Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle

Yesterday I posted a little bit about what our ideas of a software developer are. Here is a video that is along those same lines. I warn you, the video is a little long, the concept and analogies are a bit odd but it's still worth watching:

video

What Makes a Good Software Developer

I've been thinking more about the video I posted the other day. It's a good video about what it's like to be a software developer; The current standard for what makes a good software developer is a person that is good at playing computer in their head. Software engineers have to be able to visualize code and data structures in their head, twiddle bits in their head while taking into account the constraints of the particular data type. Interviews are geared toward this mindset. Developer tools support this. We have all become complacent.

There are those who are very good at these things I mentioned above and there is nothing wrong with that. I just have a lot more important things to think about than play computer or to do hex math in my head. That's why we have computers. I like to think that there is room for different kinds of software developers. And I think the tools are still not quite there. Development environments such as Delphi, C++Builder, Visual C# and even Visual Basic are the best development environments that I've used. I haven't used every environment out there but I've looked at a lot of them. There is a reason developers using these environments consistently write applications faster than with any other programming language and environment. The paradigm and environment support quick prototyping without having to play computer in your head. So the bar to become a developer is shifted a bit to support less traditional software developers and different kinds of thinkers. The approach and ideas these people can bring to the software world will only make it better, but for that what we all need to expand our view of what makes a good software developer by changing the interview process and making better developer tools.

So You Want to be a Developer

This is a great video on what it's like to be a software developer.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-a-developer-part-1

Thom on Windows 8 using Delphi

Thom has some great preliminary information on Windows 8 using Delphi. Check out his blog here

p.s. COM will never die.

Delphi Mac file system helper functions

I still have a few Delphi posts in the queue that I've been going through and cleaning up. Now that Delphi Mac support has shipped, there were a couple RTL functions that I wrote that may be useful to some people out there interacting with POSIX.

StringToFileSystemString (Mac only)
FileSystemStringToString (Mac only)

Mac stores file names internally as decomposed UTF-8 strings. This means that the diacritic will be a separate character after the character the diacritic is applied to. This is different than other POSIX platforms or Windows. Because of this all strings that are returned from file system functions need to be translated to a Delphi UnicodeString for use with the rest of the application. StringToFileSystemString and FileSystemStringToString will convert between a UnicodeString and a UTF-8 decomposed string.

Delphi Post Build Process

I was just going through the many posts that I haven't posted for various reasons and here was one that I found that someone may find interesting concerning Delphi XE but it should apply equally to Delphi XE2.

Since the beginning the EXE was build in the project directory right next to the .dpr. Now it lives in [Project Name]\Debug\Win32\[Project Name].exe which causes problems with my muscle memory at times so I've added a post build process to create a symlink.

Review: Bose Noise Canceling Headphones

I've had a pair of Sony MDR-V6 headphones for years. Although according to price the Sony MDR7506 headphones are a little better. But I digress. In March/April 2010 Embarcadero moved the Delphi team from the old Borland facility to an older office building in Scotts Valley. Once we got in there it turned out the fan for the air conditioner/header was super loud. So loud I couldn't discern the difference between going to the office and being on an airplane. Seriously, it was that loud. I first tried out my iPod ear bud headphones because I had them in my bag but had to crank the volume to hear anything. And let's face it, the only thing going for ear buds is convenience because they are so small and fit in your pocket. So I tried my Sony MDRV6 headphones. They were better but not by much. The dull roar of the fan was still there. So I started my pursuit to find a good pair of noise cancelling headphones. After many failed attempts of trying out bargain priced noise canceling headphones from Radio Shack (The new "The Shack" name makes me laugh) and the like I decided to try the expensive ones. I tried out almost all of them and can tell you with confidence that the Bose QuietComfor 15 Noise Cancelling headphones are awesome. If you have a need for noise canceling headphones these are the ones to get. You will only be disappointing with the nearly three c-notes you'll pony up and the occasional AAA battery it takes to run them. We take them on flights and everyone fights for who gets to wear them they are that nice! If you fly, definitely get yourself a pair!

The Etymology of the Word Geeks

I guess the link is gone. Bummer. It was funny!

Clever Code

Every once in a while I run across a bit of code that I find rather clever and I examine it to see if I like it or not. Really it's to see if I ever want to keep it around for my bag of tricks. Sometimes the code is a nice design pattern or sometimes it's rather small, like today's clever bit of code. Today's clever bit of code is this rather simple loop written in Java, but it'd work just fine in C or C++:

  int i = list.size();

  while (--i >= 0)
  {
    list.remove(i);
    //..do something
  }

At first glance I kinda liked it. Simple, elegant does the job in a few less lines than I would have written. Here's is probably what I would have written:

  int i = list.size();

  while (i >= 0)
  {
    i--;
    list.remove(i);
    //..do something
  }

Now after thinking about this bit of code I've come to the conclusion after trying it under a few different C compilers and the Java compiler, I don't like it. i is evaluated then no matter what in all the cases that I tested i is decremented. Not a huge deal, in this small example i will always be in a register, but if the body of the loop contains a bit more in it like the one I was looking at then there's a couple extra mov instructions generated as well.

Am I being picky? Yes, yes I am. I'm not always this picky. I prefer readable code to optimized code, but in this case I don't find it more readable and it is less optimal.

Wholly Cheese Batman, Groupon IPO

I think this is the largest IPO I've seen since maybe Google. I did not expect this and had no idea Groupon was quite that big. I'm still trying to get my head around which is why I'm posting this.

My question is simple "Does Groupon have a bright future and is it worth investing in?"

I was pretty down on Groupon when the Missus bought a Groupon for a local restaurant and the restaurant didn't honor the Groupon. We read through the fine print and they will refund your money for any reason. Not all the other competitors will do that. I'm not sure of the legalities of not refunding because you could call your credit card company, but they were really good about the refund so I'm less down on them. Needless to say the Missus has the Groupon app, watches for deals and buys deals that we would ordinarily buy or that look really fun. Maybe that is the customer base, I'm not the person they are targeting.

So is Groupon the next Google? I wouldn't have imagined they are, but then again the business model of grabbing loads of customers, making them addicts, and then leveraging that with other services seems to be a model that has worked before (Amazon, ebay, Google, Yahoo to name a few).

There are a few other similar services out there but Groupon has the household name just like Xerox and a number of other things out there. So that's a huge plus. The question is what will Groupon do with that $700 million? If they can expand and provide unique things such as unique opportunities to see behind the scenes at a making of the next Batman movie then I think they have some serious potential.

Coupons.com is another competitor that offers a monthly subscription to get discounts. Seems odd to me, but it seems to be working for them.

So do you have any insight into Groupon that I don't? Have you plunked down some cash to get in on the action or are you just and avid Groupon addict?

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the Galileo of our time, will be missed. I will always remember the commencement speech he gave at Stanford.

So I Upgraded to Lion

At the moment I'm not so sure Lion is better. Snow Leopard was clearly better than Leopard, and Leopard was clearly better than Tiger. Some things are snazzier, but just use extra CPU cycles and batteries. There are some nice features such as just close the lid of your laptop with an external display doesn't sleep the computer. But there are a lot of little problems. iCal doesn't connect which is odd. The new look of iCal, Address Book and Mail is interesting. Apparently they are phasing out iChat because it wasn't in the dock but rather replaced with FaceTime. Why are FaceTime and iChat different apps? Boot time actually seems to be longer. With Windows 8 boot time bloody fast I can't imagine

There are two reasons I upgraded:

1. I got a new MacBook Pro that I loaded to the gills with memory and swapped out the default HD for the fastest thing I could find so I wanted to run the OS that it shipped with.

2. It's usually better to stay up to date rather than lag behind. I typically lag behind if the OS bad or adopt it rather quick if it's good. I held off with Leopard because my printer wasn't supported for 6 months.

Does anyone have any input that I'm missing? Is anything really way better? Is your boot time different than mine?

Update: I upgraded to an SSD drive and maxed the RAM out and now it boots instantly. It's pretty awesome actually.