Hackers - Software Engineering

Is this the end for Java

2010-04-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

News that James Gosling (father of the Java programming language) has left Oracle might spell the end for the Java programming language. Not that Mr.Gosliong was that involved in the day to day development of the language, but more in the fact that he probably didn't agree philosophically with Oracle's future for Java. We can only hope that Oracle will make good and continue to Open Source Java and ensure the future of this wonderful programming language.

Wagile

2009-05-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

-adjective
1. slow and uncoordinated in movement.
2. nonactive; slothful: a slothful project
3. a software project were some participants are unwilling to let go of their old waterfall ways.

I'm currently working on a large project that has big visibility in the company. On the IT side, we are running the project using an agile process. We are using 2 week iterations with stories, daily stand ups and collaborative documentation using a wiki. Overall we are being very successful and have accomplished a lot in a short period of time.

Our business partners however want to create an SRS, have multiple weekly requirements meetings and are using Word docs and Sharepoint site for documentation.

We have invited them to our daily stand ups, give them access to our iteration wall (virtual) and granted them access to our Wiki. But no go.

So, ultimately can this project succeed? My gut feeling is that we are doomed for failure, mainly because we just can't get on the same page. However, from and IT side of things we are accomplishing a lot of work in short periods of time and are able to keep up with the changes that the business come up with. Isn't that one of the main benefits of agile, to manage change easier. Time will tell.

I can't take credit for this term wagile, Patrick was the one who came up with it.

Back to the belly of the Beast

2009-01-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

My professional development career started in 1989 writing restaurant management software using Microsoft QuickBasic PDS (Professional Development System) for DOS. From there I started working with Visual Basic 1.0 for DOS until about 1994.

From 1994 through 1997 I used Visual Basic versions 3, 4, 5 and 6 and VBA on a multitude of projects working as a contractor. I also worked briefly with Visual J++ on a project.

In 1997 I made the switch to Java full time and haven't looked back. I've been developing with Java professionally since 1997. I currently work mostly with Java, but have also worked with Ruby on Rails.

Last year my company purchased another insurance company. While we mostly develop in Java, they develop using .Net. So far, I've spend a couple of months in training on C# and the .Net framework and some training on their applications architecture.

Overall, my observations about C# is that it's really not that different that Java. Since .Net was developed using Java as the model, that's pretty easy to understand. From a language standpoint, there are more similarities than there are differences.

In the Java world using Open Source libraries (Spring, Struts, Apache, Hibernate, Log4J, etc) is a way of life. It seems that the .Net world is a little behind in implementing these types of Open Source libraries (although C#/.Net versions do exist). This is probably more a product of the teams working on C#/.Net projects than anything else.

One of the things I used to love about Visual Basic (Studio) was the IDE. Over the years, I have used many IDE's and Visual Studio was one of the best. I currently use Eclipse for Java and migrated back to NetBeans (6.1 and 6.5) for everything else. Overall, Visual Studio hasn't really kept up with the advancements of the Java IDE's and while it still works really well, seems to be missing some of the newer advancements. One of the biggest is the ability to load more than one project solution at a time. With large applications that span multiple solutions this can be a pain since you have to switch each time.

Anyway, it looks like I will be working on mostly C# and .Net applications in the future. I've been away from the Microsoft development world for quite awhile. It will be interesting to see how it compares to Java and Ruby.

Firefox is no longer a safe haven

2008-08-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

Eventually it had to happen. With Firefox gaining market share from Microsoft IE at an incredible rate, the virus/malware/spyware writers had to take notice...and they have. I spent the weekend removing a virus/malware/spyware that my wife got on her machine just by visiting a website devoted to children's toys, and she was using Firefox 2.0.0.16.

She didn't click to install anything, she didn't download anything. All she did was visit this particular website. She was not running virus protection at the time (my bad), mainly because it slowed her machine down to much and I wrongly felt she was safe as long as she only used Firefox.

The virus (Antivirus XP 2008) is particularly viral and also downloaded a lot of other viruses/malware/spyware once it had taken over her machine. None of the major virus scanners were able to remove this virus, although they did remove some of the other ones that downloaded along with it. Here is a list of the tools I used with varying success.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
Spybot - Search & Destroy
Ad-Aware 2008
Avast Home Edition
Avira AntiVir Personal
ThreatFire AntiVirus Free Edition 3.5
PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition 4.0
Norton AntiVirus 2008
Trend Micro HijackThis 2.0.2
Autoruns
Process Explorer

In the end a combination of the manual instructions here and looking at the processes and DLL's running using Process Explorer, I was able to determine that the virus was completely removed from memory and won't load again on startup. However, I'm not as convinced that all of the files were removed.

Needless to say we are now running virus protection on her machine again. A combination of AVG and Threatfire.

I do plan on visiting this particular website again to see if I can recreate how this happened. I will be using a combination of Windows XP and Linux (Firefox 2.0.0.16 and 3.0.1) running in Virtual Machines for protection. I will post my results at a later date.

My Top 10 Geek Movies

2008-06-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've decided to try and list out my top 10 geek movies of all time. This includes movies about geeks, geek subjects, things geeks like, etc... This of course it not an exhausted list, just of my top 10 favorites.

10. Tron - OK, on it's surface Tron was not a great movie. But at the time, the graphics were considered very high tech, and lets not forget the beginning of the movie when Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is sitting at it computer hacking all night long right before he gets sucked into the computer. What geek hasn't imaged that happening after staying up all night hacking away?

9. Sneakers - Overall plot was a little thin for me, and as usual Hollywood doesn't always get the tech stuff right. But it's a fun movie with lots of tech and geek stuff.

8. Enemy of the State - What geek doesn't think the government is out to get them, and that they are using the most sophisticated and high tech gadgets imaginable.

7. T2 - This could just as easily be the original Terminator movie, but I liked some of the higher tech graphics used in this one. The original was a much lower budget movie, so the effects were pretty bad.

6. The Matrix - I still remember sitting the theater watching this movie and every few minutes repeating the same thing over and over again; "Wow, so cool". I'm so glad they decided to not screw this movie up by making crappy sequel's.

5. Office Space - I have personally lived this movie over and over again in my career. It's so funny and yet so true to life. I just love it and have to watch it every time the replay in on Comedy Central.

4. Star Wars - Like many people, this movie changed my life. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. That first scene with the Starship flying in over the screen. I knew then that I was and would forever be a geek.

3. Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan - I was never a big Star Trek fan growing up, I'm not sure why I just never got into it. But Wrath of Khan was a great movie and in my opinion stands as the best of all the Star Trek movies.

2. Blade Runner - Actually, this is my favorite movie of all time, but it's only #2 in the spot only because #1 is better geek movie. I've seen both the original release (with voice overs) and the original directors cut, and I have to admit I still prefer the voice overs.

1. Wargames - Without a doubt the best geek movie ever. The biggest problem with movies about technology and computers in general is that Hollywood never gets the technology right. Wargames got it "mostly" right.

NetBeans revisited

2008-05-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

I used to use NetBeans exclusively until about 2003 when I begrudgingly made the switch to Eclipse. Not because I stopped liking NetBeans, but mostly because all the over developers on my projects were using Eclipse and Eclipse had much better support by the community than NetBeans. But I always thought that NetBeans was easier to use, had a much cleaner interface, and didn't have Workspaces. Also, I found that NetBeans was so much easier to build a project from existing sources, so you could take your old projects and get them into NetBeans very easily and cleanly.

Lately, I've been searching for a good Ruby on Rails IDE and NetBeans 6.1 seems to fit the bill pretty well. Again, NetBeans' interface is very clean and Ruby and Rails support is built right in.... no plug-ins necessary. Also, it supports both Ruby and JRuby and allows you to install your own versions of each. It also supports both WebBrick and Mongrel as integrated test servers. Overall, I find the Ruby on Rails support to be pretty damn good.

Way to go NetBeans!!!

KDE 4 Initial Reaction

2008-05-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I posted, my wife and I had a baby in March and things have been a little crazy. Not much time recently to check out new technology, but I did recently download and install the latest Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 Remix.

I've alway been a big fan of KDE. I've preferred it over Gnome, mainly because I feel if you're going to have a desktop it might as well have all the bells and whistles, and KDE has plenty of bells and whistles. Over the years the biggest complaints with KDE has been that it is slow and doesn't have cross application compatibility with Gnome apps. KDE 3.5 pretty much put all those complaints to rest.

KDE 4 is a huge makeover from KDE 3.5. There is plenty of new stuff under the hood in KDE 4, but I won't go into all of that. My initial reaction is with the menubar. This is the bar at the bottom of the screen where you select which applications you want to run, or to shut the system down, etc... The previous version were very Windows 98 like, you click the icon and the whole menu would expand and you selected which applications, application groups, etc.. you wanted. The new version has icons for each application group which you have to click on to load the list of applications or sub-application groups under that group. To many clicks, and it's difficult to follow where you are in the menu. I find it a huge step in the wrong direction.

New Phone

2008-01-16T15:30:00.001-08:00

After about 3 years of using a very old cell phone, I finally caughed up the money for a new phone. I decided to stick with T-Mobile as my service provider, the cost is very good and I find that their service is pretty good. My wife and I share a family MyFaves plan and we downgraded from a 2000 minute plan to a 1000 minute plan. With the MyFaves and including the mobile to mobile service we feel we can cover most people we know without having to use any minutes.

My new phone is a T-Mobile Shadow which is a Windows based smartphone. I've never owned a smartphone before and I never felt that I would need one, but I liked the features of this phone and the upgrade price with rebates was very good. This phone is a Windows Mobile based device and comes with Mobile Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It also comes with an Adobe Acrobat reader. When at home or at a T-Mobile hotspot locations the phone can switch to Wifi for internet access and VOIP. This is great and while on Wifi it doesn't cost against you minutes. It also comes with Bluetooth support for headphones and headsets.

Email was very easy to setup to my Yahoo and Gmail accounts. Access my work Exchange server is also possible, but my work network does not allow non approved devices access to our servers. So, for now I am just syncing to my laptop to access my Outlook calendar.

Another great feature is the micro sd slot for adding additional storage. It can handle up to a 4gb micro sd card. This is great for storing digital music and videos that play on the Windows Media player. Also, you can use this to store digital photos you can take on the included 2mb camera.

Overall, I really love the phone.

So much new technology...

2007-12-17T14:41:00.000-08:00

I just start playing with the new Rails 2.0 when I found out that Adobe has a new version of the Flex Builder 3.0 Beta and the Flex 3.0 Beta SDK available. Also, came the great news that Adobe has decided to Open Source AMF, previously available as part of Lifecycle Data Services and has created a new reference implementation called BlazeDS. Patrick has some more info here.

I also just started learning Python and Jython.

Rails 2.0 is Out

2007-12-10T10:00:00.001-08:00

Ruby on Rails 2.0 came out this weekend. It's packed with tons of new features, including but not limited to;

- RESTful webservices
- Improved multiview (i.e. seperate formats from rendering engines)
- Simplified controller support for URL's
- More love for HTTP
- plus much, much, more....

I look forward to taking it through it's paces in some future projects.

Horrible User Interface Design

2007-11-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

The day I signed up for NetFlix and cut up my Blockbuster card was one of the happiest days of my life (not including my wedding day of course). I've been with NetFlix for about 3+ years and over that time I've seen some really good enhancements to their web interface. In particular the ability to hover over a movie icon and get a description of the movie, and the ability to arrange the movies in your queue. But one recent enhancement, the addition of the Buy this DVD bars in the queue has to go down as one of the most horrible interface designs I've seen in a long time.

It's just so intrusive, makes it difficult to see the movies in the queue, and it's the web equivalent to the 6 foot movie cutouts that used to be displayed all over a Blockbuster store. While I've built my share of user interfaces over the past 18+ years, I'm no UX expert like Glen, but I would think something like the following would be much better and less intrusive.

By hovering of the Buy button the user would be able to see the purchasing details. Also, I would like the ability to turn this off in my account preferences. Come on NetFlix you can do better.

Update:

Found this great firefox hack here. In AdBlock Plus add the following; netflix.com#tr(class=qpv)

Thanks Jason One.

Why I like Chuck

2007-11-07T09:28:00.001-08:00

Chuck is the new NBC series about a computer geek who works for a computer tech service called Nerd Herd at super store called Buy More. He drives around in a little Nerd Herd car and basically gets into all kinds of trouble. The basis of Chuck's trouble comes from his old college roommate who worked for the CIA before being killed trying to steal a disk with all the computer data the CIA has ever gathered. This data exists in the form of a very super secret video/image format, and was emailed to Chuck right before his old roommate was killed. Chuck of course opened the email and viewed the video and now has all this data inside his brain and every evil organization in the world nows wants Chuck. Yes, I know pretty far fetched. So, now it's up to the beautiful CIA agent (posing as Chuck's girlfriend) and the nasty NSA agent/killer (posing as a Buy More employee) to keep Chuck safe.

I really like this show for many reasons, one being what computer geek hasn't day dreamed of the beautiful secret agent coming to either kill him or protect him. It totally plays into the James Bond in all of us. Also, this is one show (and there have been so many bad ones over the years) where Hollywood pretty much gets the tech right. Don't get me wrong, there is some pretty far fetched technology in this show, but for the most part the far fetched stuff is at least technically possible. But the geek gaming computer, cell phones, HDTV's, remotes controls, and even a conversation about the old computer game Zork are all pretty well done.

But mainly I like this show because it is fun to watch this computer geek named Chuck get into trouble with the beautiful CIA agent and the snarling NSA killer. It's just plain fun fantasy, with some computer geekdom thrown in for good measure.

Ruby on Rails

2007-11-05T17:09:00.000-08:00

I've been playing with Ruby on Rails for about a month now. Mostly doing Proof-of-Concepts for future projects. I wanted to evailuate both Ruby and Rails and compare it to my current favorite framework Spring.

Ruby on Rails is actually two separate components. First is the Ruby programming language and second is the Rails web application framework build using the Ruby programming language.

To start, I really like the Ruby programming language. For someone who has mostly work in Java for the last 10 years, there are some really great features in Ruby. I love how terse the language is compared to Java. Ruby is also an interpreted language as opposed to Java's bite code, which can make it easier to deploy but might make it slower in the end. I haven't dug deep enough yet into the Ruby API to see how it compares to Java, but overall I like the language.

Rails is a web application framework build using the Ruby language. Therefore, like Ruby it strives to be clean and easy. The main tenant of Rails is Convention over Configuration. Java web frameworks like Struts and Spring use XML configuration files to configure how all the pieces go together. Rails uses Ruby code to configure how things go together. Guice does something very similar using Java 5 Annotations. Even though I'm very familiar with Spring and pretty much know all the configuration files, especially on a project I'm architecting, I really do like the concept of using code instead of tons of XML configurations files.

Getting an application up and running in Rails if very quick. Once you get your environment up and running. I suggest using InstantRails for a local server environment and either RadRails or EasyEclipse for Ruby on Rails for coding. There is also a pretty good Ruby plug-in for Eclipse. Once your environment is setup, getting a small sample app similar to this one. Rails uses a code generators called Scaffolding to generate the an application framework, classes, controllers, database connectors, and UI components all with a couple of commands. That being said, these code pieces are usually just a starting point for further elaboration, but still the Scaffold is pretty powerful. Also, the ActiveRecord implementation is pretty powerful.

One of the biggest things I find missing in Rails is Dependency Injection or IOC which is one of the things I love most about Spring. Still, I found Rails to be both easy and fun to work with. I hope to use it in future projects.

Kubuntu 7.10-Beta Success

2007-10-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

After totally FUBAR'ing my previous Kubuntu 7.04 (kernel panic) trying to upgrade to 7.10, I decided to just start over. Since this was a pretty new install, it wasn't that big a deal. The main reason I wanted to upgrade was to gain easy access to the Broadcom 43xx drivers that come with the restricted drivers piece in 7.10. No more ndiswrapper. After much fiddling around with network-manager and KWifiManager, I finally got my Linksys WPC54g (wireless card of death) working in Linux. ;-)

Now all I need to do is get all my development tools installed and working and I will finally, completely make the switch from Windows to Linux.

Flex

2007-10-10T10:54:00.001-07:00

I've recently started working on some new projects and I have decided to use Adobe Flex instead of HTML (JSP) as the Presentation Layer. I like Flex for many reasons but the main one is that it's cross-browser compatible. After spending many, many, many hours trying to get JavaScript and JavaScript libraries to be cross-browser compatible, I have decided to give up the fight.

That's not to say that Flex is perfect. There is still many features that have been available in the JSP world for years that aren't available yet in Flex. Pagination, Export to Excel or PDF, just to name a few. Still, more and more widgets are being developed everyday. And now that the Flex SDK is Open Source, I'm sure the movement will continue.

Linux Woes Redux

2007-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

My first experience with Linux was back in the mid 90's, with early versions of RedHat (6.0 comes t0 mind). Over the years I've installed and uninstalled many different versions of Linux over the years and always found it lacking as a full time OS. It's fun to play with, but requires to much time to configure and get up and running. Having to spend most of my time trying to get something (GUI, networking, etc..) up and running correctly. Over the years, I've tried the following distributions;

Debian
RedHat (6, 6.5, 7)
Fedora (Core 2, 3, 4)
Suse (9.1, 9.2)
FreeBSD (not Linux I know)
Ubuntu
Kubuntu

Most often I've installed these on an older hard drive or as a dual boot with Windows. Recently, my wife got a new laptop and I inherited her old one (P4 2.4ghz). First thing I did was nuke Windows and install Kubuntu 7.04 (I prefer KDE over Gnome). Well, weeks later I still do not have my wireless card working. I've used all of the online guides I can find with regard to my wireless card (Linksys WPC54g v3), also known as the Wireless Card of Death. I tried updating Kubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 since the new version contains a new kernel that is supposed to have support for the Broadcom 43xx chipset wireless cards (like the Linksys WPC54g).

Well, the update didn't go very well and crash midway through and now I get a Kernel Panic when I boot the system. Back the to drawing board.

I'm not giving up on Linux, yet. I got Kubuntu working well enough to know that I want this to be my system of choice. Also, I briefly got Beryl working and it looks really cool.