The future of programming is wide screen

I have to confess, I didnt get it until I actually saw it for real - I was trying to program on my new(ish) laptop in widescreen, at 1280x800, which was killing my poor old eyes, which are just too good to use spectacles but not good enough to use a small high-resolution monitor, so I switched to a free-standing TFT monitor which only supports 80x600. Vista very obligingly reset the laptop monitor to matching resolution, and because I didnt choose to share the view across the two monitors, it showed the same. To my surprise, I could see much more of Visual Studio 2008 on the laptop monitor -- an AHA moment, this is probably what the research on higher programmer productivity on larger monitors is all about. I'm convinced. Now all I have to do is find a wide screen 21 or 24 inch that doesnt give me head-aches :-)

Update on Google App Engine

I've only played with it for a couple of hours so far, but I'm quite impressed. The command-line problem I had originally was the biggest hurdle, everything else after that seems to be well thought out and the documentation is very straight-forward and easy to understand. I've been meaning to learn Python Web programming for some years but never quite got around to it, so my initial difficulties might be down to this, and maybe its early adopter time, but I think Google could put some time into making it all more accessible to the hobbyist and dabbler -- I'm looking for something which is less of a productivity sink than ASP.NET and but for the buzz of the AppEngine and the fact I had other work to avoid I dont think I would have persisted:-)

An aside on difficulties with Scripting Language Web Frameworks
I dabbled with Grails, Trails, Boo, Castle, Turbogears and some others best forgotten, and yes, Rails, and they all defeated me comprehensively. Of the lot, Ruby on Rails would be the one I'm most likely to have another look at -- the setups are the problem always -- say what you will about ASP.NET, Asp and JSP with something like Tomcat, you pretty much always know where you are -- it either works out of the box or you need to reinstall or apply a patch (sorry, service pack). But with the rest, you are always wondering if a space in a Windows Path may be causing the problem you are having. Still the BitNami Ruby and Rails stacks are amazing, head and shoulders above and really give the casual user the chance to check out these technologies without having to take a six week course

Trying out Google App Engine

Trying Out the Google App Engine

Maybe this is implicit for all hardened Pythoners, but for the uninitiated, using Python with Windows seems to be more of a struggle than it might otherwise be (I know, I should revive my Linux partition -- but what about everyone else?).
So here for other pilgrims --
I'm still suspicious about "C:\Program Files" in the path of any application -- although the problem seems to be that you probably need to open a command line window (thats choose Start then Run then type cmd and click OK)
and type python before anything in the App Engine documentation (assumes C:\Python25 in your path, if this doesnt make sense, G help you and run away, dont walk )

eg
google_appengine/dev_appserver.py helloworld/

becomes

C:\Google:\>python google_appengine/dev_appserver.py helloworld/

simple, and possibly obvious, but it wasnt to me, so for anyone else out there struggling.

So I got it working, although as I had Ruby on Rails using port 8080 I had to stick in --port=8000 in the middle, fortunately nothing else was using that port

C:\Google:\>python google_appengine/dev_appserver.py --port=8000 helloworld/

Hiatus

And no I havent forgotten about my MVC series, rather distracted by Amazon S3, Google App Engine and Force.com -- so many technologies, so little motivation...

Partying like its 1989

I looked into learning Python recently -- and discovered that most of the 'new' stuff is techniques and technologies I already know from programming Smalltalk 20 years ago. I dont know whether to be discouraged or elated -- it means I only have to learn new syntax, not concepts, but at the same time, here we bloody go again

Silly Tums down

The Avis car rental site has the most dismal search I've seen on a big corporate site -- It seems to expect a booking time, without giving any option to enter -- I then figured maybe if I put in the flight number it would give the booking time -- but it didnt recognise my flight number...Atrocious bad design, required fields which dont exist, and reliance on a search field (flight number) which could change, with new values possibly being added which are outside the control of the site operators. The Big Silly Tums down to Avis.co.uk and Avis.ie

The tribes of MVC/P

I'm trying to decide which camp I belong to -- the Event for Every Class crew or the Generic Event Service crew -- I lean towards the Generic Event Service crew -- Jeremy Miller has a whole article just on the concept in C# -- it would be a nightmare in VB6 but I'm going to try it. The Event for Every Class method is what I have done so far and I'm reluctant to publish the code (sorry, reader team of one :-)

Vb.Net Appreciation course

Working with VB6 after a couple of years away makes me appreciate VB.Net -- and lately I've tried to migrate my dotNet knowledge to C# and I find it seems to be a lot more long-winded that VB.Net, you can do everything of course, and you're right down there with the framework, but some things seem to take an awful lot of typing...

The Pattern has landed

I've been very quiet, trying to absorb the MVC/MVP patterns. Last Saturday I finally wrote my first MVP example program, actually it was copied almost directly from Steve Knight's Hacking Hat example http://www.hackinghat.com/index.php/windows/mvp-aka-mvc-in-vbnet
I say almost as there are some nice features of VB.Net that you dont have in sad old VB6 -- constructors are very useful for instance. Nevertheless, I might very well post the code to my website as a help to anyone else out there insane enough to try it in VB6.
If you want to see a longer and more complex example at http://codefornothing.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/mvp-implementation-details/
but it uses Excel as well which I havent got my head around that yet -- when I do I'll have a shot at translating Jeremy Miller's BYOC stuff from C# to VB.Net to VB6 (sheesh!)

Programming Patterns and Parenthood

Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented ...

To my embarassment I learn that there is a new Edition of Craig Larman's book, the last edition of which I have owned and struggled with for years, not making much progress, I struggle to grasp (pun partly intended) patterns and the particularly the groups of patterns such as GRASP which are covered in the book, although I keep getting pointed back at it by blog references, I came across mention of this time via Moserware: What Does It Take To Become A Grandmaster Developer? and a link to David Hayden's site GRASP - A Methodical Approach to Basic Object-Oriented Design ...- here is the time to pay tribute to D. Hayden, how does he do it, I know in person other programmers with young families who somehow manage to keep on top of all this techie stuff and still have time to have a normal human life...it's beyond me, you make the time when the situation demands it I suppose

On being a semi-retired, semi professional programmer

-- wanting to be more than mediocre, discouraged by the no-good, and downright bad programs -- due to low standards of the 'monkey could do that' Visual Basic non-programming culture, and the extremely poor quality example code that used to be available ...in the patterns world they talk about 'bad smells' in programs -- most VB programs stink!

This guy Jeremy is a hero!

I wonder is he in Microsoft's book? Must look it up. Following on in my quest for the Elixir for Old Code, his Build your own CAB is great reading. Heavy going, but inspiring
http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller/archive/tags/Build+your+own+CAB/default.aspx

Techludd

I went to TechLudd: The Irish Start-Up Monthly Networking Event

last Thursday evening. Due to poor planning (thats me:-) I couldnt stay long, having another engagement, but I quite liked the setup. There was free drinks and a couple of verging-on-invisible non-presentations by dotmobi and Locle.com. Even there I heard some carping about dotBomb 2.0 and that we were all participating in such a vacuous love-in on the evening. Maybe, but a vibrant and resilient network of people who dont run for cover when the going gets tough would be nice to see, so let's try it and find out.

Start up infrastructure

Or the lack thereof. Ideally of course, such an infrastructure should pay for itself -- I dont know if aspiring entrepeneurs would be willing to pay to be told that they are completely barking up the wrong tree, but if it ended up saving them a fortune, years of effort and heart-break?
Anyway, on a more positive note, this is one exampleof what I had in mind: 2008 Startup School

Example of a Niche

I think it was Joel Spolsky, or maybe it was Eric Sink, gave the example of a niche of a web site for professional programmers. Maybe this was an invented example, or maybe not. An acquaintance who is a pro photographer in US was enthusing about the power of liveBooks http://www.livebooks.com/
compared to the frustrations of trying to maintain his own web site (web site maintenance not being a core activity for a professional photographer ... Photoshop etc yes, but Dreamweaver no :-)
It makes perfect sense, and just shows that with a bit of imagination high value customers will stump up the sheckels if you deliver

Oh Envy!

Shows it can be done. Might wake up the Irish Government about the lost opportunities
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/electric/20080326/ttc-irish-brothers-make-millions-on-onli-70a53e7.html

The Winner Takes All...

Or Maybe Not

The winner takes all hypopthesis is that if enough people have a certain word processor, other people will be forced to buy it too if they want to be able to read the documents, thus putting other word-processor companies out of business. Of course it doesnt always quit work that way -- the following extract is a good explanation

Reconsideration of the winner-take-all hypothesis: complex....

Elixir for tired old code

I'm trying to coax some life back into an old VB6 system, and have been digging around for inspiration and came across the following delightful article
Model View Presenter in Visual Basic 6. Part 1
Very much worth a look if you want to program the New Way using an old ad-hoc system
Hats off to the author!

microfinance

Its an area I dont know enough about, but here is a link to a local
example
http://www.first-step.ie/
and a gateway site which I havent got through myself but maybe a starting point
http://www.microfinancegateway.org/

psuedoScience

I see the Kondratieff wave is back in fashion again -- it seemed a great idea when I read about it first, but now the absurdity of a supposed systematic explanation of economic data which span time periods longer than a human life strikes me very strongly.
We all love trends and neat explanations, see the likes of
http://www.moneyweek.com/file/3075/housing-boom.html
and
Boom Bust: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010, by Fred Harrison
but the trouble with all these analyses is that the world isn't that neat. We should have had a bigger correction in 2001/2002, if Alan Greenspan hadn't decided to inflate his way out of trouble in 2002. That might have sorted everything out temporarily at least, and would have thrown all these neat 18 year and 75 year cycle theories out of whack

The Second Bounce

I've just finished reading
The Second Bounce Of The Ball: Turning Risk into Opportunity by Ronald Cohen
Quite an interesting book, he sounds like one of the good guys, and he mentions some of the things that I mull over in my intellectual moments, such as micro-finance and enterprise versus learned dependency