I was typing up a post about a recent Asus laptop purchase and planned to throw in some notes at the end. As I was typing up the notes, it hit me – Visual Studio isn’t free! (Of course not, silly me.) Here’s the thing: it’s not that it costs money, people will gladly pay money for quality – but Visual Studio is CRAZY expensive by today’s standards. I just jumped over to the Microsoft Visual Studio site and found that I could buy Ultimate for a cool $12K. (And, realistically, you WANT “Ultimate” because there is nothing worse than finding out the version you bought isn’t capable of doing something…)

.NET Development is Dying

That pricetag virtually assures us that all new innovation WILL NOT take place using Microsoft tools. Further, it won’t run on IIS which means it will won’t run on Windows (as both,  while not technically necessary for .NET development,  are intimately intertwined from a real world perspective).

Think of Facebook. The next Zuckerbug is sitting in a dorm somewhere coding away. Is he using C#/SQL Server/IIS or is he using PHP/MySQL/Apache? The answer is obvious. Microsoft will counter that they have much cheaper “student licenses.” This is further evidence that Microsoft just doesn’t get it. (Not to mention that a ”student version license” is worthless for the real world deployment that Zuckerbiscuit is contemplating.)

Small Businesses Don’t Use Visual Studio

I deal with many small businesses and deal with them intimately. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “I don’t want to be tied into Microsoft stuff,” or “Microsoft stuff is too expensive for us.” Take a look at any hosting provider. The linux options are universally cheaper – all the way from the cheapest shared hosting to dedicated servers, Microsoft is more expensive to run. The tools all cost money. SQL Server is expensive to license (not as bad as Oracle, but that is a different topic). Microsoft support is expensive.

The end result is that Microsoft is firmly entrenched in the upper crust of Worldwide business, but has virtually no support from the up and comers or the small business ranks. The only reason any average Joe has Visual Studio running on his machine is because his employer has a subscription to MSDN. Microsoft even makes it a pain for those guys to install it on their home machines now.

Google Changed The World

(But they did it a really long time ago.) And Microsoft has never figured out how to adapt. Microsoft needs desperately to gain some traction. Visual Studio is still AWESOME. You can build a killer website in a fraction of the time it takes with PHP. It’s time to give it away for free and get a couple Zuckerbifs on board before everyone catches up (and it won’t be long).

Microsoft is cash rich. They can afford to give it away. They’d get a ton of press. They’d seem young and hip again – instead of “corporate” and stodgy. The incremental revenue they’d give up would be worth it in the long run. (At least they’d have to take that chance.)

Of course, I know they won’t. First off, Balmer will never read this. Secondly, I’m sure Visual Studio has a decent bottom line. Third, there are many VP’s, many managers, and a whole slew of MS corporate people who would be appalled at the idea of giving away. There is still the, “I’d lose my job!” mentality even though we know free tools can sustain themselves. (Granted, they would probably need to completely restructure and cut a bunch of the non-creative dead wood.)

Meh, I’m tired now. Time to surf over to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. I’ve been meaning to upload a sitemap over at Bing for awhile, but somehow I keep forgetting…

Wise Man Say, “Send me a Free Copy of Visual Studio.”

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Initially, I thought such an application surely already exists – and, it *must* for LG to build a contest around it, right? But, as of today, there is no widely recognized de facto standard for measuring how fast you are texting. You can find a bevy of typing speed applications on the web, but texting speed calculators or text speed tests are conspicuously absent? (As a friend said, “someday people will be putting how fast they text on their resumes.”)

Developing the Text Speed Measuring Application?

One of the hardest business projects around is mobile phone development. The .mobi domain has not yet taken off (will it ever?) and there are a couple firmly entrenched provider specific platforms (think iPhone, Windows Mobile). While these markets are both considerable, unless you pursue parallel development paths, you’re starting off with a fractional overall market at best. Consider the fact that several cell phone companies include their own platforms (think of Palm and the Pre) and you’re problems expand further.

When you start looking at the whole picture, a distinct solution starts to emerge: the iPhone. Every iPhone is essentially the same (+/- 3g, gps) so the portability of an application is virtually assured. When developing for Windows Mobile, the target phones could be vastly different – you also need to consider things such as screen size and orientation. This could dramatically increase the difficulty of what should be a seemingly “easy” application to develop.

The biggest attraction for iPhone development, however, is the Appstore. The Appstore makes purchasing applications unbelievably easy. Our Texting Speed Calculator could be download in seconds! Compare your average iPhone user who is probably intimately familiar with the Appstore to your average Windows Mobile user – who most likely doesn’t even have a third party app yet.

Developing iPhone Applications
Here are some other good points about iPhone application development:
•    The development tools are near professional grade, and are cheap to come by if you’re a Mac guy/girl already.
•    Although it wouldn’t help the hypothetical Speed Texting Tester, the iPhone gives you access to a wide array of cool functionality: GPS, accelerometer, wi-fi, camera, etc.
•    The xcode developer tools also work with C++ and C code (the sdk is in Objective C).

In the end, I chose not to develop the ultimate Text Speed Tester Application. I think it is a great idea and one that will ultimately make someone $$$ money, but I just can’t make room for it in my currently overloaded life plan…

Oh – apparently, I’m not the only one who feels this way about mobile application development.

Wise Man Say, “Saying Is One Thing, Doing is Another.”

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Here’s the story: it’s July 5th and I’m at a pool party with a bunch of people. Now I own a BUNCH of domains – not quite a ton – but a bunch. I’m in the pool with a guy who owns 5x more than me. He’s got more on his plate than he can handle. He says something to the effect of, “hey, I noticed there are a lot of people creating FaceBook profiles for their dogs. We should create a FaceBook.com for dogs.”

“Awesome idea!” I said. Admittedly, I don’t know much about FaceBook, but I do live with a bunch of dogs.

I’m up bright and early the next day and I start looking at domain names (yes, before doing any other research….) and I’m SEARCHING THE DOMAINS THROUGH GODADDY.COM domain search. I have hosting accounts with GoDaddy, 1and1, DigitalCityHosting, ENOM and DomainWong. And Yahoo (I always forget that one).

Anyway, I search “PawBook.com” through GoDaddy and it says it’s available. I mulled it over for about 30 seconds and decided to register it with my 1and1 account as I felt more comfortable installing ELGG into 1and1 than GoDaddy. I log into my 1and1 account, search the domain (and it’s available) and go through the registration process SUCCESSFULLY.

I then went on a jog contemplating how to go about setting up PawBook.com. I came back from a nice run and got all the normal emails about my new domain and the charges. I went to my control panel and it said it was setting it up.

To make a long story short – it got registered PRIVATELY (domains by proxy) via GoDaddy minutes before I SUCCESSFULLY registered it at 1and1.

Of course, after a little more due diligence, I found www.fuzzster.com (which I don’t like) and www.myDogSpace.com (which I do like) which are basically the same idea. In the long run, I would’ve abandoned the project anyway, but it still speaks volumes about GoDaddy. Needless to say, I’m phasing out my GoDaddy hosting and domains.

WiseMan Say, “Don’t GoDaddy.”

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The situation at hand: we have 20,000 XML files that need to have information that is currently contained in an Excel spreadsheet inserted into them. Each file is uniquely named and sitting in the same directory. In fact, I had looped through the files originally to populate the spreadsheet and a co-worker matched the information to certain IDs that needed to be plugged back in…

My fundamental mistake was not thinking through it ahead of time. I looped through the files and inserted the data into the spreadsheet – a row for each file. I also included a guid from the file header (inside file!!!!!!!!) into the spreadsheet. I thought that would be the easiest way create the match when I got the spreadsheet back. (I’m sure those of you deal with data already recognize my mistake.)

I got the file back, went back to reverse my loop and realized I now needed a second nested loop to go through each row of the spreadsheet looking to match the guid….

Because each file is uniquely named, I could’ve written the name of the file into a column and simply looped through the spreadsheet writing the guid to each file with name of Column X.

The worst part of this is that I completely berated a younger coleague a couple years ago for a nearly identical project. His response is the same that mine is now, “hey, it was just a one off project that I was doing on the side.”

Wise Man Say, “Pay Attention to Everything You Do. Little Stuff Matters Too. Otherwise You Will Suck.”

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Fortunately, this notion can now be a reality as the iphone sdk has been released. The implication of a freely available Software Development Kit for the iPhone means that casual developers can now develop cool, fun iPhone applicationss.

If you’ve got the desire to become a budding iPhone SDK Developer, you need to surf on over to http://planet-iphones.com/forums/index.php#10. It’s a great starting place for iPhone SDK Developers. You can download the SDK and discuss all topics about the SDK.

New users can acquaint themselves with the rules about the forums. Developers find it is a great site to work through difficult questions during the development process.It’s also a great site to find out what cool new apps may be coming. Ordinary iPhone users can sign up to the site and find all the new plugins and applications for your iPhone. This includes the latest wallpapers, games and must-have accessories.

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I could live without air conditioning, but my wife can’t. Thus, the Golden Wrench in Irvine to the rescue.

I stumbled on a PHP issue where I considered using a GOTO statement. ZAP. A lightning bolt straight from the UChicago CS department traversed the web and zapped me through my keyboard.

I remembered this classic article. This was written before I was born and still holds true today.

If you think you need to use a GOTO statement – figure out a different way.

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Got it?

If you’re not a Comp Sci major, you’ve probably never heard of recursion. The simplest way to understand it is to look at some simple Visual Basic code that performs a factorial calculation. First, let’s take a look at how recursion is defined:

Start out with some natural number N (in our example, 5)
The factorial of N is N * N-1…until N=1.

So, if we let N be 5, then 5! is 5*4!. Now, we “recurse”, letting N be 4. So 4! is 4*3!. So 5! = 5*4*3!. (I know most are probably lost now. We started out with 5 factorial, and then let 5 factorial equal 5*4 factorial. We then let 5 factorial equal 5*4*3 factorial, by repeatedly applying the recursive definition of factorial.) So, 3! is 3*2!, 2! is 2*1!, 1! is 1*0!, and 0! is defined to equal 1. So,

5! = 5*4! = 5*4*3! = 5*4*3*2! = 5*4*3*2*1! = 5*4*3*2*1*0! = 5*4*3*2*1*1

Here’s the code snippet:

Isn’t that cool? So what it is? it good for? Absolutely nothing. It’s a resource? hog and loads up the call stack, but from a theoretical perspective it’s really cool (occasionally there are practical applications as well – very infrequent in web programming). There are entire languages (Scheme) built around recursion.

Cell phone has become most convenient source of communication. A large variety of cellular cell phones is available in market; especially variety of lg cell phone is rocking in market. You can also find used cell phones with low prices in market.

It can stretch your mind.? ?

As far as cell phones go. It didn’t work.

?

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After reviewing that list, I realized it is not quite accurate. Instead, it should read:

Lunchtime Driving Range Golfer
Occassional Lifter of Weights
Fledgling Writer
Purchaser of Expensive Hiking/Mountain Gear
Treadmill Runner

Different companies are offering their services for web design and development. Due to increasing demand of web page design professionals, different institutes are offering web development degree. A large variety of web design development samples is available online for the guidance of IT students. While on the other hand it has become trend among leading companies to place web design contract on site.

This got me thinking that my “optimistic” look at my hobbies is very similar to the current state of IT resumes. I’ve reviewed hundreds of resumes and all of them list “expertise” in some language or operating system. However, most times, the people claiming the expertise suddenly lose their knowledge when it comes to the interview.

I’ve had? C# experts who? couldn’t create? a C# project in Visual Studio. I’ve interviewed? VB experts who couldn’t use a MsgBox.

Wise Man Say, “He who Lie on Resume Stand on Shaky Ground.”?

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This blog? relates to coding – no management technobabble, just some inapt references to Jessica Simpson. In the last few years I’ve adopted the last bastion of techno-snobbery: I’m indifferent to the language in which I program. I’m not sure where I heard it first, but it stuck. (Also makes me think of the phrase, “jack of all trades, master of none.”)

With that said, I’ve taken to ASP.NET 2.0 like a coyote ripping into a discarded McDonald’s sack. I’ve always been partial to Microsoft’s development environments and VS 2005 is the best of the bunch. They set out to greatly improve developer productivity and they have – provided you stay within the confines of the drag and drop goodies.

Gridviews, Listviews, SQLDataSource controls… We dive right in and start pulling wires under the hood to see how they will react. Peeling away all those levels of abstraction is kinda like peeling a banana…or an onion.

Anyway, my language of choice has evolved into C# rather than VB.NET. I simply like the syntax.

However, VB.NET is vastly better than C# when it comes to stubbing out events with some index finger pressure. In VB.NET the process is easy, sleek, and good looking (like Jessica Simpson).

Now contrast that with the kludgy C# “lightning bolt” method. The C# way is missing something? (Yeah, how about a straighforward way to add “PAGE” events!) The C# way is like Rosie O’Donnell. Enough said.

?

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Wives have EXPECTATIONS and when those are not met, they make DEMANDS. If those go unanswered they become IRATE. If they still do not get appeased, they will LEAVE in search of a better product.

In my personal situation, the EXPECTATION was that the water bill would be paid in a timely fashion. DISCLAIMER: I treat Post Office mail much like spam; just like so many unchecked checkboxes so goes the occassional water bill.

Then came the DEMAND: first from the water company, but I failed to notice the large pink notice on our garage door, so (unfortunately) my wife found it.? She then DEMANDED that I take care of it. However, she did this one evening when I was in a Csikszentmihalyian Flow State and apparently I replied “Yes” several times unconcsiously.

Several days later when the water was cut off, she called and was IRATE (stage 3 for those who are counting). I quickly deployed a check (sometimes referred to as a “hotfix”) and the situation was resolved before stage 4 (LEAVE).

Software users are remarkably similar. They may have EXPECTATIONS of your product or service that you have no intention of including. They will then likely make DEMANDS that such functionality be included. (Note: These demands usually start somehwat quietly and escalate. Informal study shows that wives may jump from stage tow to three faster. I have only anecdotal evidence and do not wish to explore further.)

Users, on the other hand, seem to jump from stage 3 IRATE to stage 4 LEAVE, much quicker than wives (although divorce attorneys are making this quicker and quicker).

To summarize, if you want to make your users happier, treat them as you’d treat your wife. if you want to make your wife happier treat her like a software user. (hmm – something about that doesn’t sound right…)

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