Benefits of writing a new tool

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/benefits_of_writing_a_new_tool.htm]

I'm a big tool fan. I especially get a kick out of writing my own, custom tools - if it doesn't exist yet. Here are some benefits for writing your own, new tools:

• Very practical - A custom tool can fill a very practical niche, and let you complete a task much faster than the alternative. Usually if there's some tedious task that takes more than an hour, and I can write the tool in an hour, I'll write the tool to do it.

• You can consume it - There's something special about seeing your own code in action, especially when it's sparing you from a lot of tedious grunt work. I still get a kick out of running the MassDataHandler tool which makes it trivial to insert test SQL data.

• Small scale - If you're working on large (legacy) applications, whipping out a small tool can be refreshing. Some custom "throw-away" tools can be as quick as an hour to write.

• Huge variety - It's easy to get pigeon-holed into a specific technology or application framework. Writing a tool lets you explore areas of .Net that you might never get the chance to look at else wise. For example, some application developers might never touch reflection, diagnostics, threading (!), networking, or even streams because their application framework (usually written by someone else) abstracts those all away.

• You can share it with the world - Tools are usually isolated and self-contained (i.e. not glued to a huge framework), and hence easy to share. They are often business-independent, so you can open-source a development tool without revealing any business secrets.

Developer Scrabble

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/developer_scrabble.htm]

My wife and I were playing a game of scrabble the other day, and she was cleaning my clock. I kept staring at my random set of vowels and consonants, and thinking "Couldn't I please just use developer buzzwords and acronyms?" I'd bet the board would end up looking something like this:

 

Some random things I noticed:

• Normal English words and developer buzzwords use very different letters. For example, normal English words always have vowels, and usually have lots of E's and A's, while having very few X's and Q's. Developer buzzwords seem the exact opposite (think SQL, LINQ, XML, XAML, AJAX, etc...).

• Acronyms by their nature are short. So, lots of 3 and 4 letter buzzwords.

• Because developer buzzwords use the rare (i.e. high point-value) letters like X and Q, you could really build up a high score.

 

Book: Silverlight in Action

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/book_silverlight_in_action.htm]

I've been excited about Silverlight since I first heard about it over a year ago. Because I started looking at it as an alpha technology, there weren't even the books out yet. So, I used the quickstarts, Bill Reiss's game tutorials, Jesse Liberty's tutorials, and other people's blogs. Well, the books finally started coming out, and I got a copy of Chad Campbell and John Stockton's Silverlight in Action.

 

I liked it. While I got a lot of the background from the online Silverlight resources, the book was just thorough, filled in gaps, and had really good chapters on transforms, animation, and resources (they finally just "clicked" for me).

 

It reminded me of the "good old days" when learning a brand new technology, and you just huddled down with a book and a computer, and hour-by-hour you kept learning something new. I think this book does a really good job of introducing developers to Silverlight.

New LCNUG website up

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/new_lcnug_website_up.htm]

Check out the new Lake County .Net User's Group website!

It has several new features, including a job board, forums, and other community-building features.

The LCNUG is only 7 months old, and it's been off to a great start. It's been exciting watching it flourish.

Next month (January), the topic will be on NHibernate.

Super Mario in JavaScript (no kidding)

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/super_mario_in_javascript_no_kidding.htm]

I am impressed - someone has ported a trimmed-down Super Mario engine to JavaScript. Wow. I was impressed with Silverlight because it allowed 2D game development and let you avoid writing as much JavaScript. Just wow, got to give credit where credit is due.

http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/javascript-games/

LCNUG: JavaScript - Beyond the Curly Braces

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/lcnug_javascript__beyond_the_curly_braces.htm]

Last night several people braved the potential snow storm to hear Sergio Pereira's good presentation on advanced JavaScript. Sergio did a good job of explaining advanced JavaScript nuances, but not dwelling on the obvious stuff. It's a difficult balance to strike because everyone has already heard of JavaScript, but few people know its many obscurities.

 

Sergio blogs at: http://devlicio.us/blogs/sergio_pereira/

 

 

Why syntax is becoming less painful

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/why_syntax_is_becoming_less_painful.htm]

Unless you're a language enthusiast, most developers dislike "wasting" time trying to understand syntax. Syntax trivia makes for bad interviews, developers dismiss a problem as "that's just syntax", and it's generally considered a waste of mental energy for developers to thrash over syntax.

 

Now, at least for the type of .Net application development that I often do, syntax is mostly pain-free, partly thanks to:

• Powerful IDEs that include intellisense and compiler checking.

• Billions of online examples that are a google-query away, such as complete reference guides, tutorials, forums, and fellow blogger's who encountered the exact same one-in-a-million bug.

• Better designed APIs. for example, both C# and VB.Net reuse the entire .Net framework, making syntax differences trivial.

• Emergence of standards, like XML, HTML, and language conventions.

• The deliberate attempt by designers and architects to reduce the need for syntax by wrapping interfaces with abstraction, using standards and patterns and reusable blocks, and leveraging config files.

• More developers in the field with whom you can ask syntax questions too. For example, I can often ask clear-cut SQL syntax questions to our DBA, and he'll just nail them. ("What's the syntax for setting an index on a temp table...?")

• More powerful hardware that lets you do all this. If you only have 4KB of memory, it's a challenge just to make something possible, and you're willing to throw easy-syntax overboard to get it to work. Your machine lacks the resources to "afford" an IDE, and every language construct is optimized for the limited resources as opposed to ease-of-learning.

However, it wasn't always this way. I remember as a kid back in the late 80's, with the TRS80 and RSDOS, just staring blankly at the green and black television (didn't have a monitor). There were a few "computer people" I could talk too (like my brothers), but it was nothing like today.

 

This comes to mind because I've been reading up on PowerShell and Silverlight, and it just works. I haven't had a major syntax problem yet. It feels like I'm just cruising down the highway, and that's a nice feeling.