Jesse Ezell Blog

Fear the Cloud

2008-07-21T14:48:00Z

If you are considering using "cloud services," you should read this:

http://blog.doloreslabs.com/2008/07/amazons-s3-web-service-our-1-cause-of-failure/

MarK Cuban's Startup Rules

2008-07-20T16:37:00Z

http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/03/09/my-rules-for-startups/

NServiceBus = Fail?

2008-07-17T02:00:00Z

Finally had a chance to dig into the NServiceBus code. My thoughts are here if you care (I'm sure Udi will respond with his thoughts, so comment there instead of here if you think I'm off base):

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/nservicebus/message/1012

Basic summation: code is potentially buggy, doesn't follow standard .NET naming conventions (not uncommon but annoys me when public projects don't) and not really production quality (I saw numerous potential crashes and basic threading problems just in the two core classes I read through).

I do still think Udi is a really smart guy and has a lot of good stuff to say, I just don't like the code.

Update: Udi likes the feedback and will be looking at addressing these issues. I'll try to find some time to work through the rest of NServiceBus to find other potential issues.

Don't Mix Lambda Expressions and Using Statements

2008-07-16T12:46:00Z

Lambda expressions are really cool, but they present some interesting problems because they aren't really inline code blocks like they appear:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jaredpar/archive/2008/07/16/don-t-mix-using-statements-and-lambda-expressions.aspx

Delegation: WCF Gotcha #2

2008-07-16T03:04:00Z

Delegation can be a pain in the ass to get set up, but is a really cool feature of Windows that allows you to forward credentials from one service or machine to another. I have a post over at iServiceOriented.com explaining what you need to know to get delegation up and running with WCF: http://www.iserviceoriented.com/blog/post/Delegation+-+WCF+Gotcha+2.aspx

My First Microsoft Interview

2008-07-13T20:47:00Z

I'm happy in my present situation, but working at Microsoft has always been in the back of my mind. So, when a recruiter for the Business Solutions division tracked me down, I was certainly going to find out more. The project sounded interesting enough, so when he asked if he could take it to the next level and ask some technical questions I said, "why not?" The questions he asked basically ranged from basic stuff everyone should know to basic stuff anyone who got a CS degree should know. I've been writing code just about every day for the past 15 or so years, starting with ASM. When I started out, I had an 8086 Zenith laptop with a CGA monitor that couldn't really do much of anything else. I actually wrote programs for quite some time inside the command line debugger until I managed to find some cheap assembler program at a local computer swapmeet. As a kid, I spent so much time programming that my mom would ground me from the computer, not from going out. My first first fight was with my programming buddy that "stole" my code and changed my copyright with a hex editor (Yeah, I learned that software piracy was a bitch before I could drive). Later, I got a bigger machine and moved on to C and then C++ and did a ton of work with the STL since those were still the days when Windows was still a DOS program :). These days, I write code literally from the time I wake up at 5:30 AM till I sleep (which usually results in far less than 8 hours of sleep). It's not that I have to. I just really enjoy it. I'll hit the clubs or go out on the town every once and a while, but most nights I'd rather be coding. But... I didn't get a CS degree. To the dismay of my teachers who all had their own ideas of what I should do, I was actually going to get a Theology Degree... I never could kick the programming habit though and ended up dropping out after two years to start a consulting company.

Although I've written and optimized pretty damn complex code like H.263 video compression, path finding AI, etc., worked on teams with people that had shipped products for Macromedia and Microsoft, and shipped a few products personally, I haven't had to write my own heap class and I certainly wouldn't be using some of these slow ass sorts in my own apps (but hey, the .NET framework itself uses a quicksort which is pretty easy to implement). I faired well on the majority of the questions (like "what's the difference between a mutex and a critical section"), but it really made me feel silly that I couldn't instantly pull the answers off the top of my head to a couple of them. Why? Because it was basic stuff. Not the kind of stuff you may ever have to do in practice, but the kind of stuff you would definitely have learned if you went to school. If you didn't go to school, you have some programming chops, and some basic math skills, it's the type of stuff that you could teach yourself in a few hours. It reminds me of when I was in Junior High. We took a test to measure everyone's math skills for placement. I always enjoyed math, so I figured I would ace the thing. And I aced half of it. The complex math section. Somehow, I managed to get one of the highest scores on the complex math section, but totally screw up on the basic math section. Fortunately, the complex math score is the one that mattered, but I was always perplexed by how the hell I managed to score like that. In the end, I told myself I needed to slow down and double check the simple stuff. Treating it like it's braindead easy just makes you make braindead stupid mistakes.

This weekend I decided to go and close this little knowledge gap. I was going to start reading POSA 5 this weekend, but that can wait till next. The process has been suprisingly fun. I expected it to be pretty lame, but I was up till 4 am last night optimizing my radix sorts and heap sorts. It wasn't till my girlfriend's snores on the couch woke me up from my trance that I realized how fast the time was flying. If you didn't go the academic route, I highly recommend the excercise. Yeah, you might feel a little silly doing it, but it should be pretty easy to work through--and if you are a nerd like me, you might even enjoy it.

We'll see what happens next. Maybe I won't like the team or the offer. Maybe they won't like me. Maybe I already shot myself in the foot. In any case, I am sure as hell going to prevent that same foot from getting shot in the future :)

In junior high, I wrote a GUI using GCC and Allegro for a report about Bill Gates. We used to call him the "super nerd". The one that was so smart that it didn't matter he was a nerd. It would be funny to end up at his old company one day... though I don't think it would suprise anyone I grew up with.

Protocol Buffers: Google vs. XML

2008-07-11T21:08:00Z

"Google (or at least some part of it) has now weighed in on the whole XML discussion with the recent release of their "Protocol Buffers" implementation, and, quite naturally, the debates have begun, with all the carefully-weighed logic, respectful discourse, and reasoned analysis that we've come to expect and enjoy from this industry.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, without trying to take sides either way in this debate--yes, the punchline is that I believe in a world where both XML and Protocol Buffers are useful--I thought I'd weigh in on some of the aspects about PBs that are interesting/disturbing, but more importantly, try to frame some of the debate and discussions around these two topics in a vain attempt to wring some coherency and sanity out of what will likely turn into a large shouting match.

For starters, let's take a quick look at how PBs work..."

Great post by Ted Neward examining Google's new Protocol Buffers spec: http://blogs.tedneward.com/2008/07/11/So+You+Say+You+Want+To+Kill+XML.aspx

Behind Youtube

2008-07-11T20:56:00Z

Cuong Do on YouTube's infrastructure. Pretty interesting:
http://blip.tv/file/1069718/

Events are your Friend

2008-07-11T20:23:00Z

"Imagine trying to build a desktop application without events. How would you make a button click do what you want? One way would be to open the Button source code and add the code directly. That has approach has obvious problems, not the least of which is that the behavior of the button click will vary from button to button..."

[1] Continued at http://www.iserviceoriented.com/blog/post/Events+Are+Your+Friend.aspx

Adobe Genesis

2008-07-09T13:07:00Z

Adobe has announced that it is coming out with an AIR based mashup client.

See the prototype here:

https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a295153/p91742105/

iPhone SDK

2008-07-06T23:48:00Z

Been playing a bit with the iPhone SDK lately. Fortunately, I bought a MacBook Pro a few months ago (with default boot to Vista since I rarely ever boot into OS X). If I could pick one word to describe the experience it would be "different." The whole Apple/Jobs culture even leaks into the developer platform. They really couldn't just pick a name like "Object" for example as the base class for various objects. Instead, they had to make it NSObject. Why the NS? It stands for Next-Step--which, as you may know, is the OS that Jobs worked on during his time away from Apple. On top of that, you can't just write an application for the iPhone. You have to get on a waiting list and be approved first. That takes about 6 months or so, after which you still don't have any promise that your app can get loaded on any iPhones. After you finish your app, you then have to submit it to Apple, who decides whether or not they want it on their iPhones. That's a hell of a lot of work to do before getting a yes / no answer (not to mention that even if you do get the app in the store, a cut of every sale goes to Apple).

While listening to the developer tutorial videos, I cracked up when they got into the discussion of naming conventions. Yeah, naming conventions are a good thing, but I almost fell off my chair when the official developer training video from Apple stated that if you don't follow their naming conventions, "your whole application will come crashing down around you." The other thing I found quite strange about the videos was that they seemed a lot more like marketing material than developer training. It took a few videos before any code showed up, and then it was useless snippets that you couldn't actually compile because there was a lot of missing glue code. They probably would have made a bit more sense had I known Objective C and been familiar with OS X development going in, but they struck me as pretty useless videos and I abandoned them as a source of information.

Back to the SDK itself... The SDK uses Objective C, which is quite a bit different than C++ and has a fairly steep learning curve IMO. Definitely not like jumping to C# from C++ or Java from C++. Technically, you can compile C++ with X-Code (the IDE), but you really want to stick with Objective C, since that is what all the libraries use. The IDE itself doesn't have intellisense. It will autocomplete, but only when you've typed enough of the method to narrow it down to a single method. It really makes you miss Visual Studio, where you can just hit "." and browse for the exact method you are looking for (apparently you can hit 'escape' to bring this up). The consequence is that you have to have a much better understanding of the libraries you are working with to be at all productive. There is a "class browser" to go find methods, but it is more like a treeview control plus notepad. You find the class you are interested in and it pops up the header file in a pane so you can browse it. The interface isn't tabbed like Visual Studio, so you'll quickly find yourself wishing you had one or two of those nice big 30" monitors. On the plus side, the IDE is really snappy. Much smoother than Visual Studio...but then again, it seems like it's doing a hell of a lot less in the background.

The UI libraries are strictly MVC. You have no other good option. Either you write MVC, or you go home. As far as I could tell, the interface builder doesn't really store the interface in a useful form. Early on, I tried to drag some buttons around and then go look at what it generated; but, as far as I could tell, the IDE appears to put the UI in some kind of resource file instead of generating something you can hand modify later.

My overall impression is that iPhone development is a bit on the painful side. Unlike the Microsoft tools, you don't really have a lot of options. Apple chooses the "best" option for you and you do things that way. Though there is some merit to this idea (some times Microsoft gives you a lot of rope to hang yourself with), I like having options. Honestly, I don't think most developers could get up and running with the SDK in a weekend and it's a lot to ask to have people pour a lot of effort into an application without knowing whether it will actually be accepted.

Anyway, it's really too bad Windows Mobile blows, because if Microsoft had a decent mobile phone OS, they would win hands down in the tooling department. Cross your fingers. Maybe Silverlight will make iPhone development less of a pain.

Indisposable: WCF Gotcha #1

2008-07-03T03:44:00Z

When you have the code behind the service ready to go, you deploy it to the server of your choice and are ready to call the service. At this point, you will most likely do one of two things to consume the service: Create a ChannelFactory and reuse your interface, or use the "Add Service Reference..." option inside Visual Studio. Either way you go, you will almost certainly get the next part wrong... even if you know your shit when it comes to the rest of the .NET framework... [1]

[1] http://www.iserviceoriented.com/blog/post/Indisposable+-+WCF+Gotcha+1.aspx

iServiceOriented.com

2008-07-02T01:48:00Z

I'm starting up a new blog / website over at www.iserviceoriented.com. If you are considering transitioning over to a service oriented architecture, I'll help you make the jump. I don't have an ESB to sell or a product to muddy up the conversation with, just some practical advice to get you started.

Here's a little snippet:

double Add(double x, double y) { return x+y; }

If you don't understand the above block of code you are in over your head. Stop reading. Google was not your friend today. If, however, you do understand the above block of code, this is where our discussion shall begin.

At a basic level, a service oriented architecture allows you to take code and place it on another machine. Actually, I just made a gross oversimplification. Service oriented architecture helps you do this, but the key is that it reduces the chance of everything blowing up in your face.

Take a look back at the code block up top. It's time to lay some groundwork. Quite a few web service introductions start by turning this block of code into a web service. In ASP.NET, this was as simple as adding an attribute:

[WebMethod] double Add(double x, double y) { return x+y; }

Boom! You're done! At least in theory...

[1] Continued at: http://www.iserviceoriented.com/blog/post/Introduction+to+Service+Oriented+Architecture.aspx

.NET 3.5 SP1 / Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Details

2008-04-09T20:22:00Z

"It's settled! The Entity Framework (and the Entity Designer) along with ADO.NET Data Services will RTM as part of the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 releases!

Unfortunately, we don't have official release dates at this point, but stay tuned. You'll also want to keep an eye out for the upcoming SP1 Beta 1, which will be your next chance to check out updated bits for both of these products.

Elisa Flasko
Program Manager, Data Programmability"

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2008/04/09/entity-framework-ado-net-data-services-to-ship-with-vs-2008-sp1-net-3-5-sp1.aspx

Flash Lite on Windows Mobile

2008-03-17T18:43:00Z

Lots of people are pointing to the release of Flash "Light" on Windows Mobile by Microsoft and claiming that this is to "hold people over" until Silverlight gets here. That is just utter BS. Who the hell has ever used a Flash Light site on their phone? Hell, who really uses Windows Mobile to do any web surfing? Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever used a Flash "Light" site. Ever. From ANY device. This is certainly not something that is happening because users are demanding it and it sure isn't going to sell any more phones. More likely, this is a reflection of two things. First, Microsoft under Ozzie is making it a higher priority to support other people's products. Second, this could help limit the chances of another lawsuit over in EU land should Silverlight get big. By providing support for Flash "Light" well ahead of the Silverlight for mobile release, Microsoft is showing that it wants to win this fight fair and square.

[1] http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/17/microsoft-adopts-flash-lite-for-windows-mobile-as-a-stopgap-measure/