SBC DotNet Weblog

Upcoming MSDN Events: ASP.NET (New England Region)

Upcoming MSDN Events can always be found on www.MSDNEvents.com or at www.ManagedCode.com

Session 1 - ASP.NET: Best Practices and Techniques for Building Secure ASP.NET Applications

Session 2 - ASP.NET: Designing and Developing a Line-of-Business Web Application

Another .NET developer blog - Thom Robbins [MSFT]

Thom Robbins [MSFT] has a .NET developer blog - it has some great content for developers of RegExps, InfoPath, SharePoint and more. Thom works out of the MS Waltham, MA office and frequents local developer events and publishes too.

A jocular note for Mr Spolsky on 'Getting Your Résumé Read'

'Joel on Software' is a great source for developers - he provides 'meta information' needed in the art of software development. A subscription to his newsletter is a must! His recent posting on 'Getting Your Résumé Read' was an eye-opener - I didn't realize that people from India put a space before the comma - yikes! a lot must have happened after I left the old country many years ago. To quote Joel -

“OK, this one really bugs me. Learn where spaces go in relation to other punctuation. Attention, the entire population of India: whenever you have a comma, there is always exactly one space and it's always after the comma and never before it. Thank you.”

Well Joel, my punctuation may be awful but I know I can kick your ass in *Scrabble... LOL with :-)

* New England Regional Colleges Scrabble Champion '84-85.

*** 01.29.04 UPDATE:  I am certain that Joel has good intentions in his statements and my response was more in jest. I don't think there was any offense taken both ways.

Selling Groove - a personal observation

This is a personal observation but does bear credence.  Groove is a collaborative platform and for it to be successfully deployed in an organization, the organization must have an already established 'culture'/practice/acceptance of collaboration. Of the numerous prospective clients (mainly development shops) that I have tried "selling" Groove to - the ones who didn't buy are the ones that follow the 'not invented here' syndrome. They build almost all their own libraries, components, etc. - the 'Build vs. Buy' maxim is almost non-existant. This is an interesting correlation - a dichotomy almost between 'collaboration' and the 'not invented here' syndrome. The unfortunate side of 'not invented here' is that it invariably transforms into the 'not invented in my cubicle' syndrome and that may explain the missing 'collaboration'.

Also posted at my Radio UserLand weblogs.

.NET Reality Check - a matter of 'Pragmatic R&D'

My recent posting (with the convoluted long sentence - thanks Frans :-), needs an update. Michael Earls has some very substantiated arguments about .NET at the present and its future. His posting(s) does express a concern about what's needed today.. I do concur that MS has done a superb job with the Longhorn technology and the weblogs that are devoted to it in disseminating the information. Too much information in such cases, are never enough. 'Longhorn', today is a matter of 'Pragmatic R&D' and I hope to indulge in it (am expecting a new Dell box in my lab soon). 'Pragmatic R&D' is not a production environment but a viewport of what's coming but it may (will) change when it gets here. Having spent a considerable portion of my career in research labs, I know that it's a gamble as well, as the bottom-line is always there to remind us. When advising/suggesting to clients about the future of an operating platform, I would also like to state what's needed in human terms - training issues are the foremost. Quite a few of my clients run their systems for decades - talk about ROI! A Windows Healthcare laptop application, of which I was the project tech lead, was built about 12 years ago and it's still running! Granted that it has undergone numerous iterations (and a change in compilers from BC++ to VC++). So, it pays to do some 'Pragmatic R&D' upfront - laptops and Win3.x have come a long way!

The other important issue to consider is how are the new technologies being covered by the media. Client managers do read columnists and some columnists do a better job of it than others - some code (that's pragmatic also) but some only show screen dumps of alpha copies and render their myopic *opinions. It's the latter that you have to watch out for, but, then again, they keep me in business.

*Longhorn will be $350, and we'll just pay tribute once again while IBM wonders how Microsoft gets away with it.

10 Great Things to Do with Analysis Models and Artifacts

I should have blogged this awhile ago but better late than never..

At a recent COOUG meeting, Susan Burk gave an excellent presentation on “10 Great Things to Do with Analysis Models and Artifacts”. It was like witnessing the distillation of some great software development practices in the course of an evening. Here is the list (excerpted from the COOUG site) -

#10 Find Use Cases with Process Models and Activity Diagrams.
#9 Produce good "ballpark estimates".
#8 Define terms.
#7 Get "extra value" from Use Cases.
#6 Use Analysis Sequence diagrams to determine where to place behavior.
#5 Evaluate the placement of data and behavior for whole scope using class diagrams.
#4 Find data for Rules
#3 Use the class model to determine the data model or to map to an existing data model.
#2 Find gaps with traceability matrices.
#1 Make good decisions earlier and more cheaply.

The presentation slides are here.. (ppt format).

.NET Reality Check..

A 'must-read' is the column by Jon Udell (InfoWorld) about '.NET Reality Check'. He refers to another posting about 'Longhorn' in the market. This is a good article albeit critical about .NET and its future, unlike articles from other columnists who have become legends in their own minds.

We'll have to wait for Carl to speak again..

Sir Bill?

Sir Bill?

Where is your dev shop in this graph?

Where is your dev shop in this graph? I must admit that quite a few of projects that I have encountered are in the 'code and fix' area (at the bottom left) and its project success is another topic.

Also posted at my Radio Userland blogs.