SBC DotNet Weblog

Greater Hartford Chapter of ACM meeting - UML 2.0 Presentation on Feb 10th. More details here..  On March 9, Joe Stagner [Microsoft] gives a presentation on .NET.

Thought provoking columnist, Larry O'Brien has an interesting article 'Ignoring The Scripts' in the current issue of 'Software Development Times'. I know of another prolific developer Hugh Pyle (see his July 16 '03 posting), who would agree with Larry - the necessity of having dynamic languages with dynamic typing. Larry is a bit critical in pointing out that Microsoft is 'ignoring' such language development (on the .NET platform). Jon Udell, on the same topic, provides some more insights on dynamic languages and how others are developing the languages themselves. It certainly has its place.

Upcoming MSDN Events can always be found on www.MSDNEvents.com or at www.ManagedCode.com

'Joel on Software' is a great source for developers - he provides 'meta information' needed in the art of software development. A subscription to his newsletter is a must! His recent posting on 'Getting Your Résumé Read' was an eye-opener - I didn't realize that people from India put a space before the comma - yikes! a lot must have happened after I left the old country many years ago. To quote Joel -

This is a personal observation but does bear credence.  Groove is a collaborative platform and for it to be successfully deployed in an organization, the organization must have an already established 'culture'/practice/acceptance of collaboration. Of the numerous prospective clients (mainly development shops) that I have tried "selling" Groove to - the ones who didn't buy are the ones that follow the 'not invented here' syndrome. They build almost all their own libraries, components, etc. - the 'Build vs. Buy' maxim is almost non-existant. This is an interesting correlation - a dichotomy almost between 'collaboration' and the 'not invented here' syndrome. The unfortunate side of 'not invented here' is that it invariably transforms into the 'not invented in my cubicle' syndrome and that may explain the missing 'collaboration'.

My recent posting (with the convoluted long sentence - thanks Frans :-), needs an update. Michael Earls has some very substantiated arguments about .NET at the present and its future. His posting(s) does express a concern about what's needed today.. I do concur that MS has done a superb job with the Longhorn technology and the weblogs that are devoted to it in disseminating the information. Too much information in such cases, are never enough. 'Longhorn', today is a matter of 'Pragmatic R&D' and I hope to indulge in it (am expecting a new Dell box in my lab soon). 'Pragmatic R&D' is not a production environment but a viewport of what's coming but it may (will) change when it gets here. Having spent a considerable portion of my career in research labs, I know that it's a gamble as well, as the bottom-line is always there to remind us. When advising/suggesting to clients about the future of an operating platform, I would also like to state what's needed in human terms - training issues are the foremost. Quite a few of my clients run their systems for decades - talk about ROI! A Windows Healthcare laptop application, of which I was the project tech lead, was built about 12 years ago and it's still running! Granted that it has undergone numerous iterations (and a change in compilers from BC++ to VC++). So, it pays to do some 'Pragmatic R&D' upfront - laptops and Win3.x have come a long way!