A good read about one person’s opinion on why Delphi is less risky compared to Microsoft development tools. I concur with this opinion. Heck just the other day I incorporated some Delphi code that I wrote some 10 years ago into a customer application.
The last few weeks have been very busy for me so I haven’t had time to post as many blog entries as I would like. SO here’s a quick list of random thoughts I have had recently.
<ul>
<li>Microsoft acquires SysInternals and WinInternals. Big news in my opinion. I’m curious to see what Microsoft will do with the excellent SysInternal tools like Process Explorer.</li>
<li>Speaking of SysInternals, Mark Russinovich has an interested take on .NET managed application. I agree with him that client only applications shouldn’t be managed applications.</li>
<li>Foxit Reader is awesome. It is a PDF reader but unlike Adobe’s PDF reader Foxit loads fast and doesn’t require an install. The single Foxit exe has made its way into my bin directory of useful tools.</li>
<li>Allen Bauer points out that Foxit has an SDK that allows you to embed a PDF reader into your application. And best of all it supports Delphi.</li>
<li>Four grand to remove a tree? Makes me question whether home ownership is worth the trouble and unexpected expenses.</li>
<li>DevCo is one step closer.</li>
<li>I recently started some new work in Visual Studio 2003 and I immediately started missing features from Borland Developer Studio 2006. Most noticeable was the lack of built-in support for unit test projects and creating unit test cases. BDS simplifies the setup of unit tests.</li>
</ul>
I lived in the West Village, Manhattan for just over 6 years. Earlier this year my wife and I moved to Salem, Massachusetts. We have a number of reasons for moving such as a change in life style, wanting to be closer to the mountains of New England, etc. Cost is definitely one of the reasons. We were spending more and more time outside of NYC making it hard to justify paying high rent for an apartment we didn’t see much, especially in the winter time.
I was surprise to learn that Essex County, Massachusetts, which is where Salem is located, is ranked at the top of the recent Forbes most overprice places in the United States. (New York is ranked number 6.) Granted we don’t live in one of the awesomely big water front homes mentioned in the article. I wish we did. But homes at a million and more is beyond what we can afford. I will say, though, that $1.4 million for a 4,000 square foot water front home does seem like a better deal to me than a $1.4 million, 2 bedroom, 900 square foot condo in downtown Manhattan.
What is the SciFi Channel thinking by air ECW? ECW is some ridiculous wrestling show and has zero to do with sci-fi. Guess I will have to watch something else tonight to get my sci-fi fix. I hope this show is pulled soon.
One of the items on my never ending to-do list is to install a wiki for internal use at White Peak Software. It’s been on my list for over a year to do but it seems I never have the time. Last week I saw the internal wiki of another small software company and thought to myself, “I need to do the same.” So today I decided to take a break from my normal work to install a wiki.
There are a lot of different wiki software options available so I started by reviewing the popular ones at WikiMatrix. This site even has a Wiki Choice Wizard that helps find a wiki software package based on requirement needs.
The selection criteria was simple. I need something that will run on a Windows server under IIS and does not require a database. The content should be stored in the file system in case a need arises that requires access to the data outside of the wiki software. The software I settled on is DokuWiki.
DokuWiki is written in PHP so my first step was to download the latest version of PHP. A Windows installer is provided that will not only install PHP but configure IIS to use PHP. The installer ran without a problem, which made me very happy.
Next I downloaded the DokuWiki software and un-archived the tar file. I setup a wiki folder and copied the DokuWiki to the new folder. I created a new web site using the IIS management console and pointed the web site to the wiki folder. Within a few minutes, from installing PHP to copying the DokuWiki files to setting up the web site, the wiki site was up and running.
The more time consuming part has been adding content to the wiki site. I started by creating a new start page with links to various White Peak Software resources. I also setup a “Clients” wiki page. From there I started adding content about each client and client project. Even after 3 hours I haven’t made it very far. There’s too much information to add. I imagine I will be adding content off and on for the next few weeks.
The great thing about having the wiki is that White Peak Software now has single point of reference for accessing WPS information. When a new sub-contractor comes on board, or even if I am looking for information about a particular project, the wiki site provides easy access to the needed information. I’m glad I finally took the time to get this started.
I received a DVD containing a database backup from a customer yesterday. This morning I go to restore the database backup and I quickly realized I can’t. My DVD drive is still packed away, which means it has been over 5 months since I have had to use it. I didn’t realize until now how little I use physical media these days. Downloads regardless of size are simply better for me.
Here is a good read about the eSellerate and DR deal straight from the horse’s mouth.
I often rave about BDS2006 but not today. Today this fine IDE is really annoying me. I’m editing some ASP.NET User Controls (.ascx) using the markup editor. Every time I save the changes the editor reformats the HTML to unformatted HTML. Not only that it is inserting new HTML into the file such as empty <p></p> tags! It’s annoying me so much I’m considering re-installing Visual Studio 2003.
I don’t recall having this problem with BDS2005 and admittedly this is the first time I have done any major ASP.NET work in BDS2006. Anyone know of a way to turn OFF HTML formatting in BDS2006?
I’m one of those rare developers who have moved from .NET managed code to native Windows code over the last year. After living in the managed code world for years, I’ve returned to native windows coding and I find I am doing more and more native Win32 work each month for customers. Sure the products White Peak Software is writing are native Windows applications but recently customers have been asking White Peak Software to develop native Win32 custom software. The most common reason? The desire to eliminate the dependency on the .NET Framework.
I often hear, “We don’t know if the server hosting your program will have the .NET Framework installed,” or “The end users do not have .NET installed on their desktops so we need something that will run without .NET.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I love .NET. It’s a great framework, but there is something to be said for native Windows applications. And there are still many cases where a native Windows application should be written instead of a .NET equivalent. For instance, I feel .NET applications are ideal for in-house development typically found in corporations, and I feel commercial applications are typically better served as a native Windows application. Of course there are always exceptions to my general thinking, hence the recent resurgence seen at White Peak Software in customer requests for custom native Windows applications.
Don’t believe me? Think everything running on the Windows platform should be managed code? Well, individuals at Microsoft know that native Windows applications are staying around for a while. When the IE Lead Project Manager Christopher Vaughan was recently asked if components of the new IE7 would be implemented in managed code his response was, “No, IE7 remains purely native code throughout. I think as we develop future versions of IE you’ll see a larger focus on managed code, most likely to enable great plug-ins of that type for our platform. One thing people shouldn’t expect is that IE8 be re-written in managed code. For a variety of reasons, native code is where we’ll stay for a while.”