Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Well, today marks pretty much the end of summer vacation. My daughter had orientation over at the Middle School; she got her locker and homeroom assignment. Sure, there's the weekend coming up - but the it's back to the school year.

This summer went by really fast for me - probably because of all the travel. I was in Florida for a week in June, in Australia for nearly 2 weeks in July, and then back to Florida for a week (until Tuesday). Our penultimate day at the Beach Club showed how the summer was ending - the pool went on winter hours (closing at 8 pm instead of 10). The local pool is on short hours now as well, and closing completely by Labor Day.

So now it's back to serious work - even though we don't get time off like the school kids do, the summer always feels slower. Work slows down, lots of people are away. Expectations are lower, things get pushed off. Now it's ramping back up - I leave for Germany on September 7th for the end of ESUG, and then have to get into some pretty heavy business planning. I guess it's not unlike what kids get - the Fall is "back to work" time.

There's a bug somewhere in the updating code for BottomFeeder - it doesn't raise its head often, but when it does, it leaves a feed empty (of items). Somehow, during the update of a feed, an exception is being improperly handled, and a feed that was in mid update is being left empty. Worse, the "Regenerate Feed" option also had a bug in it. That's been fixed in the dev update stream. Meanwhile, I have to track down the actual problem. Never a dull moment :)

Frank Hayes has been taken for a ride by the marketeers at Microsoft. In a column discussing the new XP Lite (being offered in some overseas markets), he says this:

The upside is that Microsoft is now doing what was once unthinkable: trimming down a product to what users need. After two decades of bloating Windows and insisting that one size fits everyone, Microsoft is finally acknowledging that not all users require all that expensive complexity.

And that's cause for optimism, even if it's based on something that exists only on the other side of the globe. After all, if Microsoft debloated its software for them, why not for us?

De-bloated? They crippled it, they didn't lighten it. Limiting the number of open windows and disabling some networking options isn't de-bloating - heck, I bet most of the functionality is still there - it's just been routed around. Making a lighter product would take MS significant time, and this isn't it. But heck, they don't have to - they've got gullible analysts out there picking up their talking points for them...

I've been working on a simple ToDo list tool as a BottomFeeder plugin. I should emphasize simple. It doesn't have a tray icon, it doesn't beep or do anything special when a ToDo comes due; I may add some of that later. For the moment, it merely adds a simple UI that allows one to edit/add/delete todos, and manage them in a simple RSS file - which can be subscribed to in BottomFeeder. If it tests out ok, I'll post it up as a plugin, available through the normal update channel.

Dare Obasanjo has some reflective thoughts on Joel's "API Wars" article from awhile back. Interesting reading, especially now that the original storm over the article has died down.

Julia Lerman talks about code obfuscation tools for .NET, and makes a point I have to disagree violently with:

I *know* that obfuscation is  another level of security that we can all leverage. I *know* Microsoft has made it really easy by putting this "lite" (Community Edition) version into Visual Studio.NET. So, raising my hand, yet again as a typical developer - writing custom corporate applications that are not being put out in the market place - why have I never touched  it, used it, thought about it?

yeah, security via obscurity has worked so well in the software industry. Access to sources helps - both in security terms, and in transparency terms (to developers). Obfuscating code just tells future developers that you don't care and want their job to be hard. Here's the point - no code is ever going to cover all possible use cases. Allowing other developers to extend and understand is a good thing. Final classes - bad. Final methods - bad. Code obfuscators - obnoxious.

This is one item that ought to bubble down to the bottom, and fast....

This story asks the question - why do hotels charge for broadband use (which nearly every guest wants), and not for pool use (which few use, and is more expensive)? Well, the question answers itself, of course - we'll willingly pay for fast access over dialup....

Tim Bray has some interesting thoughts about dynamic languages:

First, we should get serious about dynamic languages. I totally don't see any reason why we shouldn't try to become a world leader in this space. They are the only thing on the horizon that's going to steal mindshare from Java in the enterprise IT ecosystem, and geeks love 'em so we should lead not follow.

Hmm - here's a thought Tim - you can become leaders in this space when the JVM stops sucking as a host for dynamic languages. Since the JVM seems to be locked in a stasis chamber, that's unlikely to happen. If Tim Bray wanted to do some positive good, he could raise this as an issue inside Sun. I have full faith in Sun being stupid about this - while MS seems to actually have a clue about this stuff:

I think that the threat from IronPython is much worse than the Bill describes. Not only does IronPython have the potential to make scripting on the JVM DOA, it also has the power to destroy Python as we know it. Jim Huginin is going to work full time to improve dynamic language support on the CLR. What happens if Bill is right and IronPython is the upgrade path for VB.NET and ASP.NET? Microsoft will start throwing large amounts of resources at IronPython. I find it hard to believe that the Python community will be able to keep up with Microsoft if they choose to do that. If Sun "gets behind Jython", you can expect a similar activity to emerge around Jython. Even worse would be for Jython development to be taken over by the JCP, all need to be compatible with CPython eliminated. Now you have two new dialects of Python, diverging from C Python and almost certainly in incompatible directions.

Watch MS make whatever changes are necessary to the CLR to make Python work well, while Sun leaves the JVM in the stasis chamber.

Nu Cardboard makes a wish for new methods in one of the core Java classes:

If I could add one thing to Java, it would be to add first() and last() methods to the List interface. I know it's not going to happen, for all kinds of good backward compatibility reasons, but it sure would make some of my code easier to read.

Hmm - if you have a fetish about any Java code ever written at any time (past or present) running on any given JRE, then this is a problem. Of course, under those constraints, progress is well nigh impossible. This goes past "conservative" and straight into "hidebound"...

The Mars Rover problem from last year has been diagnosed - it was a file system error:

The problem, Denise said, was in the file system the rover used. In DOS, a directory structure is actually stored as a file. As that directory tree grows, the directory file grows, as well. The Achilles' heel, Denise said, was that deleting files from the directory tree does not reduce the size of the directory file. Instead, deleted files are represented within the directory by special characters, which tell the OS that the files can be replaced with new data.

I've spent a few days at The Beach Club (a very nice Disney Resort) with the family and a few friends. The pool here is fantastic - here's a shot from a friend's digital camera (it's a huge pool; this doesn't do it justice):

And here's a shot we got in the Animal Kingdom - is the tiger dead or alive?

I have more pics and comments, but no time at the moment. I'll post some more tomorrow.

Then head over to Ted's blog. Be forewarned; some of these are real groaners :)

Software Business Journal interviews our president, Tom Nies],[IMN.USER_ID]:

Recently, one prominent figure in the software industry said that the "industry is dead." Was he correct? Will only the strong survive?

We interviewed Tom Nies, President of Cincom, to get his views on this statement and his thoughts on the future of the software industry. As the longest-serving CEO in the industry (35 years), Tom sees a much different software industry that 19s ready to reach its full potential.

ed: It was Larry Ellison of Oracle who claimed that the industry is dead.

Michael Lucas-Smith on standards:

standards exist to ensure no one implementing them can make a 'clean' implementation

Possibly related to Mark Pilgrim's spec post. Heh

The Times reports that "The Scream" by Edvard Munch (and "Madonna") was stolen yesterday - in broad daylight:

"Two or three armed men threatened an employee with a handgun to give them 'The Scream' and 'Madonna," police spokeswoman Hilde Walsoe told The Associated Press. "No one has been physically injured, and the suspects escaped in an Audi A6. We are searching for the suspects with all available means."

Apparently, this museum doesn't have any real protections - no alarm system, no cases for the paintings - they were hanging on wires, just like you do with prints at home. And this after the paintings had been stolen before, a decade ago! I think someone needs to have a talk with the management staff of this place...

The RIAA wants you to pay up for alleged misdeeds, or else. Just like my last post, it seems that they are more than happy to salt the earth behind them...

Ed Foster points out that some of the more onerous DRM/Copy protection schemes out there may well backfire on the vendors:

Of course, even those product activation schemes that have been with us a while don't get any sweeter with age. A reader who had just moved his old copy of Microsoft Office and separate copies of Publisher and FrontPage to a new laptop wound up having to exchange the machine for another configuration. "When I got the new one I had to reinstall all the software, and that's when I ran into Microsoft's silly activation scheme. Not only did I have to activate the products, but I had to complete three separate activations, because of the different versions of the software I had on my system. Have you ever gone through Microsoft's phone activation? It's a trip! You have to spend close to ten minutes dealing with voice recognition software before you're told that the machine can't activate the software and it then passes you to a human being. And I had to make three separate calls, as Microsoft considers them three separate installations. All in all, it took about an hour to reactivate three products."

There's a fine line between you need to pay for this product and we assume everyone is a dirty rotten scoundrel until proven otherwise. It seems that a lot of vendors are running across that line, without ever considering the potential backlash.

Misbehaving has an interesting post up about girls and software development - the part that grabbed my interest was the last paragraph:

Mary also said that they're working to encourage social program. She said many studies have shown that peer programming is popular with girls but this is not being used in instruction - schools privilege individual work. I wasn't aware of that, and I'd love to know whether readers here have that impression too - do women prefer peer programming? Are you aware of work on this?

The reason this stood out to me is conversations I've had with my wife. She works in a development/production shop - she and her co-workers are working on software that goes into production almost immediately. The shop is nearly all women, and she tells me that they pass work back and forth quite frequently - most of the people there are familiar with most of the projects. This sounds fairly similar to pair programming - although they don't formally work in pairs, they collaborate and cooperate regularly.

Now, back to that article - the question is, do women prefer peer programming? I don't know, but the anecdotal evidence I've seen points that way. My daughter - who's hardly a programmer - also seems to like to collaborate on projects. She spends a lot of time on Neopets, a site that is aimed primarily at pre-teen girls. The girls work with virtual pets, set up shops and communities - and this requires some level of HTML skills. I've noticed that my daughter and her friends like doing this, but they like doing it together - unlike the stereotypical male "web geek" who codes by himself, accompanied only by coffee or Mountain Dew. It would be interesting to see more data on this.

Slashdot reports on the IOC's efforts in the anti-marketing area:

the IOC is barring competitors, coaches, and support personnel from writing firsthand accounts of their Olympic experience, on the web or in print, for the duration of the Games. Nor are they allowed to ever post photographs or movies that they've taken, including media of themselves, even after the Games are finished. They've threatened to disqualify anyone that violates their restrictions and sue them for monetary damages. Looks like an effort to clamp down on grassroots, word-of-mouth publicity for the Olympics

Boy, it's a good thing that they've been selling out the arenas, hmm? What are these morons thinking? "Gee, our product isn't selling well. Let's tell fewer people and see how that works out".

Well, I'm enjoying my Disney visit. We spent some time at Magic Kingdom yesterday. It was a lot less crowded than I would have expected - I guess having the Florida kids back in school makes a difference. It's hot here - and humid. The pool here is amazing - I'll see if I can get some shots of it to post later. I (still) don't have a digital camera, but our friends do. The slide at the beach club is a lot of fun. Off to the parks.

Well, not only can overuse of anti-bacterial soap lead to the same problems that overuse of antibiotics can - apparently, some of the ingredients can stay in the environment as toxins for years - see the story here

Who knew that a bear could be a beer snob?

Gordon Weakliem makes some excellent points about how and when to worry about scalability:

Scalability usually brings up discussions of Amazon or Yahoo!, big websites with high loads. But I've seen discussions of scalability completely kill a project that never will see that kind of volume. Yahoo! and Amazon weren't always the size they are now, they grew into what they are. But people still go around wasting time on ill-advised caching schemes and what have you, when I think it's more important to get something working, get some good measurements, and let them guide you

You won't know what problems you have until you actually have them (in most cases). In my experience, developers are notoriously bad at guessing what the problems are when confronting a slow system; they are even worse when trying to predict what they might be if the load actually gets to heavy. Bottom line - make it work. If it's fast enough, don't worry. If it's not - profile. I'm always stunned at conversations that go something like this:

Them Our system is slow. We need to (insert complex solution to some presumed problem here)
Me Have you profiled the system? Are you sure that the problem is in (insert supposed problem here)
Them Huh?

Jonathan Schwartz points out that RedHat is trying to "lock in" their customers - ISVs in particular. This isn't a terribly big surprise; The Unix vendors have been doing this long before MS got into the game. He then tries to make a point that runs into one of the classic marketing brick walls - Perception Vs. Reality. Sun would like to push Solaris as more open (in the open standards sense) than Linux:

Folks in the IT community need to be more aware, in my view, of the lock-in to which they're exposing themselves if they don't take a more active role in understanding the difference between and open source and open standards. All the more reason more and more are seeing Solaris as a migration platform as they move off Fedora.

Good luck with that effort. Linux' "street cred" as open is too widespread at this point for Solaris to make any significant dent in it. Sun trying to make the "more open" point is a truly uphill battle against entrenched perceptions. There's also a cost issue to deal with - Sparc boxes (yes, there's Solaris on x86; no one cares) are far, far more expensive than commodity x86 boxes. Here's a tip - Sun isn't competing with RedHat. Sun is competing with Dell - badly...