April 2006 Archives
The Development Abstraction Layer - Joel on Software
This really made me smile, particularly the quote "Management's primary responsibility to create the illusion that a software company can be run by writing code, because that's what programmers do. And while it would be great to have programmers who are also great at sales, graphic design, system administration, and cooking, it's unrealistic. Like teaching a pig to sing, it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." -- comparing developers to pigs, well that might stretch the analogy a bit, but still it is a good analogy.
Heather Leigh of Microsoft has an interesting few words to say regarding hiring for potential. Well, most of the article isn't directly about hiring for potential, but it's the bit that caught my eye.
When recruiting for my team, I've very infrequently looked solely at academic results. In fact, one of my recent candidates had a 2:1 Oxbridge degree, but was very ropey in the interview, got 9/30 on the aptitude test and didn't have that "spark" either. So, qualifications aren't everything.
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting in a jar on my desk.
ATTORNEY: But nevertheless could the patient have still been alive?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law
If you have a copy, or have access to a copy, take a look at pg416 of "Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step by Step" (Microsoft Press). The line that gets up my nose is "If the user needs to ..... can edit the configuration file by using a text editor..." arggh!
Considering that this is a .net 2.0 book, and you'd reasonably expect applications written in .net 2.0 to be compliant with LUA when Vista comes along, this is a pretty shonky piece of advice. "Joe User" shouldn't be able to change an app.config file, and shouldn't even want to!
Yet another note to self, must get round to reading these in detail:
-- Microsoft Windows Vista Developer Center : Developer Best Practices and Guidelines for Applications in a Least Privileged Environment
-- Adding a UAC Manifest to Managed Code
It's a shame that you have to jump through that many hoops to add a UAC Manifest to a managed application, it'd be nice if Microsoft (hint, hint!) or somebody else released a tool / project inclusion / project option which managed all this for you. The "Security" tab in a VS2005 winForms application has all kinds of options - how 'bout adding it there?
BBC NEWS | Scotland | Bird flu confirmed in dead swan
Uh oh! Time to swear off chicken for a while! ;)
I think I remember reading somewhere that VMWare had done something similar recently, albeit with the "viewer" version of their software. It'll be interesting to see if any virtualisation / emulation companies start whining about anti-competitive practices as a result of this. Don't forget, MS can't even bundle a media player with their OS now without being forced to release another version of the OS that doesn't contain it...
MS Office - free, but pay for services?
Interesting concept,... not sure how MS would integrate adverts into office, especially as they've just gone to all the effort of re-shaping the UI to use their new "Ribbon" toolbar/navigation technology.
One of the most annoying things in Word has to be the fact that you can't, by default, paste in the same format as the current part of the document. However [via: pcmag.com] there is a way which involves recording a macro. Bit of a "power user" way of doing things, but it works!
pinvoke.net is without a doubt a god-send. And to add benefit to bonus, it's in Wiki format so it can be refined, polished and improved by anyone. Long gone are the days of scrabbling through stacks of old magazines, trying to remember which issue mentioned how to do X, the internet (and especially "community driven resources such as pinvoke.net) is assuredly the way of the future.
For example, the page for advapi32.CreateProcessWithLogonW contains two largish code snippets for both VB and C# which one of the previous editors hadn't formatted quite right, so the code samples were broken up and dis-jointed. Without having to login, spend ages waiting for a username/password email, I was able to edit the page and tidy up the layout. Go wiki! ;)
