DevTopics

First it was musicians, now it’s software developers, and next it will be movie stars.  The gravy train is over, folks!

If you write code for a living, your career is in the crosshairs of the Web’s demand that everything digital be cheap or free.  A whole generation is growing up believing that if you cannot touch it, then it has no monetary value and is free for the taking.

The terrific webcomic The Oatmeal demonstrates this brave new world:

Is this necessarily a bad thing?  If we remove the economic incentive for the time-and-resource-intensive business of software development, consumers are likely to see fewer ambitious software products like Photoshop and Microsoft Office.  However, I’m confident in the future that we’ll all enjoy an endless supply of Fart apps.

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This is part 18 in a series of articles on obscure programming languages.

What is REBOL?

REBOL (Relative Expression Based Object Language) is a cross-platform data exchange language and dynamic programming language originally designed for network communications and distributed computing.  More recently, REBOL has been used to program client and server-side Internet applications, database applications, and multimedia applications.

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This is what I tweeted after being blown away by the movie Inception:

Inception is AMAZING! That rare combination of high-concept brain teaser with summer popcorn blockbuster.

And this tweet by Stas Miasnikou is one of the best explanations I’ve seen for the movie.  However, you must truly be a geek if this comment makes you LOL:

The main idea of "Inception": if you run a VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM, everything will be very slow

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Here’s a clever way to pre-screen candidates: post the job description in C# code.  That’s what a company in Port Chester, New York did for a $80K-$100K .NET Developer position posted on CraigsList.  The job description starts as:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace CandidateSearchApp
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main( string[] args )
        {
            var candidateSearch = new CandidateSearch();

            foreach (Candidate candidate in candidateSearch.GetCandidates())
            {
                if (candidate.IsViable() && candidate.IsQualified())
                    candidate.SubmitResume();
            }
        }
    }

And the necessary qualifications are summarized as follows:

return
    canWriteCSharp
    && canWriteCPlusPlus
    && knowsOO
    && knowsInterop
    && knowsThreading
    && knowsEntity
    && knowsClientWCF
    && knowsLinq
    && knowsWinForms;

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I bought a laptop in June 2008 with 64-bit Windows Vista installed.  At that time, Windows x64 was relatively new, so I encountered a few problems with incompatible hardware and software that required an upgrade to 64-bit drivers.

Now in August 2010, most of the incompatibilities have been solved as x64 has gone mainstream.  At the local Best Buy today, perhaps 90% of the full-featured laptops run 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.  This makes sense because most new laptops come with 4-8 GB RAM, and you must run 64-bit Windows to access more than 3GB RAM.

64-bit Benefits

Here are the key benefits of running 64-bit Windows instead of 32-bit:

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Imagine you are driving down the highway and run out of gas.  Surely that’s bad enough, but then you discover that you cannot refill your gas tank and are stranded for 24 hours or more.  Welcome to the world of high-speed satellite internet.

To deal with this problem, we built HNFAP, FREE Windows software that acts like a smart gas gauge for your HughesNet high-speed Satellite internet.  HNFAP™ (pronounced "HEN-fap") enables you to download as much as possible without running out of gas.

Satellite Internet: Best Option for Rural Customers

There are three major satellite internet providers in the United States: HughesNet, Starband and WildBlue.  With satellite internet, you download and upload data via a satellite dish mounted in your yard or on your roof, similar to how DirecTV and Dish networks provide TV channels via satellite.

When compared to other means of internet access (cable, DSL, T1, dialup, etc.), satellite internet is generally more expensive, slower (except for dialup), falters during rain and snow, has a noticeable lag, doesn’t support online gaming or virtual private networks, and has strict limits on how much data you can download each day.

But on the other hand, if you live out in the country, satellite is currently the best affordable option for high-speed internet (though perhaps that will change someday with the US Rural Broadband Initiative).

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An old joke floating around the Internet:

A little boy goes to his father and asks, “Daddy, how was I born?”

The father answers:

Well, son, I guess one day you will find out anyway!  Your Mom and I first met in a chat room on Yahoo.  We really hit it off, so I set up a date with your Mom via email.  Our first date was at a cyber cafe.  We snuck into a secluded room and googled each other.  Then your mother agreed to a download from my hard drive.  As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of us had used a firewall, and since it was too late to hit the delete button, nine months later a little pop-up appeared that said:

“You’ve got MALE!”

Photo Copyright © Erin Lee, used under license
Joke found at Web-Funny

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DeveloperFusion offers a free .NET code converter.  Simply paste your C# or VB.NET code into this web-based tool, then select your target language: C#, VB.NET, Python or Ruby.  Supports syntax up to .NET 3.5.

Code Converter

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“I’m tellin ya, mo fos… I’ll bet my last clean diaper that C# is the best programming language there is.”
 

Now here’s something you don’t see every day: a programming poem.  A BABY programming poem, no less!  Apparently Google App Inventor is so easy that even an infant can build Android apps.

But back to the poem by Andra McCoy.  Here is the first stanza:

Why does PHP and HTML sleep in the same crib,
Whenever I look, they’re sharing a bib.
They seem to support some code they call OOP,
I find it irrelevant, more concerned with my Poop!

Any poem that contains both OOP and poop is true geek art in my book!

Read the rest of the “Baby On Rails” poem

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As the resident geek, my part-time job is providing computer tech support to family, friends and neighbors.  One of the most common questions they ask me is:

“What’s the difference between digital songs that cost $1.29 on iTunes and $0.99 on Amazon.com?”

And being the smartass that I am, my stock answer is:

“30 cents”

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