Another great night of coding
Well, I'm finally finished with GenX.NET 3.0. At least, the code is finished. I have tons of documentation to write, and then one more White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino-powered code review tomorrow afternoon. For those of you who don't know what this is, I print every single line of code out on paper, and seclude myself in public (the seclusion is from the computer not from people) and edit the code line by line. I pretend that I've never seen it before, and check the documentation for consistency and correctness. I also pour over every line and make sure my naming conventions are all predictable, I've properly disposed of all of my objects, and that everything is cordoned off into #Regions effectively. IMHO, this is a MUST for any coding project. Not only does this usually fuel some last minute refactoring (like my Sunday afternoon session did) but I can't begin to tell you how many "compiled but still might cause a problem" bugs I've caught.
On the architecture front, I've decided that I'm going to have to talk about the design, no matter what help I end up giving my competition. For one thing, I can't keep it a secret. The extensibility model is too fabulous to keep people in the dark about it. Second, half of the techniques I'm using are blatantly obvious in the files that the system outputs. I would say third is disassembly, but since I'm using obfuscation that's not an issue. My value proposition will have to lie in the actual implementation, along with the support systems we will be making available. Besides, while my competition is busy catching up to what I've done, I'll be working on V4.
Next week I have my first live experiments with clients implementing GenX.NET. I'm going to observe as an individual who has never seen any thing about the product attempts to implement alongside SeriousFish's eXport.NET. I'm going to gather data on customer reactions, implementation time, and the overall user experience. Hopefully I'll be able to see where I can make some last minute improvements. Then, we're going to do some trace tests using large-scale spreadsheets and gather some data for our comparisons. I'm extremely excited. It will be nice to see someone implement it as they learn about it. Hopefully I'll get lots of good data.
On a final note, not that anyone really cares, but I'm going to start the annoying process of moving beginning next week. Many other transitions are soon to follow. Also, I'm going to be opening up 2 new weblogs starting next week as well. The first will be a corporate weblog, where I will discuss things specific to my company. The other will be a personal blog at http://www.robertmclaws.com. This is where I will blog about politics, my column, and whatever else I feel like talking about. Basically, I want to be able to piss people off and not get in trouble for it. Well, I don't WANT to piss people off, but I'd rather not be called a facist on a site that gets 2 million hits a month. And for the record, I don't believe in Facism, Communism, or Socialism. "One should not believe in an "ism". One should believe in themselves." (Name that quote and you get.... a cyber hi-5).
I'm still going to do all my .NET talking here, while my corporate blog will be reserved for talking to my customers a la the Cluetrain Manifesto, and my observations on the rest of the Tech Sector and business in general.
Well, that's my braindump for the day. I've been up for 23 straight hours (not inluding the 35 minute siesta at lunch), so I'd better turn in for the morning. Back with more tomorrow (well, today really).