ide
In VB.NET vs C#, round two, I realized that choice of IDE has a far bigger impact on productivity than which language you choose. Lately I’ve started to think the relationship between language and IDE is even more profound: the future of programming languages isn’t a language
regex
Jan Goyvaerts released a new version of RegexBuddy today. I’ve talked about this tool before – it’s easily the best Regex tool available. Some feature highlights for this version are: * Built in GREP tool * Visual regular expression debugging support * Full unicode support The GREP tool is an unexpected bonus;
programming languages
It’s easy to get caught up in the “newer is better” mindset of software development and forget that ideas are more important than code. Not everything we do is obsolete in four years. The Evolution of Forth, which outlines Charles Moore’s guiding principles in creating and implementing the
software development concepts
Do you have coworkers whose shelves groan under the weight of hundreds of pounds of technical books? I do. And I always try to gently convince them that maybe they should buy books by content instead of weight: It took me a while, but I finally came to realize that
performance
In my previous entry on the real cost of performance, there were some complaints that my code’s slow and it sucks. If I had a nickel every time someone told me that, I could have retired years ago. Let’s take a look at the specific complaint that the
software development concepts
A recent post by Wesner Moise after a two month hiatus got me thinking about a passage from Steve McConnell’s, After The Gold Rush. Like all Steve’s stuff, it’s great, but the title is unintentionally ironic: the book was released in 1999, at the very height of
programming languages
It’s always reassuring to be reminded that people much more talented than myself make mistakes, too. And I especially appreciate it when they share those mistakes in the form of advice: On avoiding IT mistakes: Rick Cattell’s, Things I Wish I Learned in Engineering School: * Good technology is
javascript
When I visited Alex Gorbatchev’s blog, I noticed he had a unique client-side code highlighting solution in place, one I hadn’t seen anywhere else. That’s something I’ve wanted on my blog for a while; the vanilla <PRE> sections I’ve been using are serviceable,
multithreading
Back when I was writing for Tech Report, I had an epiphany: the future of CPU development had to be multiple cores on the same die. Even in 2001, a simple extrapolation of transistor counts versus time bore this out: what the heck are they going to do with those
software development concepts
Brad Wilson pointed out a new, interesting blog yesterday: Spurious Pundit. On managing developers: It’s like you’re asking them to hang a picture for you, but they’ve never done it before. You understand what you need done - the trick is getting them to do it. In
.net
Coming from humble Visual Basic 3.0 beginnings, by way of AmigaBasic, AppleSoft Basic, and Coleco Adam SmartBasic, I didn’t get a lot of exposure to formal programming practice. One of the primary benefits of .NET is that it brings VB programmers into the fold – we’re now real
programming languages
I stumbled across the Craig Andera post, The Last Configuration Section Handler I’ll Ever Need a few months ago, but I didn’t really understand the implications until I started writing a bunch of configuration section handlers. His approach is very clever; instead of writing a bunch of tedious