June 2005 Blog Posts
The more projects I see the results of where the customer lives in a vacuum, the more convinced I become that for a project to be very successful there must be close ties between the developers and the customers. For those of you familiar with the latest buzzword methodologies like Agile and XP Programming, it is becoming pretty popular to say that a member of the customer's team should be placed in the development group to provide instant feedback about features and functionality.
While this type of thing isn't always feasible from a business sense, I have noted in my career...
<Begin Musing>
I was reviewing some code the other day from one of my developers who recently made the jump from classic ASP to ASP .NET and I found that the developer was using a lot of the old VB core functions like cint(), dateadd() etc instead of their new .NET Framework counterparts.
In my opinion, it is preferred to use the .NET Framework methods whenever possible instead of the VB Specific ones both for potential compatibility for porting code to other .NET languages and because of my unverified belief that some of the Framework specific functions may be more efficient.
So I...
Another weekend, another chance at a learning opportunity missed. I was hoping to download and install the latest CTP of SQL Server 2005 but once again my "broadband" provider is happily charging me $44/month for high speed service that isn't what any reasonable human would call high speed.
If I was in charge of the FCC I would nail a company like this for false advertising. Luckily the lot that I'm building my house on has Time Warner, I've had roadrunner before, it was great, and I can't wait to return to it. The provider I have has a damn monopoly...
A very common mistake I see being made by developers involves the signing of their employment contracts. Oftentimes there are clauses, like invention clauses, in the contract which can have a signficant impact on your personal time and pet projects. The purpose of this article is to make you more aware of the legal issues involving employment contracts, and help you avoid signing a contract that could potentially harm you. As most of my readers do realize, I am not a lawyer, this article is not intended to hold up in court, if you have doubts always consult a professional.
Congratulations! ...
It's politics day on CodeBetter.com, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to weigh in on a few concepts about wages, unions, personal finances, and the IT business in general.
The American Dream
Sahil makes an interesting point in his post about the "American Dream" and people living beyond their means today. The American Dream originally started with the concept of people that worked hard and sacrificed to obtain freedom in the form of land ownership, no fear of religious persecution, and a decent life for their loved ones. Immigrants to this country often came with nothing and did some tough jobs...
Link from the BSA:
http://www.bsa.org/usa/press/newsreleases/BSA-Collects-from-Marketing-Solutions-Company.cfm
Notice that this company was not in compliance with their software licenses (something that can be tracked in Easy Assets .NET) and the cost? $65,000
Suddenly spending a few thousand on a good Asset Management solution doesn't seem so bad eh?
Excellent article here for you wannabe consultants about abusive client relationships that you should end at the first opportunity.
Here's some of my own comments on these 11 clients you need to fire right now:
THE DISILLUSIONED consistently expresses disappointment with your work even though it is of good quality and conforms to spec.
This client is a very hard one to deal with. They often have pie in the sky ideas mixed with a difficulty of expressing those ideas in the form of a spec. What they end up with is something that works, but isn't what they envisioned in the special...
Trying to console myself for missing TechEd due to it filling up so damn fast. So here's something I found humorous:
http://www.yourish.com/archives/2005/june5-11_2005.html#200506601
A common question I get from developers new to OO programming and VB .NET is what the difference is between inheritance and interfaces, particularily when should you use one over the other.
At its most basic level, the difference between inheritance and interfaces is that inheritance is intended to allow you to share an implementation, while an interface specifies that you must implement something, but supply your own logic. Many people liken an interface to a "contract". To use an interface you must expose certain functionality, but the implementation of that functionality is up to you.
Make sense? No? Let's look at...
Just wanted to let all you blog fans know that School One in Cleveland is hiring 3 .NET Developers.
"Growing Educational Application and Technology Services Company seeks full-time developer with BA/BS and approx. five years professional experience creating scalable, custom web apps using ASP, MS SQL 7, HTML, DHTML, and JavaScript. Experience with VSS and InterDev required. Experience developing in .Net and writing store procedures required. Experience developing web apps from initial concept through final production deployment, as well as maintaining/retooling existing web apps. Must be comfortable working with QA to ensure consistency, product reliability, and functionality on MACs, PCs, and...