Cornerstone vs. Versions, Again

I've updated and expanded my comparison of the two best Subversion version control clients for Mac OS X. Short story, I've switched to Cornerstone.

Paul Graham vs. the recession

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

And if you're worried about threats to the survival of your company, don't look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.

Line Eater

There is a batch file that we run to create a version of RPM that's ready for deployment. It does some optimizations on some files among other tasks. I recently needed to have it remove the first line of every JavaScript file. After trying some unsuccessful batch file tricks, I figured it would be faster to whip up a little app to do it.

So if you need a command line utility to remove lines from the start of a file, be my guest: Line Eater.

Go Vista

I use a Mac at home and love it. I use Vista at work and on my HTPC and I don't mind it. If you've got a newer machine Vista is better than XP. For various reasons Vista has received a bad reputation. Microsoft knows they shit the bed on Vista marketing and the Mojave Experiment is leading their response. Unfortunately, I agree that it's bad science, and bad marketing.

However, more important to me is that despite what some people would have you believe, Vista is doing well. Microsoft has sold over 180 million licenses as of July 2008 and sales will likely accelerate. That makes me happy since every new Vista user is one less user of IE6, the bane of my profession.

So please, if you can't go Mac, go Vista. If you can't go Vista, at least go Firefox. Either way, you save a developer.

I'm Presenting at Agile 2008

I'm presenting a short experience report at the Agile 2008 Conference in Toronto. If you're there on Wed, Aug 6 please stop by for "Design to Delivery in 7 Weeks" at 3pm on the user experience stage.

The highlight of the conference for me will no doubt be the closing keynote speaker, my role model, Alan Cooper.

Cornerstone vs. Versions Follow-up

I've added a follow-up to my Subversion client comparison, including my thoughts On SmartSVN and ZigVersion.

Cornerstone vs. Versions

My quick comparison of the two new Subversion version control clients for Mac OS X.

CSS Strip

The CSSTidy optimization tool didn't meet my needs so I wrote CSS Strip. It's free so if it might help you please go ahead and try it.

Computer Geek Boldly Goes

Charles Simonyi is a programmer's programmer, a true Übergeek among mere poseurs like myself. And now, the man who brought us workplace favorites like Excel has bought his way into space.

Excelsior!

And for the record, I think allowing people to pay huge sums of money to be astronauts is a fantastic way to help support and promote space exploration. I wish NASA would embrace this.

Even at $20 million a ticket, the Russian Space Agency is fully booked until 2009

Software Mistakes Can Kill

Lockheed's F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line. A software bug shuts down the electronics of a couple $125 mil jet fighters.

It reminds me of the initial encounters in the new Battlestar Galactica miniseries where our latest Viper VII fighters are disabled electronically by the Cylons. The pilots were helpless as the enemy missiles closed in. It was an emotional moment in sci-fi, in fact I'm getting a little misty-eyed as I type this...

Jupiter Deployment

Last night we deployed our biggest, most complicated version of our software (4.0) to our oldest, most complicated customer. We do the deployments in the evenings to minimize the impact to users. It went really well and here it is 9:22 AM the next morning and no frantic calls yet. Granted, it is only 8:22 there.

The only hard part is coming right back to work early the next morning. Especially when we all picked last night to try the double Big Mac® for the first time. My stomach was so loud after as it processed that pile of "beef" that it was disrupting my office-mate.

Alex Bell vs. Silver Bullets

I guess a blog called The Jaded Developer should occasionally have a development related post. I recently came across a post by some Boeing software architect that I liked, a nice little rant about so-called "silver bullets".

The fact that a diagram has been created using the UML leads some to believe that the associated design is guaranteed to be implementable and ready for development, even if the laws of physics were ignored as constraints.

I really like the pragmatic view of software development people like Mr. Bell and Joel Spolsky have on software development.

A PHP IDE for me

At work I recently completed a search for a PHP Integrated Development Environment. I evaluated:

• Zend IDE
• Maguma Open Studio
• Maguma Workbench
• Maguma Studio
• WaterProof PHPEdit
• Eclipse
• Dev-PHP
• NuSphere PhpEd
• VS.PHP (Visual Studio plug-in)

In the end it came down to Zend, VS.PHP and NuSphere. NuSphere won.

NuSphere has a great editor, a fast UI, active development, an active forum, quick support turnaround, almost perfect code completion, easy project management, and a lot of little things done right. Not surprisingly, it was the most expensive of that list where some were even free. But in the world of development tools I think it's an OK price, and when you're a full time developer you don't skimp on the tool you use every day.

Most of my work is still on the actual RPM application which is C# in Visual Studio 2003.

Paul's Web 2.0

Paul Graham, the master of the quick, relevant tech essay, takes on Web 2.0

And here's a quicker (maybe even better) explanation: The Devil's Dictionary: Web 2.0

My AJAX presentation

Thanks to everyone who came out. The follow-up links are here.

From Banff

I'm in a conference room and day two of Creative CANUX is about to begin. The Banff Centre is a really neat place and this is definitely my kind of conference. This morning's topic: Customer Research for Design. Thanks to various government sponsors, this 4 day conference was a great deal. 3 nights accommodation, all the meals, and 3.5 full days of conference for just $370.

Bad Microsoft web design

I like Microsoft hardware. They make really good mice, and in the past made really good keyboards. However, the Microsoft hardware website has the worst country selection I've ever encountered.

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When you go to http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/ it comes up with a page asking you to select your country. Many websites do this when the products differ from region to region. Putting aside the issue of forcing this choice at all, let's focus on the interface they provide to make the choice. It's awful.

1. All this room on the page to put links, but instead they put the options in a drop-down selector. A list of links would be easy to scan and a simple click would take me on my way. Instead I have to click to open the list, find my country (maybe scroll), click it, then click the "Go" button.
2. The list isn't sorted in any way. How about at least alphabetical? How about at least keeping different language sites for the same country together?
3. Most of the prime real estate on the page is occupied by a map of the world. You can't click on your country, it's only purpose seems to be to highlight the continent of your selected country. Useless, especially since the countries each have their own site (except Canada).

My quick re-design:

PHP turns 10

If you held me down and forced me to pick a favorite programming language, I guess I'd have to say PHP. Well it was 10 years ago today that Rasmus Lerdorf posted PHP tools version 1.0. I've been using PHP seriously since 1999, and it's been a vital part of professional career. Thank you everyone who's played a part in its development.

We're partying like it's 1997

AJAX is the new web development craze. But why is it popular now when it's based on technology from 1997? Adam Bosworth has some ideas. Never one to be out of hi-tech fashion, we're using AJAX functionality in RPM now.

Visual studio is eating my event handlers!

We use Microsoft Visual Studio for our development and there is a bug where in a specific situation it will destroy some work. I've got the details here along with some screenshots.