rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for Miscellaneous
May 27, 2006 at 10:16 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I brought my kids to Merced for the weekend. It gives them a chance to spend time with their grandparents. My wife asked me to drive carefully — she is not a worrier by nature. I understand the feeling of seeing the rest of your immediate family drive off in a car on a road trip. Accidents do happen.
As one did while we drove through Livermore.
Heavy traffic, moving quickly. In the fast lane. Workers on the shoulder picking up debris. Traffic slows ahead. I slow and nearly stop. One of those times when you have to brake hard making sure that you don’t hit nor get hit. No problem for me. No problem for the white car behiind. A red car darts onto the shoulder. Luckily, no workers here. Red car comes along side and veers into my lane. I move to the right (staying in the lane) and narrowly avoid getting hit. At the same time I hear a crash behind me (not my car). Red car falls behind and hits the white car. Another crash. Look behind and see the front-end of the white car crushed. The red car is back there too but I didn’t get a good look at it.
I don’t know how many cars were involved nor if anyone was hurt.
We are fortunate tonight. I hope, perhaps in vain, that no one was hurt.
Tags: Personal
May 22, 2006 at 8:02 am · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
It is refreshing that Scheme (the variant of Lisp) is getting so much attention right now.
Check out www.schemers.org for Scheme resources (thanks to Steve Maine for the pointer).
It was used as a teaching language at Cal. Scheme was, without a doubt, the only mind-expanding programming language I’ve ever had the pleasure to ingest learn and use.
Tags: Programming, scheme, Software-Development
May 17, 2006 at 8:28 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
From Don Dodge: Microsoft has unveiled the Microsoft SaaS Lighthouse Program.
This program is designed to help SaaS startups with licensing, technical, and marketing assistance.
I have been talking about this hole in Microsoft Partner Programs for sometime — a little on my blog, but mostly in person to Robert Scoble, Sam Ramji, John deVadoss, and many others. Pretty much every Microsoft person I meet. Microsoft has a good program (called Empower) to help the ISV startup and has, up until now, really had nothing for the SaaS startup. Why is the SaaS startup important? Because Web 2.0 companies are essentially all SaaS startups. Why are Web 2.0 companies important? If you don’t know, well . . . stop reading here.
It is obvious that Microsoft is trailing in the Web 2.0 community — this is embodied in the negative perception of Microsoft I found at a TechCrunch party: “anti-Microsoft” is a buzz word?. Most Web 2.0 startups are making use of free tools to build their sites and view Microsoft’s products (primarily Server 2003 and SQL Server) as being too expensive. While the productivity gains attained using these tools trumps licensing costs, Microsoft still needs programs that will help the adoption of their technology in SaaS startups.
Unfortunately, this program isn’t it.
You see, to get into this program, your company must have venture funding. A few problems with this:
- A venture-backed company can afford the licenses and training. Period.
- A Web 2.0 startup doesn’t start with venture money. In fact, very few startups begin with venture. So, the Web 2.0 startup gets no help from Microsoft until after VC? Kind of obvious, I know, but the startup has probably already built a service and released it before they get serious interest from a VC.
- The venture clause is likely a way for Microsoft to get external validation that the startup isn’t wasting their time and money. OK, but that is no way to increase adoption.
Now, I cannot claim that the purpose of this program is to help Web 2.0 startups (or to increase adoption of Microsoft techologies).
Just to be clear: it doesn’t.
Tags: Microsoft, SaaS, Startup, Web2.0
April 26, 2006 at 10:41 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Nick Bradbury has an excellent post on how Dvorak is wrong about Internet Explorer (perhaps Dvorak is reading Kevin Burton’s blog).
I agree with Mr. Bradbury on the value that Microsoft brings to developers by making IE easily embeddable into applications. Having this capability built into the OS makes it all the easier for the distribution of new products without the weight of an IE install.
So, yes, I too am glad that Windows has a browser. I do wish it were better and easier to extend; but, I think IE7 will help us there too.
Tags: Dvorak, IE, IE7, Windows
April 26, 2006 at 6:48 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Last week I got into a morass on some prototyping I’m doing. I had made some changes to several different modules. I ran the standard tests: all good. I decided to run a slightly more obscure test (one that requires special orchestration). Failed. I wasted much time tracking this down. Turns out (of course) that the original code also didn’t work on my machine. Works every where else. In fact, I still don’t know what the problem is, but I’m moving on for now (confident that this problem will resurface somewhere else).
On Friday, my wife and I were talking about the week and I said that it was kind of frustrating. I gave her a little detail on the issue. Her response was:
That seems really common in your job (i.e., frustrating and non-productive time developing software).
That gave me pause. Is this common in my job or common in software development? Is it even common in my job?
Perhaps I have a tendency to talk about the frustrating without talking about the rest (the part that is creative and fulfills a need for artistic expression).
But, it got me thinking. What are the sources of frustration developing software?
Poor Tools / Development tools don’t work
This is generally not a problem; though I have a tendency to use addins from beta or early-access programs. Certainly while tools have been upgraded to work with VS2005, I’ve had a fair amount of uninstall / re-install / disable of addins. I wouldn’t bother, but some addins you just can’t live without (like TestDriven and ReSharper).
Of course the solution is to keep your dev machine fairly clean. Good idea, but hard to do in practice.
Too many manual steps
This is not uncommon when building something for debugging or testing on a remote machine. If between build and debug you have to switch to some other application, manually select files or folders, copy (ftp, . . .) files, restart something, run a test, wait for results, . . . then you have a source of real frustration and, worse, the chance of introducing error.
I try to root out manual processes as soon as possible.
Maintaining someone else’s poorly documented code or code with poor/nonstandard style
Not generally a problem at Digipede, but certainly can be frustrating.
Using poorly documented APIs
This can be frustrating for obvious reasons. One can easily get into a situation of just trying different things until the API works as you expect. Still doesn’t work? Try a different method or change this other argument. Combinitorics quickly can make this a black hole.
As an author of APIs, I know this can be hard to get right. How much documentation is needed? How many user scenarios are enough? How much knowledge should be assumed by the user of the product and other issues (like proper OS configuration, security practices, etc.)?
Other things that are frustrating?
What things am I missing? What frustrates you when developing sofware?
Tags: Programming, software, Software-Development
April 20, 2006 at 5:04 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
The week of June 19th is really full.
- First, there was SuperNova, which I wasn’t going to go to.
- Then there is BarCamp which I might have gone to.
- Then Marc Canter suggested an unconference in response to SuperNova which has become BloggerCon IV. I RSVP’ed yes to that, though now I’m not sure if I can go.
- Digipede is going to SIA Technology Management Conference in New York. I found out the other day that I’m expected to be at this one.
- Yesterday I was invited to the Microsoft CTO Summit in Redmond on the 21st and 22nd.
I’ll be going to Redmond and I hope to BloggerCon IV.
We need eight days a week, eight days a week, eight days a week.
BTW: Marc: that is the longest post slug I’ve ever linked to. đ
Tags: BloggerCon, Digipede, Microsoft
April 14, 2006 at 9:01 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Someone suggested that I’ve stopped posting while Robert Scoble is taking a blog break — but come on, not that many of my posts link to Robert.
Of course, RSS is a great mechanism for occasional posters, though I don’t intend to be one.
For me it is just business as usual: kids in preschool bring home germs, wife has knee surgery, Digipede, tagging music, other projects, a tinfoil constitution, and the craving for sleep.
More soon.
Tags: Digipede
March 30, 2006 at 11:32 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
I just got a Squeezebox yesterday. I am so swamped that I thought I’d wait to set it up till I had the luxury to really play with it. Then I installed it any way.
No kidding, in 3 minutes it was all working flawlessly.
This product was made for me. Over time I think they’ll end up sprinkled throughout my house.
I’ll post a review of it sometime soon.
March 25, 2006 at 10:18 am · Filed under Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
Kevin Burton suggests that the Vista IE7 delay can be eliminated by tossing IE7 and adopting Firefox. I would be surprised if IE7 is on the Vista critical path, but the idea of Microsoft replacing IE7 made me laugh.
At first, I thought he was kidding, but he is serious (see the discussion between Robert Scoble and Kevin in the comments for that post). Fundamentally, Kevin’s idea is an interesting one, but that ship sailed a long time ago. Too many developers have products that rely on IE (e.g., NewsGator uses the IE browser control) with large installed user bases. Microsoft cannot just leave those developers and users in the lurch without a migration path.
Kevin suggests that since Firefox is a whole new application, that existing applications wouldn’t break. Good point, but remember, IE6 is considered a security problem. Abandoning IE7 doesn’t solve the IE6 problem for Microsoft.
They own the problem by winning the first Browser Wars and then letting IE stagnate.
Tags: Browser-Wars, Firefox, IE, IE6, IE7, Vista
March 21, 2006 at 9:24 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
J Wynia posted about how Good Enough Often Is. He talks about an experience with a company a few years back where the president’s motto was good enough never is. I like his post.
I started my career at a consulting company (Quantum Consulting, Inc.). Then president, Bruce Smith, used to say that our customers weren’t paying us for perfection. This resonated with me for its pragmatism. As J Wynia puts it:
Fundamentally, good enough usually *is* good enough. After all, âgood enoughâ means it met a set of requirements. It accomplished the goal. And, when reaching good enough costs $10 and âperfectionâ another $100 or $1000, it becomes pretty hard to make a *rational* argument for why we should pursue that particular perfection.
Of course, if you are launching people into space then spend the 10 or 100 times as much time and money to approach perfection. Otherwise, just strive for good enough. Good enough is often quite challenging on its own (and of course, doesn’t preclude greatness).
I say: strive for greatness, achieve good enough, and forget perfection.
Tags: consulting, perfection, software
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