Comment Feed for MetaGunny

Re: Marc Mercuri and Kyle Johns: Inside RoboChamps

MetaGunny — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:15:15 GMT

I just thought I'd let you guys know the website isn't working for me.

I had to install silverlight, although I installed it before but I think that was version 1.0.

After install, I had to go back to the website, redirecting and refreshing didn't work.

Now, when I go to the site, it looks like I only see the background, but the code of conduct, terms of use, etc, links at the bottom work.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Doug Hodges: The history of Visual Studio Extensibility

MetaGunny — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:30 GMT

Aristo,

I'm sorry but that has to be the stupidest comment I've EVER seen on C9.

Their filming a video!!

It's about priorites. Keeping the interviewing rolling is a higher priority (and more polite), than picking up the phone and telling them you'll call them back later.

It's like if your in line at the subway, and you have thousands of people in line behind you while you're telling them what you want, you get a call, and talk to the person for a minute telling them you'll call them back, why, what you are doing, oh no it's quick, etc.

What they should really do is before they start any interviews is ask them to turn their ringer off and let it go to voice mail and return their call later.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Betsy Hjort: On Making Windows Server, Singing with Bill and Being Technical

MetaGunny — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:49:24 GMT

Let me also say, that having said that, you do need someone that is also a business person, or approaches things from a business mindset. That is extremely important as well. You need someone who understands the technology but also the business aspect.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Betsy Hjort: On Making Windows Server, Singing with Bill and Being Technical

MetaGunny — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:48:09 GMT

Loving it!!!!!!!!!!

It's not a corporate thing. It's a book called The Color Code. If there is one book you read, make this it! You too will go around saying "I'm a blue", or "I'm a red", etc.

When you get the book, flip to the chapters describing the colors. It starts with describing reds. If you start there you will read the entire book, just read the colors, then go back to the beginning.

To put it in a way that won't convince you to buy and read the book, it will most importantly help you understand yourself more, and secondly, help you understand other people.

Anyway, Charles is right. I don't care if you are male or female, of if it's doing a disservice to females. It's not about doing what is best for females or males. That isn't the question. The question is: What is best for the company? And, hiring a non-technical personal as a manager to manage a software project is idiotic. Plain and simple.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: This Week on Channel 9 @ Mix: March 14 Episode

MetaGunny — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:59:34 GMT

Does anyone have a link to Chris Auld's stuff? Or the you tube video? I tried searching but couldn't find it. Maybe I should sart using live search?

>>- Chris Auld demonstrating an IIS module that dynamically >>combines resources (css, images, javascript, etc) resulting in >>400% perf improvements, all with no code changes (2:57)

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Christian Kleinerman: SQL Server 2008 for Developers

MetaGunny — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:47:50 GMT

Awesome!!!!!! Hierchaires, Paging, etc, have always been some what of a pain in sql server. I think adding these types and support directly into t-sql is a very good idea.

The row_id I think it is called that was added in sql server 2005 really made my paging code cleaner.

It would be REAL nice if you can add something to help with sorting. I haven't tried in awhile the different options, but having multiple sort options in sql server using a stored procedure would be a good feature. I tried in the past to do an ORDER BY @SORTCOLUMN type of method, and also multiple IF statements with duplicate sql statements isn't ideal either. The only other option using sql server is to have multiple stored procedures and in your .net code putting the IF statement.

Also, is microsoft sql server ever going to have something like oracle's rac for load balanced sql servers? I know MSFT prefers the scale out approach, and a rac type approach is technically different and ripe with problems, but just curious.

(One last thing, I found a bug in sql server 2k related to when you have two columns with certain types right next to each other. It was really weird and was relating to data storage. I tried several testing options, and the bottom line is when I changed the column order, the data came back correctly. I tried posting awhile ago on C9 and sending msft an e-mail, but they wanted me to snail mail it in. If you want me to send you the script with the table def and data let me know. I think I might have it.)

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Miguel de Icaza and Dragos Manolescu: On Open Source, Mono and Moonlight

MetaGunny — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:15:13 GMT

One last comment:

Microsoft, just because we aren't vocal, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people out there that DON'T want you to open source any of your code.

You paid someone to write it, you own it. If you think you did a great job with it, or people could benefit from it and it's not material to your business, then share it with the world.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Miguel de Icaza and Dragos Manolescu: On Open Source, Mono and Moonlight

MetaGunny — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:10:44 GMT

Most people misunderstand open source. They think it's about code, but really it's not, that is just one facet of the debate.

The core of open source is really a philosophy, and the philosophy they believe in is more along the lines of communism or to be nice socialism.

"From each according to ability, to each according to need."

In the same way communists believe individuals should not have property rights, and that all property is the right of the state. That is why they believe that no company should have "propietary code", and that all code should be open source. In other words, the indiivudal shouldn't have their own property, and in this case the "code" should belong to everyone, the community, for the "greater good". The same reason they think IP, copyrights, or patents shouldn't exist.

They say this is really the only way to have freedom, but the truth is it's the complete opposite of freedom.

In fact, just about every logical reason they state that they are for "open source" or really a broader philsophy, they get the opposite result.

The main point here is when talking\debating to a proponent of open source, just remember the debate isn't about code.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Joe Duffy, Huseyin Yildiz, Daan Leijen, Stephen Toub - Parallel Extensions: Inside the Task Parallel

MetaGunny — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:28:05 GMT

Charles,

You brought up a great point\question that has been on my mind for awhile.

Why not add some keyword or attribute to the language itself to further enhance parrelellism?

I can't remember his name but he replied that they are looking into this level of language integration. I'd love to see a video on that topic.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

MetaGunny — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:58:48 GMT

Very interesting. Thanks Sylvan.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

MetaGunny — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:39:29 GMT

Thanks Sylvan. That clarified it for me.

Although I'm sure there are other benefits, I'm presuming functional programming is being talked about more and coming back because of multi-core.

So, the question is, is this all theory or is there a functional programming language I could start using today and write a massively parrell program in it easily?

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

MetaGunny — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:31:34 GMT

Ifeanyie,

Of course. I would had said the same thing.

However, a couple of things:

1) The samples you gave used object oriented languages, not functional programming languages exclusively.

2) I've watched all of the C9 videos on these functional programming languages. I only remember one referring to a real world scenario which was in telecommunications. I even watched a video on youtube when the interviewee was younger and the demo showed them crashing the system, where only one process or thread would die, and it wouldn't bring down the whole system. How they could make changes live to the system and it would only affect new processes, etc.

However, that really didn't relate back to the concepts of "purity", etc", of the why someone should use functional programming languages.

I'm not approaching this with an argument of why not to use functional programming.

Rather, I'm simply asking someone to explain the reasoning behind FP in a "KISS" way on why it's better than an existing programming language.

Or, maybe it's not meant for real world use in today's world. Maybe it's more of theory and bits and pieces are taken to enhance existing languages.

I'm just looking for clarity on this subject.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

MetaGunny — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:03:44 GMT

I've watched all of the related videos.

However, I'm assuming that you reference reading other material because you yourself don't truly understand the why.

If you did, you could have explained it.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

MetaGunny — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:45:05 GMT

Let me answer my own question here a little bit.

Where I think this would be useful is as a feature in an existing language.

For example, if you could create a certain type with a certain state. That way, if you have that special type you also know it has a certain state, or a certain value. The equivalent (somewhat) of saying what Erik said in his video of you know you're going to get a certain type and a certain value, but really I mean state.

This would be beneficial in the case of a string for example. Let's say you create a new stringempty type, where whenever you get this value you back you know it will never be nothing.

Why would this matter?

It would eliminate all of the exceptions for people who don't check if string is nothing before trying to call the Trim() method on it for example.

Imagine how many exceptions this would elimnate and how many lines of code it would eliminate.

The bottom line is I don't care if a string is nothing, I just want to get the value, trim it, and see if it's equal or not equal to a certain value.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

MetaGunny — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:32:22 GMT

This doesn't make any sense at all.

If in order to be truly "pure", why don't we just replace our code with nothing but a bunch of constants?

We could then go around saying I write constants instead of I write code.

I don't understand the thinking that in order to be truly pure, it has to return the same value. Why can't it be pure if it returns the data type specified? I.e., if I say I'm goign to pass you back a string, then you can know for a fact you are going to get a string returned.

Why do we care what the actual value is?

Why would it make sense to have to specify not only the data type returned, but also that it's not a constant value by plaing in front of it?

Also, what's up with the Let? Why can't we just say x = "whatever"

I think it would be better if you show a sample application, where this type of functional programming language shines.

When we don't want our "world" to change, why doesn't it make more sense to use the concept of Interfaces when needed?

I think the problem with the concept of purity and functional programming, is that it's trying to force programmers into a box of how mathmeticians think. That logic falls apart because the need for a programming language is not simply to solve mathmetical equations.

To step back and keep it simple, rather than talking about how it works;

What problems does it solve?

How does it make programming or the end-result better?

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Tobii Technology Eye Tracking: Follow the eyes

MetaGunny — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:36:52 GMT

Charles,

I think it would be better if you do the demo first, and then they talk about the demo. That way, you have a visual in your head of what they are referring to, and can understand whatever they are referring to better. Where, if you talk about it and then do a demo, you have to try to think of what they are talking about first, and then backtrack once you do the demo and relate the demo back to what they said before.

Anyway, just a suggestion. Keep up the great videos.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Expert to Expert: Brian Beckman and Sam Druker - Deep Entity Framework

MetaGunny — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:25:10 GMT

I never understood the entity framework, but now I do. It seems very interesting.

Currently, I have a data access class I wrote called "StoredProcedure". I then have code generators to create the stored procedures, and the VB.NET classes. It's specific to the type of operation, such as insert, update, delete, select as output params, select multiple, etc.

Although I think it's very clean, replacing all of that with the entity framework, if it's clean and is performant, would be great.

However, the stored procedure class I created offers quite a bit and has some intelligence in it. For example, formating the sproc name, validation, not adding certain parameters if they don't pass validation and that parameter has a default, etc.

Also, I plan on adding possibly some type of load balancing to it, possibly based on the stored procedure name (or parameter specifiying read only or data is modified by this sproc), and also user based specific connection strings. (This way, for example, you can setup mirroing database, and have the read-only stored procedures executed on the mirrored database.)

I'd be curious to see if the entity framework would be able to do this as well, and\or whether or not you can inherit and modify certain objects that are responsible for this.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: JAOO 2007: Glenn Vanderburg - Dynamic Languages and More

MetaGunny — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:21:59 GMT

Charles,

In terms of software composability, I would say, it's more about the programmer writing good code, rather than a new programming language.

I think the two most important aspects of writing good composable software is A) interfaces and B) reflection.

That's all you need. Then, in your house example at the end, if you have a component that implements an interface, all you have to do is rewrite it or write something completely new and call the new component instead of the old one, or use a factory pattern.

Thanks, Justin

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Tony Bernard on BizTalk

MetaGunny — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:59:46 GMT

I actually wrote our own EDI system in 2 months, plus an integration going on at the same time with a trading partner. It's only been used for the transportation industry so far, but it's processed at least a couple hundred thousand messages. The 2 month system was a rewrite of the first time I wrote the EDI system. The first EDI system I wrote when I was brand new to EDI had an XML system that would map the EDI to a table, and do an insert or update on a table. It started getting to complex to support every scenario in XML, so I rewrote and the second version is a lot better.

Of course it can't compare with a system like BizTalk, but it's not bad for a pure EDI system. So there isn't a tight coupling it will use reflection, and load an assembly dynamically and call it to actually do the processing on EDI message. However, there are objects that the external dll's use to read/create the EDI file itself, for example, to read or create an EDI "compatible" date\time value. It doesn't have a full GUI, and everything else, like deep validation of every type of transaction set and every segment/offset when creating the 997 response. The last I checked into BizTalk, the deal killer was having to purchase a license for each individual company or server.

It looks very interesting and complete though.

posted by MetaGunny

Re: Windows Mobile 6.0 Things and Stuff

MetaGunny — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 22:08:41 GMT

This is really good but is it available yet on the palm treo 700w? In the video I think he mentioned this video is going to be released after it's available.

I'm surprised to hear anyone likes the tmobile dash over the treo.

Also, it would be nice to have some basic features fixed/added like adding a phone number that just called you to your contacts without having to memorize it, better call conferencing (my little crappy nokia was a million times better than the conferencing on the 700w), keeping an e-mail marked as read when I then move it to another folder (when viewed in outlook on my desktop it's unread but in the folder), etc.

Hopefully you guys start doing more smaller incremental improvements instead of always big picture let's change the world type stuff.

posted by MetaGunny