Software, Technology, Business & Life

Wikipedia compares C/C++ IDE’s, and Netbeans C/C++ pack looks surprisingly good.

But being written in Java, I suspect that it’s as resource-hungry as large Java apps are.

The perpetrators of what sounds like a big zombie-net have been arrested:

Three Spaniards arrested in alleged global hacking scheme

Apparently, 13 million computers were infected.

Tiobe’s 2009 Programming Language Survey is an interesting read. I write in a variety of languages: as it turns out, seven of the top eight.

Very interesting that C seems to be such a constant. And far more constant even than its second place suggests, since six of the top eight languages use a syntax based on it (Java, PHP, C++, C#, and JavaScript), not to mention Objective-C. C is the bedrock.

Objective-C seems to be coming on crazy strong. It has been around forever, but Apple’s interest is giving it a boost. Apple’s interest alone, though, will only get it so far.

Java and C# are here to stay, and for good reason. They’re strongly typed, object oriented, have great libraries and manage some of the hard stuff for you.

C++, my language of choice, seems to be slipping. I’m not concerned. I’m convinced that the C++ compiler is the most powerful software development tool ever. When managing complexity and maximizing performance are crucial, C++ is it.

I’m glad Python is doing well. It’s a great scripting language with a great set of libraries. I think it’s overcoming Perl’s passionate and loyal following. (I admit: one of my career goals is avoiding learning Perl. And I think I just might make it.)

JavaScript is crucial to know, too: every browser runs it. It’s as ubiquitous as the web.

For the record, my proficiencies, in my best-guess order: C++, C, Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, Visual Basic.

PS: The TIOBE Index isn’t to be taken as gospel.

Here’s an interesting read: the Scrum development framework.

Methodology, strategy and work-flow all rolled into one rather informal process. Not specifically for software projects, either.

Here are two applications to help learn the basics of programming:

• Alice.org (aka, Alice) teaches computer programming by letting you “program” things in an animated virtual world.
• WizBang is a visual programming tool that lets the learner drop and connect symbols.

Both are free to use. Wikipedia keeps a more exhaustive list of visual programming tools, but these two caught my eye: Alice for its entertainment value, and WizBang for its simplicity.

(A note of caution: visual programming is great for learning and relatively simple tasks, but I’ve witnessed visual programming tools becoming an unbearable burden to serious software efforts.)

When I was in college, I rented a friend’s computer for a year. It had an amazing ten megabyte hard drive, and I loved it! I didn’t have to boot it with two single-sided single-density 360KB floppy disks. It was great!

And ten whole megabytes! I figured I could type non-stop for decades before I filled it up. How cool was that?

Times have changed, haven’t they?

Update, 3/18 – Full disclosure, FYI: 105 GB of the disk space you see are consumed by virtual hard disks across 14 VMWare virtual machines.

Now that screens are wide, I find vertical space more precious. So I put my XP task bar on the left side of the screen.

It’s interesting how many programs now come up underneath it. Commercial packages with large user bases. I’m sure they mind the task bar when it’s at the bottom of the screen, but not here.

While it’s not a big deal (to me at least–just a tiny annoyance), it shows how we make implicit assumptions about our world. Sometimes those assumptions are fine. Sometimes not.

I’ve made plenty myself.

Also, I’ve not encountered a program that refuses to run or throws itself off the top or bottom of the screen because of this. That’s a possibility. (I need to keep this in mind if I find a program behaving badly with its screen position.)

The very useful CastleCops web-site seems to be defunct as of late December, for “an as yet undetermined reason.”

Fare thee well.

Their databases can now be found on SystemLookup.com.

It seems Windows XP is being phased out:

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can’t be wowed. They complain about Vista’s hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows.
[...]
“You really can’t make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you,” he said.
[...]

This troubles me, too. My wife has Vista on her laptop, and I’m amazed at how it makes a brand new processor feel slow. And how often Internet Explorer 7 has problems.

I don’t feel like I missed a thing when I skipped over Windows ME and 2000. I kind of have that same feeling towards Vista.

Maybe I should be happy. After all, it creates more work for us software folks. More work, but less real progress.

Many Windows apps run under Linux via Wine, or ported to Linux via a variety of tools. Is it time to (re)evaluate?

It’s a good time to think about your criteria: What do you need? What would tempt you to switch?

Stepping into Linux can’t be done casually. You may be trading one set of unknowns for another. Steep new learning curves. You can buy support, but how much will you need? How much will you spend in the end?

I’m amazed at how far Linux has come, but I still don’t think it has caught up as a full-featured desktop. And what flavor? Ubuntu? OpenSUSE? Xandros? Red Hat? CentOS?

30 years from today–that’s January 19th, 2038–at 3:14am, the 32-bit unsigned clocks of legacy Unix systems will roll over. They’ll read January 1, 1970.

I wrote about it here.

More serious than Y2K, since all such clocks will roll over. If you recall, with Y2K it was primarily whether the programmer used two-digit years or accounted for the 1999-2000 transition some other way.

Similarly to Y2K, only those computers making decisions based on the clock/calendar will be affected. For instance, your car won’t since it doesn’t care (or even know) what day it is.

Another similarity: we can easily categorize calendar problems from severe (loss of life) to nuisance to trivial. For instance, if some cash register receipts (or even bank statements) read 1970, that’s unlikely to cause mass insanity/hysteria.

Our best bet is that all such legacy systems will have retired by then. And that’s not too bad a bet, either.