After almost two years of uninterrupted C# and .NET development, I have got back for few days to Java world. One of our old customers asked us to do few enhancements and changes in the application we wrote. And because we always stand behind our work, always do answer the call for help and do support our customers as long as they want to be supported, I have squeezed-in few days worth of work into pretty packed schedule. So here am I on a short detour into world of class files and jars ...
There are few technical books which you enjoy first time you read them, remember the experience and keep coming back. One of such classic books is The Pragmatic Programmer - from journeyman to master - by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt. If you have not read it, get it, it is worth every cent. Since the book was written - ages ago, back in 2000 - it did not loose anything of its freshness and value - which one cannot say about most of technical books written earlier than 2-3 years ago. Inspired by the success of their initial creation, Dave and Andrew started the website and continued writing whole Pragmatic Programmer series of books.
Since yesterday, I made nice progress in solving my issues with content creation for PRS500 and it's readability. There are several ways how to proceed:
The simplest is to download Book Designer. It is free for non-commercial use and current version 5.0 Alpha does the job very well. It allows you to load source in text, HTML, Lit, PDF, PalmDoc (prd/prc), rb and few other formats and process them into native LRF format - plus few others I do not really care about. The result is nice, readable LRF file with three sizes, nicely formatted, with metada. As added benefit, because the author is Russian, the program does not assume that English alphabet is the only one in existence and allows to select encoding. The result is quite good - most of the extended characters from Czech/Slovak are there, some are missing and displayed as space (namely ř,ě,ľ ...) but it is readable. What is maybe better option is that with English as language and default encoding, the software "downscales" the extended characters to closest English pairs: ř -> r,ě -> e - which results in familiar computer Czech/Slovak. I am very comfortable with option 2, and will work on getting correct font for #1.
My favorite top ten epigrams, for more see http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html
0. One man's constant is another man's variable
1. It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
2. If you have a procedure with ten parameters, you probably missed some.
3. A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.
4. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
5. You can't communicate complexity, only an awareness of it.
The Ottawa .NET Community organized today interesting lunch-and-learn session: first of two sessions on introducing the Rocky Lhotka's CSLA Framework. Usual location - Glacier Room at downtown Microsoft Office. I decided to attend for two reasons: first was that I knew the presenter - David Campbell. David is a great guy - consultant with 20 years of history in the software development business, running his own company. Last year when we were looking for people with CSLA experience in Ottawa, David's name came out first.
Most programmers love GUI. It is so easy, so convenient, just point and click here, click there, drag and drop, repeat few times and problem solved. Who in sanemind would bother typing and writing code when can GUI do it all. The convenience rules. If you need to add or change something, it takes just few more clicks. Not a big deal, just add a few more easy steps. No problem - right ? Wrong !
It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets. [Alan Cooper]
And the users exclaimed with a laugh and a taunt: "It's just what we asked for but not what we want."
For a sucessful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled. [Richard Feynman]
We build software line by line, idea by idea, side by side. Our software is an expression of ourselves, our best moments, our toughest challenges, our greatest hopes.
This wonderful quote is from handcrafted copy of Vista, which was distributed to everybody who worked on a product. It is a Microsoft tradition that the people who worked on a project get a copy of the project when it ships.
Back in old country, I once had a programmer working for me who made himself famous with the following quote:
"I have fixed that bug, do you want me to compile it too ?".
In his mind, he was done as soon as he identified the bug and put the fix in the code. All the rest was trivial and unimportant routine.
During last 20 years I have worked with many very different developers and learned the hard way, how very many different meanings the word "done" can have. For some, done means that coding just finished and he/she successfully compiled the projects and stepped through some of the code paths with debugger with negligible occurrences of major crash. Whether the code is in CVS, commented - who cares ?