier to write a well formatted documet with my uses cases numbered. When documenting classes and the relationships between them, it is easier to use UML. Class , sequence and collaboration diagrams are far easier to write and understand than textual description. One caution though, you do not have to use each and every one of the diagrams available from the UML standard. I have had very few uses of State diagrams in my work. I only use what I need.

Thu 02 Sep | Cecilia Loureiro | IMHO Managers are interested in UML because they are more concerned with the problem that the software solves than with the software itself. If you see the problem from their point of view, you have: Problem/Real World ---> Model of RW --- > Specifications of the System -- > Software/Code UML helps to standardise the language between all the stages. So managers, coders and clients can be sure they are talking about the same thing. If one focuses only on the last stage (coding) the benefit of UML cannot be appreciated on its totality.

Thu 02 Sep | TheFBIgaveMeANewIdentity | 'This industry is not a fraud; it's just incomplete or inconsistent” Dino, I completely agree. Cecilia I think your diagram would look better if you add an extra stage: Problem/Real World ---> Model of RW --- > Analysis of Requirements --> Specifications of the System -- > Software/Code I don’t think UML is the silver bullet, but yet there is nothing better than can cope with the above.

"Don't fake the plural" | Wed 01 Sep | Blah

Eric Sink in his latest article states that micro ISVs should not present themselves to be bigger than they actually are (in terms of # of employees, etc). Does everyone agree? If Im the only person backing the product, is it better to to present Widget A from XYZ, Inc. (complete with info, support, and billing departmental email addresses), or does Widget A developed by Joe Smith sound better?

Wed 01 Sep | Dennis Forbes | Unless you plan on staying as one person, having separate contact emails, etc, isn't dishonest at all, and supports 'scaling' much better for obvious reasons. One thing Mr. Sink mentioned that I thought was a bit flawed was the observation that single-person companies use plurals, while mega corporations use singulars. I think that in the latter case mega companies know that you know that they're a mega company, with all of the benefits that entails (for instance theoretically stability), so it is beneficial for them to also present a personal 'we're people too!' front. In the former case, the single-person company, people have no idea how big or small you are, so it's entirely the front that builds the customer impression. As most buyers, especially businesses, distrust the stability of small firms it's obvious why there is a tendency to pluralize. Of course you can take it too far - I remember a particular thread on one board discussing the inflated pay and merits of CEOs, and a couple of 'I'm a CEO and I work hard for my money...blah blah blah' posts appeared. Some probing discovered that they are the CEO of a organization of 1 (sometimes maybe 2 or 3). Such inanity such as using the titles of mega corps is dishonest and, well, lame.

Wed 01 Sep | Eric Debois | I buy quite alot of audio software (VSTis and hosts and stuff) and in my experience the smalltimers offer way better support than the bigtimers. So, I prefer to buy from single developers or very small teams. Also as an early adopter and programmer, I sometimes even develop a semi personal relationship with the devs (Giving good bug reports go along way here) which allows me to influence the future of the product. All in all I get way better bang for the buck. Having said that, if I was buying some type of software that I didnt have any experience with, I would probably prefer a larger vendor. It boils down to confidence I guess. Are your customers confident, or will they need an authority to trust?

Wed 01 Sep | Oren Miller | CEO is not a title reserved for mega-corporations. It is simply the title for the executive in charge of day to day management of a corporation. If you are the only one in your corporation, guess what, that's you.

Wed 01 Sep | MicroISV Lou | I've run a micro ISV for some years and have used both. The problem with 'I' is you do get people who try to enter into some kind of 'relationship' and blab on and on seemingly for hours about their product ideas, or what they want to see in the next version, or they try to weasel a free copy of the newest version. When the email is addressed to you, it is hard to just ignore when you're too busy, so you can easily spend a full day just responding to 50 individual emailers. They all might mean well, but it really takes time. With an impression of 'we' and generic 'support@company.com,' at least they don't feel so bad when nobody responds, since most 'big' companies don't work at that level.

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. O | 'If you are the only one in your corporation...' In the U.S., you can't incorporate if there's only one of you (a 'P.C.' might be an exception, but wouldn't apply to an ISV).

Wed 01 Sep | Dennis Forbes | 'CEO is not a title reserved for mega-corporations. ' Right, but it sounds inane when applied to small organizations and publicized as one's role - a chief executive office of a executive division encompassing...one person. I suppose such a person is also the COO, the CIO, the CTO, the CRD, the Director, the Managing Director, and the Owner.

Wed 01 Sep | kc | You can incorporate with ANY number of people. It doesn't take anything except designating a legal agent to represent the corporation. It can even be a single person... For example, one high profile Senator and current US VP candidate incorporated a business in order to take some of a lawsuit payout as a divident instead of income... (Therefore avoiding the higher levels of taxation that exist on a personal income level and Social Security taxes.)

Wed 01 Sep | Mr. O | 'You can incorporate with ANY number of people. It doesn't take anything except designating a legal agent to represent the corporation.' What state are you talking about? Every state we looked at required a board of directors (besides a local agent), with various restrictions about who could double up in what positions. You can file for incorporation yourself and submit your bylaws, but until you've followed up with the list of board members, it's only provisional.

Wed 01 Sep | Chas Emerick ( http://www.snowtide.com ) | This is just an example where knowing your market is preferable to following the generalized advice of faraway writers. If your product is a solitaire game, or a web utility, or a website, or any other artifact that is cheap enough to be bought on a whim (or at least cheap enough to get thrown on someone's Visa without too much thought), then being personable and friendly, and saying 'I' instead of 'we' will probably benefit your image. However, if your product is anything that is marketed to companies, and is likely to be subjected to a purchasing process, saying 'I' will get you stopped at the door. Corporate mentalities are *very* cautious and conservative, and will shirk away from anything that looks like a one (or two, or five) man shop. Granted, the latter is pretty rare, at least in the 'micro-ISV' world, but it does happen, especially in very narrow verticals that just can't support a super-mega-corporation.

Wed 01 Sep | Aaron F Stanton | In the state of Indiana there is no minimum number to the board members. It is entirely possible to incorporate here. I've done it. (Not that I've had any sort of success at all, but that's a completely different story. Just pointing out that it's possible by example.)

Wed 01 Sep | Bob's your uncle | I know a guy who runs his own business. He is the one and only employee. He has business cards that say: His Name CEO How utterly pretentious and retarded.

Wed 01 Sep | ronk! | Many, maybe most businesses incorporate in a state a like Delaware that doesn't take corporate income tax. Your business need not reside in the state to incorporate there.

Wed 01 Sep | kc | Bob, Although you could technically title the owner of a ine-employee company anything (CEO, CIO, janitor, sr. developer), what else would you reasonably call them?

Use BTS as a personal organizer | Wed 01 Sep | Frank "Grimey" Grimes

Thinking about it, a true geek could set up a BTS like bugzilla, and use it as a sort of personal organizer, i.e. to do list: Spouse needs geek to fix something, so he/she enters it in as an issue in the BTS. (Are true geeks and marriage mutually exclusive?) Gotta remember to mow the lawn? BTS issue. What do you think? Any willing to confess?

Wed 01 Sep | Ewan's Dad | I'm not endeared to an automated honey-do list, but it sounds like you might have the beginnings of a new software category. :-)

Wed 01 Sep | devinmoore.com | What would be awesome is if it supported sound files, so that you could record the request, were anything to magically 'change' in between. 'I ASKED YOU TO DO XYZ!' 'Oh yeah? That's not what you SAID...' Of course, it would also have to come with a flying skillet protection mechanism, because that's the next thing that's coming your way after you try that level of back-talk! I think I'll stick with a paper list :)

Wed 01 Sep | PopCulture | I think you'll find heavy uses of certain state codes, such as: 'not a bug/ not our bug' 'works as designed' 'unable to replicate' 'Delayed till future release' or maybe thats just me...

Wed 01 Sep | kc | My wife and I use eGroupWare to track chores and such. Things are not marked complete until they are.

Wed 01 Sep | www.marktaw.com | Sure, and you can use some sort of device like the Danger Sidekick to surf from the supermarket because your shopping list is in there. It would seem tedious ticking 200 items as 'complete' upon checkout though. ;-) I think one of those refridgerator whiteboards and a pad of paper is good enough for me.

Wed 01 Sep | sgf | I don't have enough disk space for the things I never get around to.....

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | A Palm Pilot is pretty good for a shopping list. Enter ifrom the PC and sycnh

Bug tracking at Microsoft | Wed 01 Sep | Scott Stonehouse

Can any of you (former?) insiders enlighten the rest of us on the bug tracking policies at Microsoft? What criteria must be met before an issue makes it to the public knowledge base? Is there a policy restricting people form talking about known bugs until they are in the knowledge base? I spent a lot of time dealing some issues with Reporting Services (see my last post). The issues are not in the knowledge base, but after lots of searching on the newsgroups and web forums, I am convinced Microsoft insiders must know about them. What I dont understand is why these poeple dont answer my questions on the newsgroups, or even when I email them directly. It would have saved me (and all those poeple I emailed, and all the other people posting the same questions in the forums) a LOT of time if they had these issues posted in the knowledge base.

Wed 01 Sep | na na na na na | Because they have 50B and you don't

Wed 01 Sep | Ewan's Dad | Send your question to Chris Sells; you can find his email address at www.sellsbrothers.com. He's an MS insider in the MSDN group and he's usually responsive.

Wed 01 Sep | Chris Nahr | 'What criteria must be met before an issue makes it to the public knowledge base?' Totally subjective. As far as I can tell, bugs must be either really severe, or else not too embarrassing to Microsoft. And they must have a workaround, or at least seriously intend to fix it. Known bugs that make you shake your head but that don't infuriate any of their major clients simply remain known bugs -- and undocumented. Grab an archive of WDJ (Windows Developer Journal) back when whats-his-name was editor. They had a regular column on bugs in the Visual C++ compiler. More often than not, when they asked MS about a reproducible bug they would either get no reply at all, or the reply would be 'yeah, we know about that one' -- with no KB entry and no intention to fix it.

Wed 01 Sep | Scott Stonehouse | 'More often than not, when they asked MS about a reproducible bug they would either get no reply at all, or the reply would be 'yeah, we know about that one' -- with no KB entry and no intention to fix it. ' That's exactly my experience. I've really enjoyed watching interesting new tools come from Microsoft since the 'Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers!' speech. Development tools seem to be important again. MSDN webcasts, blogs from the development teams, community sites. It seems to me like things are improving. But damned if they will help you when you've found a bug. Especially if it's one they already know about. If they haven't seen it before, you might lure them into a conversation, because they think they can help you. But then the conversation ends with 'it might be a bug, I submitted it to so-and-so in such-and-such a dept.' If you get to that point, nobody will ever contact you again. I can only conclude that they have a policy that says, 'don't talk about bugs'. I even found a workaround for one of them, but I'm sure they aren't interested.

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | I once tried to report a bug to Microsoft. I went around an endless loop for an hour and a quarter and gave up.

Wed 01 Sep | Andrewm | There's definitely no policy here at MS about hiding or not admitting bugs. There's a big support service that tries to identify the most important bugs (measured in severity x number of customers who will experience it) and document, or find workarounds to, these problems. And we're all supposed to try to answer questions on newsgroups about the features or products we've worked on and therefore should know about. I guess there should be more.. Of course, any product will ship with many, many known bugs. To eliminate them all would mean never shipping. But all of the known bugs that ship in a product were considered not to be over the bar to fix, in terms of effort to fix vs customer pain. Bugs found in shipped and released products are much more expensive to fix. That's probably why, when you reach somebody at MS about a bug you're experiencing, and you get a reply like 'yeah, that's a known bug', is because it's just that - it's something they know about, and decided not to fix. Maybe it'll be fixed in another realease, but probably not before. It can be infuriating to be up against a bug that's killing your particular scenario, but isn't common or severe enough to cost MS money if it's not fixed. But it's definitely not policy to ignore or suppress bugs. Policy is the opposite. Reality is somewhere in between.

Equivalent of mshtml for Linux? | Wed 01 Sep | Banana Man

Is there any equivalent of mshtml for Linux? Preferably, I should be able to use it from Python? I need to be able to parse non-well formed HTML documents quickly and access any parts of them using a DOM-like functionality.

Wed 01 Sep | ice | Gnome's libxml might help you.

Wed 01 Sep | joev | You can do this with a combination of TidyLib (to clean up non-well formed HTML and convert to XHTML) and libxml2. TidyLib itself has uses a DOM-like structure as well, so you may not need libxml2, depending on what you're trying to do. http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ http://www.xmlsoft.org/ These are cross-platform, and will run on pretty much any OS. Since they are C-based, there are many 'wrappers' available for higher-level languages like Python and Tcl.

Wed 01 Sep | matt | There's also Tag Soup ( http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/XML/tagsoup/ ) and NekoHTML ( http://www.apache.org/~andyc/neko/doc/html/ )

Wed 01 Sep | Abe Fettig | There are many native Python libraries you can use, starting with thebuilt-in SGMLParser and HTMLParser modules. You might also take a look at Beautiful Soup: http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/

Wed 01 Sep | Simon Perreault | If I recall correctly, KHTML (Konqueror and Safari's rendering engine) has Python bindings.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Can you use MSHTML to parse a document without hosting IE?

Von Neumann and HCI | Wed 01 Sep | Aussie Chick

Does anyone in here konw the relevance of Von Neumann to the field of HCI? Is his main contribution to computer science really the Von Neumann Architecture? He is a big part of a computer science high school syllabus, and yet I have never heard of him (I did a comp sci degree, you would think I would have heard of him during that if he is relevant to high schoolers?) I can and am googling (please dont give me a google link). Just curious as to real thoughts on the guy and the things that may be considered common knowledge about him.

Wed 01 Sep | Vladimir Gritsenko | When you need good information of this sort, don't google, wiki it ;-) . So I'll just post the link here, because it's not google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann 'Von Neumann devised the von Neumann architecture used in most non-parallel-processing computers. Virtually every commercially available home computer, microcomputer and supercomputer is a von Neumann machine. He created the field of cellular automata without computers, constructing the first examples of self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. The term von Neumann machine also refers to self-replicating machines. Von Neumann proved that the most effective way large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt can be accomplished is through the use of self-replicating machines, to take advantage of the exponential growth of such mechanisms. In addition to his work on architecture, he is credited with at least one contribution the study of algorithms. Donald Knuth cites von Neumann as the inventor, in 1945, of the well known MergeSort algorithm, in which the first and second halves of an array are each sorted recursively and then merged together.' Now you know who you curse when you find yourself learning one algorithm for a few months...

Wed 01 Sep | yet another anon | I knew there was an impressive statement about him in 'Computer Architecture' (Hennessy / Patterson), so I looked it up. First, regarding the 'von Neumann machine': von Neumann worked on the ENIAC project with its creators J. Prester Eckert and John Mauchly. In 1944, he wrote a memo crystallizing the ideas the three had discussed. Herman Goldstine distributed the memo with only von Neumann's name on it. So von Neumann was inaccurately given full credit for the contents. I just wanted to clear that up, because I hate it when people aren't given credit when it is due. Later, Goldstine joined up with von Neumann and Arthur Burks. Regarding a paper they published in 1946, the book states: 'Reading it today, you would never guess this landmark paper was written more than 50 years ago, as most of the architectural concepts seen in modern computers are discussed there.' I'm forever in awe of people with that kind of foresight.

Wed 01 Sep | Aussie Chick | >In 1944, he wrote a memo crystallizing the ideas the three had discussed. Herman Goldstine distributed the memo with only von Neumann's name on it. Now that is interesting. I would love to find a source that confirms it.

Wed 01 Sep | yet another anon | Just google for von Neumann Eckert Mauchly. You'll find a lot of sources that confirm it.

Wed 01 Sep | Jon Dinlea | Not to cast aspersions, but what did your 'Computer Science' background consist of? I'm intrigued because I find it unfathomable that Von Neumann went unmentioned. This may be due to nationalistic influences (every country seems to dispute the primacy of certain technological breakthroughs) or something else. But I've also become alarmed at what some institutions call 'Computer Science.' I've seen this applied to everything from business data processing curricula to MCSE-oriented programs of late. Then again, maybe you just forgot about old John?

Wed 01 Sep | Aussie Chick | >Then again, maybe you just forgot about old John? This is possible. The degree just didn't focus much on the 'who's who' of history. I think we touched on babbage and ada in an early course (but then again that might just been some of my own reading), if it was in a course I imagine it would have been part of an introduction, rather then actually required knowledge. Yes, it is possible that he was mentioned yet I forgot him, but if that is the case, then he probably wasn't mentioned much. I would have thought with the amount of attention that the Queensland grade 11/12 syllabus give him that, yes, he would have played a much larger role in my CS degree. It is a shame, I find history interesting, I know it is something I will disperse through my lesson plans.

Wed 01 Sep | Ged Byrne | Jon, I think nationalism does play a strong part. Here in the UK Turing's seems more prominent, and Charles Babbage of course. Although I had heard of him, I really didn't encounter Von Neumann until I studied Econmics and read some his book on Game Theory.

Wed 01 Sep | as | 'When you need good information of this sort, don't google, wiki it ;-)' Or, hesitant though I am to suggest a ghastly old-fashioned thing like a book, look it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, where you will find many references to von Neumann's work in a wide variety of fields. When I was a lad, von Neumann was famous for his work on the foundations of quantum theory, especially his alleged proof of the impossibility of a hidden variable theory. He also pretty much invented game theory - William Poundstone's book 'The Prisoner's Dilemma' has a lot about von Neumann - and was rather vaguely credited with the concept of the stored-program computer. For von Neumann's role in the development of the computer, have a look at Alan Hodges' biography of Turing, 'Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence'. Again when I was a lad, nobody actually knew what a von Neumann architecture was, but it was vaguely considered to epitomise a serial architecture as against a parallel architecture. What is HCI, by the way?

Wed 01 Sep | no name | HCI? As in Human Computer Interaction? I don't know of anything you could say that vN contributed directly to HCI (architecture, for sure, and so of course indirectly to HCI).

Wed 01 Sep | Stephen Jones | I agree with as - Hodge's biography ot Turing is excellent, not least because of the credit given to others.

Wed 01 Sep | Tom H | If you want to learn more about Von Neumann, watch the movie Dr. Strangelove; that's him (he was wheelchair bound from cancer he developed building the Bomb).

Wed 01 Sep | as | Indeed. And if you want to know more about Keith Richards, be sure to watch "Pirates of the Caribbean".

Wed 01 Sep | Joe Blandy | If I remember correctly, the USPS plans to issue a stamp on JvN sometime in 2005. Carry on.

Multiple Build Machines or Just One? | Tue 31 Aug | Y)Y)M4

Am I supposed to have one build machine for each version of Windows that an application is targetted at? Right now, whoever changes a program last builds it, as we dont have nightly builds (trying to change that). Most applications are written in VB6, if it makes a difference. If I could just get away with using Windows 2000 that would be great.

Tue 31 Aug | Marc | Get VMWare or Virtual PC (if you have MSDN it is included with it). This will let you simulate a complete PC with whatever OS you wish on a single PC. You can even run a virtual PC with Windows 2000 Server and connect to it with a virtual PC running Windows XP. It isn't quite as nice as a real PC (it can be somewhat slow) but if you are simply testing for compatibility (as opposed to speed/performance) then they work great.

Tue 31 Aug | Y)Y)M4 | We have VMWare and MSDN and I am planning on making the build machine virtual for many reasons. I'm not concerned about speed at all, I'm more concerned about doing it right. Currently we just compile them on whatever OS whoever compiles it has (Win2K or WinXP). I want to eventually have automated builds, packaging, and testing. Test machines are another story. I use VMWare to test the applications on all the Windows versions.

Tue 31 Aug | Mark Bessey | You should only have one build machine. It shouldn't matter which OS you have installed on there, as long as whatever build tools you have will run on it. Whether or not you do regular nightly builds, every 'official' build should be done on the same machine. This helps to ensure consistency, which is the #1 goal of any rational build process. -Mark

Tue 31 Aug | Christopher Wells | > Am I supposed to have one build machine for each version of Windows that an application is targetted at? Our ambition was to have a single build that would *run* on any O/S, so needed a separate *test* machine (not a separate build machine) for each O/S.

Wed 01 Sep | GML | I have to agree with Mark, especially if you're only shipping 1 set of executables. We have 1 official build machine. Our build is actually 2 steps: 1. Get proper version 2. Build. If anything breaks, it indicates that someone didn't check sonething in properly and broke the build. It really helps that we have only 1 build machine. This helps keep things consistent.

Wed 01 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | You need one build config, and as many test configs as you care to support. Are you shipping source to the clients? Do you support several customer building configurations? In that case you'd want to test al these build configs. If you are not shipping source, or not supporting compilation by the customer, then stick to one build setup.

Wed 01 Sep | Y)Y)M4 | Killer, you guys are the best.

Wed 01 Sep | Dino | One build machine may not work; it all depends on what components your software links into and if these components run (or not) across multiple os versions. There are instances where you end up in a versioning problem which forces you to use multiple build machines.

Database access in Web applications | Tue 31 Aug | S

Assuming Im writing a simple web page that displays an article. It needs to display the content of the article, but also the name of the author. The author is linked to the article using an author Id field. The authors table also contains information that is irrelevant to this page, like the username of the author, or his phone number. In order to keep the actual code clean of SQL, I would write two classes that represent an Article and an Author. When initializing the Article it would normally select everything it can about the article, and then initialize the Author object, again, selecting everything it can about him. Obviously, this model can be very resource hungry, especially when using inside a bigger application. Is there a better way to design this without falling back to a plain, single SQL query?

Tue 31 Aug | .NET Guy | Assuming there are likely to be small set of authors, maintain the entire set of Author objects in memory as a shared resource; load all the data in one go at system startup, and make sure all Author create/update/delete operations go through a broker class so you can write through your cache in memory. That way, you only ever need the author ID which is already in the article table; this gives you the lookup you need to fetch the Author object directly without another query. Obviously, this pattern only really works if there are a limited number of authors, and that number is likely to stay limited. If not, you can use a fetch-on-demand, cache-recent-requests strategy. Either will offer you better performance than just fetching the author info from the database every time.

Tue 31 Aug | OO yeah whatever.. | Do you need to deal with the abstract notion of 'Article' and 'Author' in a lot of different places? Is there a lot of business logic, aside from just the data, that is associate with 'Articles' and 'Authors'. If not, just write a simple SQL query and be done with it. How is 'select article.content, author.name from article, author where article.authorid = author.id' more complicted than creating classes, get/set methods for each property, save/get/delete methods etc.? I'm more and more convinced that OO designs which consist of a bunch of classes that have the same attributes and names as underlying database tables (which often seems to be the case) are just a waste of effort and a layer of complexity that hides what's really going on. Why write, debug, and have to maintain a bunch of code that re-implements what the underlying database is already modeling natively?

Tue 31 Aug | Mike Swieton | If there's not a lot of domain logic, there's nothing wrong with a transaction script style architecture. And it doesn't sound like you have much complex logic there. Of course, moving a transaction script to a full OO-style domain model is hard, so if you are sure you'll need it, don't hesitate to make the classes. Code for the complexity level you're *sure* you'll need, and no more. I plug the book a lot, but it really is that good: go read Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. This question sounds like you're interested in his chapter on object/relational mapping.

Wed 01 Sep | RedFox | Make one class call 'Backend', another called Result [was discussed here in the past] and put the SQL behind it. Use proper wording for the methods. backend.findAuthodById(aid) backend.findBooksOfAuthorAsList(aid) backend.findAuthorsOfBook(bid) Result r = backend.findAuthorById(id) if (r.isSuccess()) { ResultSet rs = (ResultSet)r.getExtraData(); <> } else { die } In fact you can generalize the backend methods: backend.findByQueryWhereOrderByAsView( queryName, whereClausen default null, orderClause default null, view default 'list' ): Result Then a bunch of : backend.UpdateXXX and backend.calculateXX and backend.prepareReportXYZ methods will do the job. Why avoid showing that we have a DB when it is so powerful to use its features ? Why putting a ton of abstractions on top of each other to display a list in a rectangle on a web page ? Too much clutter in backend ? Yeah sure, put some delegates in it if you need to so that it stays manageable by a team. If you are the single developer, don't mind and put everything in there. What you can also do is to pass a Command object as an extra parm for added flexibility.

Wed 01 Sep | sagi | I only gave the simplest possible example. My actual code is much more complicated than this. Assuming I am building an e-commerce website with many different supplier. In any page I need to access several variables from the supplier table, like his name, email, etc. In some pages I also need to access a function which calculates the possible amount of payments depending on the cost of Product and some variables that are different to each supplier. The supplier class must also do some other actions, like validation when updating the supplier details through the site admin interface. So the options I have: 1. Wrtie a proper Supplier class that initializes itself with all it can about the Supplier, including details I may never need anywhere on this part of the website. 2. Load only the basic supplier details in each request, and only select the payment details when I need them, in another sql query. Here I may have another problem - where do I put the payments code, and how do I initialize it? in this model the Supplier object is not complete. This is, again, only a small example - in a real website I may have those issues again and again in many different objects. Until now I found myself just falling back to normal SQL in many places, but I always wonder what is the 'right way' to do it.

Wed 01 Sep | Andrew Cherry | What language is this?! If you have a language which will allow you to easily override the accessors, create a class with lazy initialisation for the parameters that you only need rarely, and/or would be expensive to compute/request. This should be trivial in something like C# or PHP5. And definitely look in to books on Patterns of Data Access. Well worth reading.

Wed 01 Sep | Slaphead | The following Microsoft whitepaper discusses options for what you describe: http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/application/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/boagag.asp Their recommendation is to design your Business Entities around your application functionality rather than mapping directly to tables. To do your example in .Net, this translates to creating a Dataset to represent the important fields of the Author and Article tables rather than all the fields. Does this help?

Wed 01 Sep | sagi | > What language is this? Currently using PHP4, but slowly migrating to 5. > And definitely look in to books on Patterns of Data Access. Well worth reading. I will. I will also be thankful if anyone could point me to some well designed open source projects that implement those patterns.

Wed 01 Sep | Egor | One word: Class::DBI (http://search.cpan.org/~tmtm/Class-DBI-0.96/lib/Class/DBI.pm http://www.class-dbi.com). It's Perl, not PHP, but looking at it should give you an idea how to better approach the problem. Availability of tools like this was one of the reasons I said good-bye to PHP after four yeas of fighting with it. It never matures, just grows.

Wed 01 Sep | Clay Dowling | The DBI model is available in several languages, in fact, or something close to it. PEAR::DB, for instance, is a great choice for database abstraction in PHP. libdbi offers the same features for C/C++ (although admitedly for a very small number of database engines). When faced with this very same situation I decided that what my classes needed was a way to get information from an query, not just one that it had initiated. This let me populate my author object from the same query that populated my article object. It cut down on the number of queries, and ensured that all access to the database would be treated identically by the object.

why bother | Tue 31 Aug | Dr. Real PC

This is from a CS text book, and I think explains why some of us bother with programming, in spite of all the aggravation and not being appreciated by managers or users. [Our traffic with the subject matter of this book involves us with three foci of phenomena: the human mind, collections of computer programs, and the computer. Every computer program is a model, hatched in the mind, of a real or mental process. These processes, arising from human experience and thought, are huge in number, intricate in detail, and at any time only partially understood. They are modeled to our permanent satisfaction rarely by our computer programs. Thus even though our programs are carefully handcrafted discrete collections of symbols, mosaics of interlocking functions, they continually evolve: we change them as our perception of the model deepens, enlarges, generalizes until the model ultimately attains a metastable place within still another model with which we struggle. The source of the exhilaration associated with computer programming is the continual unfolding within the mind and on the computer of mechanisms expressed as programs and the explosion of perception they generate. If art interprets our dreams, the computer executes them in the guise of programs!]

Tue 31 Aug | Actively Disengaged | 'exhilaration associated with computer programming' Especially when you bring down the production server... :)

Tue 31 Aug | sgf | Or, (since I work in embedded control) when you mistakenly send the 100 lb table of a machine tool crashing through the end stop and onto the floor!

Tue 31 Aug | Alex | That too is fun, but really fun is when safeguards are in place and you have to be creative!

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Where is the quote from, please?

Wed 01 Sep | Just me (Sir to you) | Geeks and bongs, a deadly mix.

Wed 01 Sep | Inigo | SICP: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/front/node1.html

Wed 01 Sep | no name | Ta.

Reading technical (technical!) books | Tue 31 Aug | attention span - and there it goes

Whats your completion percentage distribution for technical books? Im trying to figure out if I have a poor attention span or not. My first programming/technical book ever, Teach Yourself C, I only got about halfway through. My second C book--also about halfway through. Pascal book--all the way through (for a class). Java book--about 4 chapters in of 15. Access developers handbook - halfway through. Delphi book bought cheap--never really opened, of course I didnt even have the compiler so what does that do for me. Lisp book - three chapters in before throwing in the towel. HTML book-about three chapters, then I flip back and forth for reference whenever I need it. Introduction to Databases by Date - I think I managed a chapter or so. The first book I read cover to cover was Eric Gunnersons C# for Programmers book, partially because I was very interested in C#/.NET and partially because there was no extra/boring fluff. I havent finished any book completely since that time. So I score pretty poorly. Only one book I completely finished, and I average about a third of a book before moving on. I love all sorts of novels (the latest is Umberto Ecos tangled web Foucaults Pendulum) but I just cant seem to sit down and run through an entire technical manual. So what does it take for you all to wade through a technical book? A conservatory? Motivation? Coding experiments? Because whatever it takes, apparently I dont have that...whatever that is.

Tue 31 Aug | Zach M | I typically don't finish technical books with the possible exception of the for dummies books.. Generally I'll read parts of technical books, but for the most part use them as references.

Tue 31 Aug | Chris Tavares | I usually finish the technical books I've gotten, if by 'finished' you mean 'looked at every page.' In general, I don't really *read* technical books anymore; I skim them, get the general idea of what they're talking about and file it away for later use. For some reason my brain is really good about 'oh yeah, I read about that in xxx' type recollection. So skimming gives me enough so that when I hit the problem later I know where to look.

Tue 31 Aug | patrick | i read the majority of Balena's VB.net book. I skipped a good deal of the Graphics chapters. Very informative and LONG book (over 1200 pages). I highly recommend this book. But, more of a reference/example and read what's important to you book. When it was all said and done, i remember very little of it. Mainly because there was soooooooooooo muuuuuuuuuchhhhhhhh!

Tue 31 Aug | anonymous for this one. | Friend of mine read the first Java reference manual three times cover to cover when it first came out. He has since had an excellent Java career. Me, I'm the chapter one king of the universe. Wish I had more concentration.

Tue 31 Aug | yet another anon | I used to be dogmatic about finishing every tech book I started. I would get pangs of guilt seeing unfinished works on my bookshelf. Gradually I've gotten over it. Now I read the first 1/4 quickly then either skim the rest or just use them for reference. I read an interview with Charles Petzold ('Programming Windows') in which remarked that he was always surprised to meet someone that read the entire book. He envisioned that readers would just look at the parts they needed.

Tue 31 Aug | anon-88 | >>Me, I'm the chapter one king of the universe. Wish I had more concentration. Lol, I must be the prince then. Ive been getting better since getting a safari subscription. :)

Wed 01 Sep | James U-S | I have a couple that I have read completely but they're the exception not the rule! Mostly I use them as a reference when I need them, or for learning something totally new will read as much as is necessary to start feeling comfortable then go away and experiment, referring back when needed. Of course, there are one or two that I never even got that far with!

Wed 01 Sep | Ian Cheung | I've found active reading helps a lot. (not the same as speed reading). The idea is you skim through, pick the chapters you want to get most out of, like pointers in C. Write down specific questions about the chapter you are seeking answers to. Read through to find those answers. answer those questions on paper, yes writing it down helps. That way you get as much out of a technical book in the areas as you really needed. You also get a lot of background info on the general topic. It is totally different to the Read Every Word On Every Page And Not Move On Until You Understand It method. The REWOEPANMOUYUI method is why most people don't finish tech books. You get bogged down in the bits you don't fully understand which may or may not be important to you and it drains away all your energy and initial interest to read it. One other thing that has made a big difference to me is to realise that making notes in the margins is not scarligous, it aids understanding which is the purpose of the book. I used to keep each book pristine but since I started to use a pen (don't be tentiative and use a pencil) to make my own personal notes I have understood subjects better. Also helps when you review or give the book to someone else.

Wed 01 Sep | redguardtoo |






That's enough to help you earn high salary and pretend to be a hacker.



enough to manage a project.


redguardtoo
http://www.d2ksoft.com

Wed 01 Sep | OffMyMeds | Skimmer / non-finisher here, same as everybody else. The exceptions so far: The Pragmatic Programer Coder to Developer I found every chapter in TPP engaging and the whole thing is an enjoyable read. I'm on Chapter 5 of C2D right now, but I can see it's the same way. Ian, great suggestions for active reading! I'm going to try those. Also, I do a lot of my tech reading on the eliptical machine at the gym. I think that helps because working out is so mind-numbingly boring the book is riveting by comparison. It's cool too because it motivates me to workout, which motivates me to read. The downside is looking like the biggest nerd in the gym, but that would probably be the case with or without book in hand.

Wed 01 Sep | Kenny | i've had success from looking up reviews online before purchasing a book. there aren't too many tech authors who are entertaining writers. most of 'em are excrutiatingly boring (microsoft press books come to mind) joel's a good example of a guy that's technically savvy yet easy to read. --yeah, i'm wiping mouth, so what! :P-- don box is another...

Wed 01 Sep | Peter | If the books are like the ones redguard mentioned, they are easy to read cover-to-cover. If they are like 'xslt cookbook' or 'spidering hacks,' then I bought them for one of the chapters or a piece of code. I don't get bent out of shape if I don't finish a technical book. Some of the books can best be described as 'here is my code and you are welcome to it.'

Commenting out | Tue 31 Aug | Mneumonic

This is a naive questions - but it is bugging me. How does one comment out a XML doc? !- comment out -! ///comment out /* comment out Thanks for your help :)

Tue 31 Aug | Christopher Wells |

Tue 31 Aug | Alex | Christopher, you post doesn't show! :)

Tue 31 Aug | no name | Aley, you're mean (but that is pretty funny).

Tue 31 Aug | devinmoore.com | no wait, i got it: or is it: or maybe: <'>

Tue 31 Aug | Messer, Gabel, Feuer, Licht | devinmore: it's none of your suggestions, I'm afraid

Tue 31 Aug | test | Please don't treat the following lines as code.

Tue 31 Aug | Brad Wilson | Devin was actually being humorous, you know. :)

Tue 31 Aug | redguardtutu | I am meaning to make softwares to make American lazy programmer funny ha ha and I think there is muchs market for such a utility. What did you tinks?

Tue 31 Aug | no name | Like This ( I have commented out the following line):

Wed 01 Sep | www.marktaw.com | http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204/#dt-comment 2.5 Comments [Definition: Comments MAY appear anywhere in a document outside other markup; in addition, they MAY appear within the document type declaration at places allowed by the grammar. They are not part of the document's character data; an XML processor MAY, but need not, make it possible for an application to retrieve the text of comments. For compatibility, the string '--' (double-hyphen) MUST NOT occur within comments.] Parameter entity references MUST NOT be recognized within comments. Comments [15] Comment ::= '' An example of a comment: Note that the grammar does not allow a comment ending in --->. The following example is not well-formed.

Wed 01 Sep | no name | It doesn't allow them to be nested either :-(

Wed 01 Sep | i like i | golly, I always thought that you could use as many - as you want as long as you close them appropriately...

Growing your business | Tue 31 Aug | ThisIsSerious

Anyone have any experiences to share about going from a consulting / virtual team, to a "real" consulting business (with offices, a salesperson, fulltime employees)? How did you do it? Was it a matter of waiting for that "huge project" that gives you the resources to expand?

Tue 31 Aug | Sgt. Sausage | ==>Anyone have any experiences to share about going from a consulting / virtual team, to a 'real' consulting business (with offices, a salesperson, fulltime employees)? How did you do it? Was it a matter of waiting for that 'huge project' that gives you the resources to expand? To paraphrase Nike: JUST DO IT! There are no secrets, and there are as many ways to actually do it as there are ' 'real' consulting business[es]' If you're waiting on that 'huge project', you may be waiting forever. We typically get the 'huge project' only about every 3 years. The bulk of our projects are small one-to-three month projects. The thing is, don't spend it all. Bootstrap it. The profit made from this job, goes to investing in the business for use on the next job (and so on).

Tue 31 Aug | Christopher Wells | > How did you do it? I've never done it, but perhaps instead of 'waiting for a huge project', the way to do it is when you get one project, you don't let that prevent you from continuing to look for another one: perhaps have junior people who you're mentoring, who do some of the work of implementing existing projects, which leaves you free to do the hardest portion (i.e. the initial portion) of new projects.

Wed 01 Sep | Bored Bystander | Sgt Sausage, A question about your tact of hiring a sales person. Do you think that this approach would scale to a one person shop? Or let me turn it around. Suppose it was just you in the business, and your new business development sucked and you felt that you needed a boost like this. What would you do? Every programmer that I know that is any good is employed, so the pool of partner candidates is slim. And somehow, I don't think the answer for me is to band with other techies who have the same aversion to the marketing process. My guess is that this could work if I were willing to assume the role of a manager and subcontract work out if the sales person was 'too successful' (that sounds funny...)

why bother being a coder | Tue 31 Aug | whyBother

Youll never get to run the business, and even if you run your own, you need experience in sales and marketing. The jobs are slowly disappearing job (in the US at least) and businessmen always win, no matter what. The Joel Spolskys of the world will run your work life, anyway. And really who cares if you write yet another software tool amongst the thousands out there. Lacking an original idea to market for yourself, why be a coder? (dont forget to vote for Bush)

Tue 31 Aug | Jim | For the pay. (Remember to vote for Kerry).

Tue 31 Aug | Ogami Itto | Because it's the only thing some of us can do. And we're too lazy to learn new tricks.

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | Why bother being alive? You're just a dust speck among more than 6 billion animals of the same species. So stop wasting the earth's resources, as you'll probably never achieve anything of importance anyway.

Tue 31 Aug | a programmer | You're right, I would never want to be just a coder. However, a *developer* has skills that include coding, but could include any of the following: designing, requirements gathering, project management, testing, communication, etc., etc. And who says developers can't learn business? Some of the best and most successful people I know have both business *and* techincal skills.

Tue 31 Aug | Bored Bystander | >> The Joel Spolsky's of the world will run your work life, anyway. Jeez, the average programmer should have it so good. Try being whipsawed by sales types or Type A owners who hate the software process and just want you to booger things together. Or for REAL fun try working for companies managed by ex-capital goods manufacturing executives who see everyone under them as a factory worker. I'd much rather work (as an employee) for one of my own kind than someone who is ignorant of this field who just wants to push a button on the 'code monkey' and get a result...

Tue 31 Aug | a programmer | (Remember to vote for Nader)

Tue 31 Aug | salad cream | remember to vote for hitler

Tue 31 Aug | EHBudd | Ok, someone mentioned Hitler. The thread is officially over.

Tue 31 Aug | whyBother | ---Why bother being alive? You're just a dust speck among more than 6 billion animals of the same species. So stop wasting the earth's resources, as you'll probably never achieve anything of importance anyway.--- And what earth-shaking achievements have you? Coders, even developers, do nothing for the long run. The best ideas get nowhere without a savvy marketeer, period. Sure, the people who build the stuff have a part, but really now, they are just as good as say, the many casualties that built the Empire State building. The sad part about being the actual writer of the software is that you will be forgotten, no one will care what you did. Some of you will get personal satisfaction, but all your brain power is wasted.

Tue 31 Aug | Wisedude | Remember to vote for salad cream.

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | 'And what earth-shaking achievements have you?' At the moment, none, as I'm a mere newbie. This is irrelevant, though. I have a future. What's your excuse? 'Coders, even developers, do nothing for the long run. The best ideas get nowhere without a savvy marketeer, period.' Yeah. That Guido fellow? He must've had a gazillion dollars as a marketing budget, didn't he? 'The sad part about being the actual writer of the software is that you will be forgotten, no one will care what you did.' As opposed to doing... what, exactly? Most scientists, for example, even the good ones among them, never achieve popularity among the laymen, even if their efforts saved said laymen's asses and elevated their standards of living. Same goes for every politician, every businessman, every doctor, every human being. 'Some of you will get personal satisfaction, but all your brain power is wasted. ' Your problem is some kind of star disease. It's not depressing at all, most of the time, and working for the Joels of the world is way better than doing a lot of other things, including popularity for trivial acomplishments. Maybe your success yardstick is recognition, but mine is real achievement and satisfaction. All kinds of creativity-supressing asses exist in this world, both in coding and otherwise. Coding isn't different from other endavours in those respects.

Tue 31 Aug | GD | Because I really enjoy it? I work for a really wonderful company who's product I use and admire, and the thought of my own work being a part of that is inspiring in itself. Then there's the money... (P.S. for those who contend that an idea needs great marketing to get off the ground, I suggest you listen to The Free Software Song by RMS, and then go admire GCC. You'll soon see the error of your ways ;)

Tue 31 Aug | muppet | My nipples act as fulcrums for the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Without me you're all doomed.

Tue 31 Aug | Simon Lucy | If there were a way in this life of guaranteeing, beyond murder, never hearing RMS sing that song again I would take with alacrity and give it away to the world for free.

Tue 31 Aug | Steve-O | [remember, why bother voting...]

Tue 31 Aug | Aaron F Stanton | Simon - Well, jamming needles into your eardrums might guarantee never hearing the song. A bit painful, maybe, but it's not murder. :)

Tue 31 Aug | devinmoore.com | What should we be doing instead? Posting cynical, self-defeatist threads in JoS? Guess what, I like my job, and without programmers, this board, the internet, your computer software, and probably most of the things you hold dear wouldn't exist. I enjoy my life. If you don't, maybe YOU should change, not all of us.

Tue 31 Aug | Alex | >> The best ideas get nowhere without a savvy marketeer. And the savvy marketeer gets nowehere without your best ideas. No man is an island.

Tue 31 Aug | muppet | No man is an island, but life is a highway, and I'm gonna ride it, all night long.

Tue 31 Aug | old_timer | In a past life, I knew a guy who was a low level machine operator. He worked on drill presses pretty much his whole career. He'd take the part, put it under the drill, pull the handle, throw the part on a bin, repeat several thousand times a day. It was totally mindnumbing. I couldn't do it for an hour without going bonkers. He loved it. Now, this guy was not stupid, nor was he a boring twit. He simply had no ambition and didn't want to think. He did an honest days work for an honest days pay. Simple as that. This past weekend we're eating at a local diner and my daughter sees a guy clearing tables and notes he's been doing this for as long as she can remember. She wondered why hasn't he risen above busing tables in 15 years? Who knows? If he's doing it either he has no desire or no ability to rise to the next level. If you like to write code, write code. if you don't, then quite and do something else. If you have higher ambitions, concentrate on what it takes to rise above it.

Tue 31 Aug | moseswhitecotton | I often wondered how some people who seem to be very intelligent, interesting, and fun could spend their days doing mundane tasks, then I read this book: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ( amazon http://tinyurl.com/6cfmd ) its a tough book to get throught but some very interesting observations.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | You called the 'flow' book tough? It's quite an easy reading in my opinion.

Tue 31 Aug | no name | I bother to be a coder so I can spend my time on these type of forums.

Tue 31 Aug | www.marktaw.com | I thought the first 4 or so chapters of Flow were the important once. Everything else kinda dragged and rehashed the same information. Ironically, I didn't experience a flow state while reading Flow, but I'd still recommend it, for the first half dozen chapters anyway.

Tue 31 Aug | kc | I'd happily work for Joel as opposed to 90% of the bosses I've seen/met out there.

Tue 31 Aug | Ross | Lacking an original idea? Vote for Bush. I agree we should outsource all such people. :-)

Tue 31 Aug | RedFox | I work for myself and I am a coder at the core; No problem being business savvy BTW. Since I've got most of what I want (nice place to live, wife, car, good machines to play with) and 6 months of cash in the bank in case of trouble, life is fine. My job will be removed ? Yeah, I just work on a $15 Mios project as advisor... Climb up the food chain. But being a developer helps a lot in being credible. And partner with the enemy if you cannot beat them. (Large indian company, signed a deal of 800 mandays for an account they now work for). So, fuck the naysayers & remember what Heinz said: 'Success is doing common things uncommonly well' ... there is a wide gap between awareness & skill. Bring them on !

Tue 31 Aug | whyBother | So you become the enemy rather than outsmarting them. Yeah, that's a score for coders.

Tue 31 Aug | . | > Lacking an original idea? Vote for Bush. I agree we should outsource all such people. :-) Yes: get yourselves a nice, Dutch parliament instead.

Tue 31 Aug | Honu | Shouldn't feed the troll but its the end of boring day soe WTF: First you say: >>Lacking an original idea to market for yourself, why be a coder? But than when RedFox says that he is a coder who is succesfully marketing for himself, you say: >>So you become the enemy rather than outsmarting them. If your going to troll at least re-read what you previously posted... Sounds to me like someone is feeling inadequate and is looking to blame others instead of doing something to make a real change.

Tue 31 Aug | whyBother | The 'typical' coder position is anti-establishment. I was merely pointing out that people who consider themselves 'real' coders would never 'sell out'. Which proves my point, actually. In order to win the game, you eschew that which made you a great coder in the first place. No, being a manager or sales or marketing type doesn't necessarily make you anti-coder, necessarily, but many would debate this point. The game is rigged, you decide whether you want to be a cog in the wheel or be the one calling the shots. No matter how you slice it, unless you become the hateful enemy, your brainpower is being used for other people's monetary gain while you get little.

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | A 'rigged game', eh? In this game, it's trivial to dictate your own terms, and choose your own lifestyle, be it corporate, freelancing, ISV-ing or OSS development. There's a saying in Russian - 'плохому танцору яйца мешают' - freely translated (by yours truly) as 'a bad dancer always complains about his balls'.

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | AH! What's up with the borked displaying! D-:

Tue 31 Aug | Kalani | You have a strange idea about the relationship between businesspeople and software people. Yes, in a certain sense you're a tool for somebody else's ambition -- they use your talent to get what you want. But that's the nature of cooperation and the working world. You are also supposed to use them as a tool to get what you want. This is a 'cynical' way of describing a perfectly harmless thing. The work world is not zero-sum. It's very important that you build a good relationship with the businesspeople or managers in your organization. Either they're sensible people, in which case they'll be more than happy to negotiate with you to make sure that you're both winning something from your deal, or they're unreasonable people and they'll use fear and intimidation to get what they want out of you. Think about the fate of nations. What kind of nations thrive? Which ones fail? Help build an organization like the nation that you want to live in.

Tue 31 Aug | Kalani | '... somebody else's ambition -- they use your talent to get what you want' should be '... somebody else's ambition -- they use your talent to get what they want'

Tue 31 Aug | Vladimir Gritsenko | But what if you're an individualist and an anti-nationalist?

Tue 31 Aug | aarrgghh | > The 'typical' coder position is anti-establishment. > I was merely pointing out that people who consider > themselves 'real' coders would never 'sell out'. > ... hated enemy... blah blah blah ... Oh, grow up. The 'hated enemy' is our gravy train, kid. And we're his. If nobody sells the product, nobody buys it, and nobody gets paid. I've worked with a lot of developers who understood that, and with a lot of sales, marketing, and management people who understood the corollary: If there's no product, or if the product is hopelessly bad, they've got nothing to sell and nobody gets paid then, either. There are dysfunctional companies out there, but there are good ones, too. As an adult, you have to work with people who aren't exactly like you. You *can* learn to do that, and if you've got a halfway open mind, it's fun. Who the hell wants to look in a mirror all day, every day, for his entire life? Teenagers do, of course, but most of them grow out of it. Last of all, the best managers I've worked for have been former programmers who got interested in management. It turns out that management, like programming, can be interesting and fun if you care about doing it well. Management, like programming or anything else worth doing, is the art (or craft, or filthy habit) of solving problems as well and as cheaply as possible, and many of those problems turn out to be interesting. A good manager can make his team's lives better and make the product better at the same time; the two are not necessarily unrelated. That way, everybody has more fun and makes more money. Fun is good. Good products are better. Money is best of all. If you're a galley slave writing stupid DB frontends at a bank, I don't suppose your life will be worth living anyway... but that's an edge case. If you do happen to be in that kind of trap, work on your resume. Find or invent excuses to do more technically interesting stuff at your job (you can *always* do that, believe me). Take on contract work doing more serious stuff than whatever VB misery they're paying you for. Put all those good things on your resume, and go find a better job. Across the board: Be persistent and aggressive. Pull your head out of your ass and quit feeling sorry for yourself. Find what you want and get it. If you're just bitching because nobody's coming by to hand you paradise on a plate for free, you deserve to suffer. So what if the job market's bad? Do you have anything BETTER to do than work for a better job? How many nights a week can you stumble home and masturbate in front of the same 'Laverne and Shirley' rerun for five hours?

Tue 31 Aug | jdm | four more years... time to immigrate.

Tue 31 Aug | whyBother | 'How many nights a week can you stumble home and masturbate in front of the same 'Laverne and Shirley' rerun for five hours?' Actually, I do my self-stimulation in front of Law and Order SVU reruns.

Tue 31 Aug | - | whyBother, who is it on that show that does it for you? The original, blond D.A.? Or her successor, the redhead? Or is it Detective Benson?

Wed 01 Sep | trollop | ' four more years... ... time to immigrate.' They'd fail you on the language test any place you wanted to go. Are you arriving or fleeing?

Wed 01 Sep | Vladimir Gritsenko | 'Actually, I do my self-stimulation in front of Law and Order SVU reruns.' Can't even get proper porn, eh? Pathetic.

Wed 01 Sep | RedFox | They are not the enemy, some of them are pretty great and kick ass. Okay, they are millions and this gives a sizeable chunk of crappy ones. It's just that american people are less numerous and the chunk of crap is smaller in absolute terms. I am not that sure about the relative terms. The largest & cheapest pool will get the money. We all have brains & w/ motivation the big number will learn enough to wipe the smaller crowd out of the surface. Still, there will be interesting things in your local market. As a sidenote, get a shot @ using RAC or eLance. When provided with a clear spec and a base architecture, they will produce good results for cheap. Okay you'll have to do some QA but much less that you would have to do on your own. Come to realize it, there is just a given quantity of work that someone can do per day, no matter how smart he/she is. And as for not being a coder, meet you at a demoparty so that I can blow your mind w/ some funky code. And I want the money so that I can have some freetime (target is 50% of daytime) for my little hobbies. So far, it works.

Wed 01 Sep | Nemesis | 'The Joel Spolsky's of the world will run your work life'. God, what an awful prospect. I love coding because it is creative. I was never any good at art or music or anything, but I think creating solutions out of tiny bits (mind the pun) is pretty amazing sometimes.

Wed 01 Sep | - former car owner in Queens | 'The Joel Spolsky's of the world will run your work life'. Having been reading Joel's writing for years, and having visited the Fog Creek offices in person, I personally would consider working for Fog Creek to be a career high point. (back to my noisy soulless cube farm in an ugly soulless neighborhood working for a massive soulless organization)

Wed 01 Sep | Kenny | >>You'll never get to run the business, and even if you run your own, you need experience in sales and marketing. if you wanted to run the business, why did you become a coder to begin with? and if you run your own, you can actually hire people for sales and marketing... cool concept, huh?

Wed 01 Sep | Squiggy | 'How many nights a week can you stumble home and masturbate in front of the same 'Laverne and Shirley' rerun for five hours?' I believe the answer is 7.

Wed 01 Sep | ronk! (a Korn fan) | They give ya money, and the girls, and the fame. I only do it for the fun.. That's my game.

Wed 01 Sep | whatAConcept | Because I like coding.

I'm scared. | Tue 31 Aug | Woodentongue

A friend of mine - engineer, no software training - asked me to t