Exciting News This Week from CodeGear
CodeGear made a couple of announcements this week that have generated a excitement and some confusion.
Major Progress Made on Vertigo
I have been talking about Vertigo for a couple of years now. Vertigo is a software product line currently under development at White Peak Software. In a nutshell it is an email program for the Windows desktop. And yes, it will be release this year.
Why develop yet another email program? Simple, none of the available mail programs suit my needs as a small business owner. And I have tried them all including Outlook, The Bat, Eudora, Poca, and ThunderBird. My needs are not unique and there is definitely an untouched market out there, which is why we are building yet another, albeit, a new kind of email program.
We current have a working version of Vertigo that is being used daily. Dogfooding an email program, though, can have its challenges especially given than I must send emails out every day. The thing that has surprised me the most is the large amount of crap contained in mail messages.
We are building a database containing thousands and thousands (soon to be hundreds of thousands) of real mail messages. Of course the majority of the messages in our database are spam mail. This will be extremely helpful when work begins on the spam filter feature. But the spam messages are also proving to be helpful in uncovering bugs in Vertigo. Malformed message headers, date formats, and MIME encoding are common. Then of course there are the attachments containing questionable content. It’s been amazing to see what actually happens with email under the hood.
My Trips in 2007
It’s been over a month since my last blog posting. I’ve been very busy the last 2 months and haven’t had time to make any thoughtful postings. Today’s no different.
For those who don’t know me well I travel a lot. Not as much as I did a few years ago but enough. I have definitely scaled back on the travel in recent years, but I’m still out of town at least twice a month on average. So I thought I might be fun to track the places I visit in 2007.
What a Different 4 Years Can Make
4 years ago my best friend Dave was fighting cancer. He had a rare form of leukemia called granulocytic sarcoma.
4 years Dave was fighting for his life. There were times we didn’t think he would live. I remember talking with Dave’s dad in December (4 years ago). He said to me “We thought we lost him last night.” That conversation really sticks in my head, and it was one of the worse nights for Dave during his 9 month hospital stay.
4 years ago Dave struggled to walk. Just walking to the bathroom across the hospital room was a major challenge for Dave, many times requiring assistances.
4 years later (today) Dave faces a different kind of challenge. Today Dave runs in the Charlotte Thunder Road Marathon. The guy who 4 years ago could barely walk and was fighting for his life is running a marathon. Dave’s cancer has been in remission and he’s healthy again. Dave is the most amazing person I know.
Dave, have fun in today’s run!
Read about Dave’s struggle with cancer and his turn around in this Charlotte Observer article.
Update: Dave’s final time: 4:42:55
Delphi (BDS) Live Templates for SQL Server
Here are a few Delphi (BDS) Live Templates I created for writting SQL Server script:
Create SQL Server Table
<pre>
version=”1.0.0”>
Create table for SQL Server.
Kirby Turner
TableName
<![CDATA[/***
Create |TableName| table.
***/
PRINT 'Create |TableName| table'
GO
IF (EXISTS (SELECT name FROM sysobjects WHERE (name = N'|TableName|') AND (type = 'U')))
BEGIN
DROP TABLE [dbo].[|TableName|]
END
GO
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[|TableName|] (
|*||end|
|*|CONSTRAINT [PK_|TableName|_1] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
|*|(
|*|)WITH (IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
GRANT SELECT ON [dbo].[|TableName|] TO [public]
GO]]>
</pre>
Create Foreign Key Reference
<pre>
version=”1.0.0”>
Create foreign key constraint for SQL Server.
Kirby Turner
PrimaryTableName
SecondaryTableName
ColumnName
<![CDATA[ALTER TABLE [dbo].[|PrimaryTableName|] WITH CHECK ADD
CONSTRAINT [FK_|PrimaryTableName|_|SecondaryTableName|] FOREIGN KEY([|ColumnName|])
REFERENCES [dbo].[|SecondaryTableName|] ([|ColumnName|])
GO]]>
</pre>
Enjoy.
Apple Distributed QuickTime Patch Through MySpace
WTF…Apple distributed a QuickTime security patch through MySpace. This is crazy!
First of all, I’m not a fan of QuickTime for various reasons. I stopped using it years ago and I no longer have it installed. But when I read this blog posting about Apple distributing a security patch through MySpace it made me glad not to be a QuickTime user. And to think Apple has been running ads on TV about the Mac being more secure than the PC. Will the day come when Mac users need a MySpace account to install the latest Mac OS security patch?
What the heck was Apple thinking?
Showing Love for the Little Guy
Jeff Atwood has declared December 1 as “Support your favorite small software vendor day”. He is asking people to register those useful programs created by independent software vendors that are used on a regular basis. As a small software vendor trying to make a living off my own software, I find this show of love great.
Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup
TechnologyReview.com has a very good interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++. In the interview Bjarne talks about what is wrong with software development. One quote that really stuck a cord with me is:
<div class="quote">
“Looking at “average” pieces of code can make me cry. The structure is appalling, and the programmers clearly didn’t think deeply about correctness, algorithms, data structures, or maintainability. Most people don’t actually read code; they just see Internet Explorer or Windows “freeze,” have their cell phone drop a call, read the latest newspaper story about viruses, and they shudder.”
</div>
So true, so true.
Many programmers today are only worried about getting a feature out the door as quickly as possible ignoring the fundamentals of software development. This is typically driven by demands from management. I for one have been guilty of taking shortcuts just to meet unrealistic demands. This is one of the reasons I left the corporate IT world. I was losing pride in my work and I felt I was starting to forget the fundamentals of software development.
Bjarne also says (towards the end of the interview):
<div class="quote">
“A lot of thinking about software development is focused on the group, the team, the company. This is often done to the point where the individual is completely submerged in corporate “culture” with no outlet for unique talents and skills. Corporate practices can be directly hostile to individuals with exceptional skills and initiative in technical matters. I consider such management of technical people cruel and wasteful.”
</div>
I am by no means the best programmer nor do I consider myself an expert, but this is something I have definitely experienced first hand on more than one occasion and with more than one employer. In a way it was good for me (I worked with good companies) because I got to do a lot of R&D; work inventing new things, which was a lot of fun, that never went into production but aided in completing production systems. I have been called everything from a maverick to a hero to a lose cannon. And all because I insisted on being myself, an individual with a passion for software development. It wasn’t that I was against the team or company. I just wanted our software to be the best it could be. I wanted time to think about proper algorithms and data structures, and most importantly maintainability. I knew as I do today that the right amount of up front time can have huge payoffs in the long run. Unfortunately too many in the software industry think only of the next 6 months and not of the next 6 years.
New Pictures in the Gallery
I just posted a bunch of photos (200+) to the gallery for the photo-junkies out there.
DoS Attack This Morning
My hosting provider for thecave.com and whitepeaksoftware.com was hit with a DoS attack this morning. As a result the mail and web servers for both domains have been down today since around 9:30 AM Eastern. The attack seems to be contained as of 2:30 PM Eastern.
My apologies to family, friends, and customers who have been trying to reach me by email and to those at thecave.com who have been without email since this morning.