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title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. |
descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001. |
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| Monday, June 30, 2003 | |
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I'm hacking up a doc to explain a text file format we're using in a customization project, and it in itself is nearly enough of an argument to use XML. Here goes (and I haven't started the address): The PoS export file will be an ASCII text file of any reasonable (less than a gigabyte) length. Each personโs entry will appear on a separate line. Each entry in the PoS export file must begin with double quotes. Then, an optional โ%โ may appear as a specialty indicator. A space will appear next, regardless of whether a specialty indicator character was written or not. The entryโs last name will then appear, followed immediately by a comma and that comma followed immediately by the peronโs first name. A space will then appear, followed by the personโs middle initial and a second set of double quotes. After these double quotes, numeric text representing the personโs age in years will appear followed by another comma. Double quotes will appear, followed by a string that will indicate the personโs status, followed by another pair of double quotes. This area is where the โDISโ entry for dismissed may appear. Another comma will appear before address information begins. [more to come here] All values will appear as capital letters. Lines/entries must not โwrapโ for any reason. Lines will be separated by a carriage return and a line feed. What a mess! Being able to call each an attribute and not worrying about the order would be very nice. In other news, I'm still wondering when I get to see some 1.6 GHz G5 benchmarks. Today's the last day of "No payments till Jan" at Apple, but I think I'm still waiting until Panther comes out. I keep having to tell myself that I don't need the 12" Powerbook. That's still a neat machine, and nearly the same price (with Superdrive) as the 1.6. One more proc upgrade over the next few months and it might be fast enough to program with. Right? :^) Daggum Apple and their cool and horribly expensive hardware. posted by ruffin at 6/30/2003 03:57:00 PM |
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| Sunday, June 29, 2003 | |
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Ran over to Xbench and ran it on the ole .5 GHz iBook. Awesome score of 33.52. This really is a flying score (very sarcastic, if you somehow didn't pick up). The 2GHz dual-proc G5 doesn't score as well as one might like, which is relatively bad news, barely putting in better than dual 1.42 GHz G4 numbers. Still waiting to see the first real single processor G5 benchmarks against another machine. Hope the 1.6 G5 beats the dually 1.42 G4 at something so I can rationalize buying it. Looks like another two months before Panther and my purchase, however. posted by ruffin at 6/29/2003 08:18:00 PM |
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| Thursday, June 26, 2003 | |
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I'm not sure how big an event Qt/Mac's release is, but something nags me that it could be big. I've never quite understood how GPL'd software costs something, and I think maybe that's just maintenance. If that's correct, this certainly does mean that traditionally Linux-only programmers will be able to release fairly easily on the Mac as well as Windows with native code. If it catches on, well, that's certainly good news. I want to see a real competitor for .NET in the client-app "space" to appear that's xplat, and perhaps this could be it after it matures a bit. Unfortunately from my experiences, Java and Swing are not anywhere close to .NET and Windows.Forms yet, and probably won't be for a few years at the earliest. Native is better. On the same subject, with Macs out now that are actually fast enough to run OS X and software at the same time *smirk*, I'm starting to think realistically about REALbasic. I don't like the RB IDE -- I wish they'd steal directly from VB6 and stop doing things their way, though I might have missed some config options -- but they really have the basics working fairly well on Mac and Windows, which is super. $250 to port to Windows? That's cheap. Now that you can reference dll's, etc, REALbasic is a decent solution. The only problem is that the rate's much greater b/c of the development tools and the lack of mature objects like the set VB6 and .NET give you. posted by ruffin at 6/26/2003 12:34:00 PM |
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| Tuesday, June 24, 2003 | |
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One more comment before getting back to work. OS X has really turned the corner. The iApps are super. Where else can you drop into a store and come home with a DVD editing studio, an online music store, video conferencing hardware and software that'll work, a digital photo album with a multiude of export options, a mature email client, and immunity to the vast majority of computer virii/viruses/whatever? More importantly, where can you find a computer like this where you don't need manual number one to get started using all this? Sit down, plug in, cut it on and anyone's rolling. And I haven't yet mentioned Sherlock's stock quotes, movies... (though Sherlock's eBay feature is currently crap) ... or the iPod... or... And the hardware has finally caught up with the OS. OS X on my non-Quartz Extreme, half-GHz iBook is way slow, but still more usable on the strength of the iApps than Windows for day-to-day tasks. The only downside is the price. But I'm of the opinion that the time you'll save and the things you'll make (want to share all those pictures you took of your kid last year in a slide-show format on DVD? Done!) will greatly off-set it. I'm doing things on my Mac, such as it is, -- more importantly my significant other is doing things on my Mac -- that I haven't heard of a single friend doing on their Windows PC. posted by ruffin at 6/24/2003 09:16:00 AM |
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Thank heavens. The improved Finder in OS X Panther is exactly what I've been wanting. Hope it's also fully keyboard tranversable. It's been bad enough I'll go to the iTerm (Terminal replacement) to get where I needed to go in many cases. posted by ruffin at 6/24/2003 09:03:00 AM |
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| Monday, June 23, 2003 | |
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Aside from the groove new PowerMac G5's, this is the best news I've seen from WWDC: Mail improved. Everything is faster. Safari HTML rendering. Safari as a component is a good thing. Hopefully coming soon to a REALbasic app near you. G5s are neat. At $2000, seems expensive, but that's with Superdrive (take it out for $200 cheaper). Interesting specs show the difference between 1.6 & 1.8 GHz are more than just Hz-ige, however. Bus speeds, max RAM, etc, there are some fairly significant differences. Can't just low-ball the system. Anyhow, neat. Apple's making some progress. Yay, IBM. posted by ruffin at 6/23/2003 03:41:00 PM |
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| Saturday, June 21, 2003 | |
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Someone once asked on the Apple Java list what kind of computer they needed for Java programming or what laptop to buy or how good the Mac they were buying would be for programming or something like that. In any event, my answer was not to skimp on the resolution of the monitor/screen. I might as well have been flamed out of existence by a guy or two on the list as an inept programmer who didn't know a text editor from a hole in the ground. In theory the guy's right. Give yourself a 40 column display and vi and you can code anything you want. In practice the guy's crazy, and I'm reminded tonight again why I think so. Screen resolution is everything in an IDE, especially when the IDE has a form designer. Yes, I know, that's a little overstated. But where I wrap lines and what the whitespace in my code looks like is pretty dependant on screen resolution even if I'm not hacking forms. But any GUI design is heavily influenced by the size of your screen (with good recognition of the "640 rule", aka, "Make sure your app runs on a decently small resolution, even if it's slightly greater than 640x480"). And when you hack in VB or Netbeans or anything else with a form designer, it's even more important. I notice (and am noticing again tonight) that I often limit the size of my forms to what I can see at one time in the IDE in front of me. Makes for a slightly smaller form than may be appropriate, and I try and cram everything in there. Not so important if you use good Window Layout Managers, but even then what you see in front of you biases you greatly. Anyhow, back to coding. Getting sleepy. posted by ruffin at 6/21/2003 08:41:00 PM |
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Patents on compressing completely random data, which, as it may have occurred to you, is an impossible task. posted by ruffin at 6/21/2003 06:45:00 PM |
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Looks like IBM and Apple have tried the 64-bit thing as far back as 1991 [pdf]. Wonder if OS 9- ever looked at being 64-bit native? Here's a quote: Contrary to some reports, the 970 isnโt the first 64-bit Power- PC. In fact, a 64-bit PowerPC was planned from the start, when IBM,Motorola, and Apple began creating the PowerPC architecture at the Somerset design center in Austin in the early 1990s (MPR 7/24/91, โApple/IBM Deal Catapults RS/6000 to Prominenceโ). At that time, the PowerPC alliance promised to deliver three 32-bit processorsโthe 601, 603, and 604โand one 64-bit implementation, the 620. All four chips eventually reached the market, but only the 32-bit processors succeeded. The ill-fated 620 first appeared on the PowerPC roadmap in 1991 and was first described at Microprocessor Forum in 1994 (see MPR 10/24/94-02, โ620 Fills Out PowerPC Product Lineโ), but it didnโt ship until 1998. By then, it had grown so complex it was uneconomical. At 250mm2, it was Motorolaโs largest slab of silicon. The 620 never made it into a Mac and soon vanished. posted by ruffin at 6/21/2003 05:04:00 PM |
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Been meaning to try this for a while. This was me testing links. posted by ruffin at 6/21/2003 01:37:00 PM |
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| Friday, June 20, 2003 | |
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Read a blog by a game developer (apparently) recently that was fairly down on code reviews. Here's a quote: Our finding? Although we did find some "bugs" early, most of them were not stop shipment bugs. Readability bugs, guideline violations, sure. Every now and then, maybe every other review, we found an actual stop shipment bug and were like, Yes! Good catch! But we estimated that the amount of time we would have spent fixing the stop-shipment bugs later was actually less than the amount of time we spent reviewing code. Hrm. That's kinda sad. Where I'm working now, we're pretty big on one-offs, much moreso than I would like. We are, however, the Custom Software Development Team, and the whole advantage of custom programming is that you can make something awfully quickly percisely because your audience is so small and you can cut a lot of corners you wouldn't if you were programming for the generic masses. That said, programming for the now is still a very short-sighted proposition. If you plan to reuse code in the future (and there's been hardly a project I've worked on where I haven't), you're every bit as worried about "readability bugs" as "stop-shipment bugs". I know I'm an idealist and my tack could probably use some realism, but if you're only programming for your next release, you'll find yourself starting over from scratch next time. And that's got "delayed [next] shipment", every bit as bad in the long run as a stop-shipment now, written all over it. And while I'm at it, run over to thinksecret.com and check out the new G5 specs! posted by ruffin at 6/20/2003 08:05:00 PM |
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| Wednesday, June 18, 2003 | |
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Ah! It finally occurs to me today, as I listen to the salesperson [for our VB3 [sic!] product] across the cube wall, why Microsoft has purchased VirtualPC and "started stopped" making Mac software (specifically Outlook Express, whose death seems to have gone unnoticed, and IE, the news of which is, as I said, EVERYWHERE). It's exactly what a a buddy of mine has been harping on for months (though in his case, it's Linux and Wine, a Windows "emulator" of sorts for Linux). Matt says: Let's be honest: Isn't WineX just a bandage for all those Linux users (former Windows users) that can't give up Windows games? He's coming at this from a different, and, in the case of VirtualPC on Mac, the wrong direction, but the concept is right on the money for Linux and Mac users. Perhaps Wine and WineX on Linux is used mostly by ex-Windows users, but I'm betting on OS X VirtualPC is being used to provide a quick and inferior hit of Windows to Mac users. We've got VB3 software for educational insitutions. Wanna use it with your Macs? "You can, if you buy VirtualPC," is apparently the company line. Then perhaps the Mac users notice this software works much better and much more quickly on the much less expensive WinPC down the hall. And guess what? All the software you *need* is already there. Email. Web browsing. mp3s. Do you really want to pay $150 for VPC per box to run the last essential piece of software on your Mac? Instead, wouldn't it be better at the next hardware refresh to grab WinPCs? If VirtualPC becomes good enough that WinOffice on VPC is better than any of MS's Office competitors on OSX, guess what? Office X goes away, and the "bait-to-switch" is on. posted by ruffin at 6/18/2003 10:52:00 AM |
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It's everywhere. Microsoft is dropping development of IE on the Mac. They cite Safari as the reason to stop. It just ain't so. Apple and Microsoft talk. Apple knew MS wanted to drop IE's production or at least get paid (I assume) to keep this browser on Windows' only current viable desktop competitor. Apple needed a browser, and they needed it quickly. Luckily Apple didn't sell -- and cheap -- out and license OmniWeb (whose engine was apparently so bad they're dying to use Safari's spin on KHTML) or Opera (who apparently was just looking for a good excuse to dump Mac OS). Safari is fast, lean, and a right good browser, even if there are bugs with Hotmail and Blogger thinks it can only handle the "LoFi" version of the Blogger entry screen. The point is that Apple made Safari because they knew Microsoft was playing hard[-er] ball; MS did not kill IE Mac solely b/c Safari rocks. Apple made the decision from the options MS gave them. It'll be sad to see IE go, however. IE 5 Mac, when first released for OS 9, was a great browser, trumping its IE 5 for Windows contemporary with standards compliance and feature set. I can't see MS dropping Office on X any time soon, however. It's one thing to drop a product with competition that's given away for "free". It's another entirely to back out of your position of king of the desktop office suite. Nobody's going to trade in their free IE 7 on Windows for Konquorer, but they very well might grab OpenOffice instead of dropping hundreds on MS Office if Apple throws some weight behind it. posted by ruffin at 6/18/2003 01:36:00 AM |
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| Tuesday, June 17, 2003 | |
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Here's an article at Microsoft that pretty clearly shows the downside of how they made Word and the upside of how Apple made iTunes. posted by ruffin at 6/17/2003 01:05:00 PM |
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Though I remember hearing about it a while back, I still haven't played with the JavaBean to ActiveX Bridge provided by Sun. At some point, I should. In other news, I got word from the president of REALbasic software that they were looking at ways to get REALbasic dll's compiled for Windows. This would allow you to reuse REALbasic logic on Mac and Windows, which would be a huge boon. There's so much you can do awfully easy in Windows by including its host of COM-compliant objects (1st & 3rd party), and having a feature-enhanced Windows release (or, rather, share a good portion of your code on the Mac) would be super. RB dll's would also allow you to use REALbasic objects with .NET with COM-interop, which would be great. But until it shows up, I'll continue to hold onto my $300. posted by ruffin at 6/17/2003 09:51:00 AM |
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| Monday, June 16, 2003 | |
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No freakin' way. Took a "Which OS Are You?" test online, and guess what?  Which OS are You? posted by ruffin at 6/16/2003 04:34:00 PM |
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Bloggeriffic Monday! Neat set of articles for the indie publisher. At least the one I'm reading now is okay. ;^) posted by ruffin at 6/16/2003 04:25:00 PM |
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If App.PrevInstance = True Then ' handle "we've got more than one open" End If posted by ruffin at 6/16/2003 02:47:00 PM |
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From Thinksecret.com, the most reliable Apple rumor site I've found (though it usually reports on, rather than breaks, very big rumor stories): Apple reportedly seeks out Fortune 500 companies that have large installations of UNIX workstations and use high-end software like Cadence. In particular, Apple targets companies that have employees using both UNIX and Windows hardware. Apple seeds Mac hardware to these companies, making the pitch that by switching to the Mac, these companies could run both UNIX apps and regular Office-style software on a single box -- or even a laptop. Very smart. :^) posted by ruffin at 6/16/2003 02:47:00 PM |
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from here: If you ask most people, Java on the desktop has faded into obscurity - partially from neglect on Sun's part, but partially from the realisation by developers that it was easier to develop and deliver software to the web top than it was to the desktop. Only recently has the Java Plugin and Java Web Start made it possible to deliver desktop applications in a pain-free manner for the users. On the money quote, there. Pretty neat idea -- they are showing what you might be able to do with a "Java-only tool suite", so to speak, based on a similar idea from CNET that had some guys try to not use MS software for a month. Now why the two schmoes used Linux and not Mac OS, I'll never know... ;^) At any rate, on the page are replacements for pretty much everything. from office suites to email to instant messaging. Though on a little more inspection, things don't look good. Pretty "icky" apps. I have noticed a huge number of bugs in Apple's 1.4.1 implementation of Swing, and relatively little noise on the Apple Java dev list. There's been more complaining about Swing & Apple's 1.4.1 on the Furthurnet developers' list than Apple's. The lesson there is, pretty obviously, I think, that people aren't making Java client apps. With the exceptions of Limewire, jEdit and possibly Furthurnet and SQuirreL-SQL, there's just not much out there. posted by ruffin at 6/16/2003 12:30:00 PM |
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From an email to a coworker about what books I'd recommend to learn to program: The only programming book I picked up recently was "Programming C#" or some such by Jesse Liberty from O'Reilly. Unfortunately at this point, I'm usually able to surf a few sites and figure out how to do whatever in whichever programming language as long as I have a language reference laying around somewhere. I've enjoyed O'Reilly's "Nutshell" books on Java, which are basically just lang refs printed out, and would like to get the same thing for C# if I ever have a real reason to learn the language. Once you've gotten a good feel for one language (like you've done with Crystal scripting), it might be worth finding a pretty good week-long, relatively high-level training course on the language you'd like to learn. That's all I did for VB6 a few years ago. Every language is just a dialect of the same "archetypal" [programming] language, if you ask me. Programming in a new language as much learning your new IDE as learning the API of the lang nowadays. posted by ruffin at 6/16/2003 10:18:00 AM |
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| Sunday, June 15, 2003 | |
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Brushed Metal look on Apple Java apps (AWT on OS X only) http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2003/Apr/30/appleawtbrushmetallook.002.txt posted by ruffin at 6/15/2003 01:53:00 PM |
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"ASP" for Apache via open source (but only Perl scripting; no vbscript. Oh well.) http://www.apache-asp.org/faq.html posted by ruffin at 6/15/2003 01:52:00 PM |
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| Friday, June 06, 2003 | |
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Someday I've gotta learn BeanShell, used here, and in jEdit's search & replace function. In other news, wow they updated the blogger interface. Much more Moz friendly now. posted by ruffin at 6/06/2003 10:39:00 AM |
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| Tuesday, June 03, 2003 | |
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JoelonSoftware.com Joel finally moves to Mozilla (by way of Firebird). Bout time. Just for the type-ahead find, I've been using Mozilla more out of utility than principle for a while now. Even when I go to MSDN I've been using Moz recently. Quick quote: the Mozilla Firebird browser has finally caught up with Internet Explorer. After downloading virtually every Mozilla release over the last three years, this is the first browser I'm actually going to make my default web browser. All the little problems are fixed. It loads fast. It's not ugly and clunky. My beloved Alt+D/Ctrl+Enter work perfectly. NT challenge/response authentication is supported. More interesting is Joel's slant later on why the AOL/IE licensing deal is important (something I questioned in a recent /. post of mine)... I suppose one possibility [of why AOL's "free IE licensing"] is that Microsoft plans to not make IE available to all developers as a component in some future operating system, and AOL wants to make sure that won't affect them. Also thought it was interesting Joel mentioned the ActiveX Moz project I thought was so neat a while back (a little buggy when I last tried it about a year ago, but a neat concept). The Object Model just like the MS Internet Control. As Joel points out, if the MSIC becomes licensed, this Moz/ActiveX work becomes much more important. Wonder if Apple will do the same [ie, license] with Safari? posted by ruffin at 6/03/2003 08:44:00 AM |
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