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
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 Not everything we do is obsolete in four years.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
namespaces
Jon Galloway recently pointed out something that’s been bothering me for a while: I’m happy to see the huge growth of community contributed code – things like RSS.NET, sharpziplib, ftp classes to tide us over ’til .NET 2.0, etc. But one thing that bothers me is the
software development concepts
Jack Black, in the DVD extras for School of Rock, had this to say in an interview: I had to learn how to play electric guitar a little bit because all I play is acoustic guitar. And I’m still not very good at electric guitar. And the truth is,
software development concepts
How can you tell experienced programmers from beginners? New programmers think if they work hard, they might succeed. Experienced programmers know that if they work really hard, they might not fail. Allow me to elaborate with an excerpt from an interview with Steve McConnell: SM: One of the points I
unicode
Over the last few months, I’ve come to realize that I had an ugly American view of strings. I always wondered what those crazy foreigners were complaining about in their comments on my CodeProject articles, and now I know: there ain’t no such thing as plain text: If
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
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
software development concepts
If Task Manager Extension is Task Manager on steroids, then Mark Russinovich’s Process Explorer is Task Manager in a ripped anabolic fury, fueled by high octane rage. In other words, it’s extreme: Although it can be a little overwhelming – I think it just kicked sand in my face
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