DevTopics

“People always fear change.  People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they?  People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines.  There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear.  But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.”

As Bill Gates once warned, computers have indeed become our silicon masters, pervading nearly every aspect of our modern lives.  As a result, some of the greatest minds of our time have pondered the significance of computers and software on the human condition.  Following are 101 great quotes about computers, with an emphasis on programming, since after all this is a software development site. 
 

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Tags: Bill-Gates, Computer Programming, Quotes

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the snacks are so delightful,
And since we’ve no place to go,
Let me code, let me code, let me code!

What should a software developer do over the holidays?  Many take off to be with family and friends during the last two weeks of December.  Others (including me) have spouses who must work or have used up vacation, so they find themselves working in half-empty companies.

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Tags: Holidays, Worker Productivity

Launching a startup software company is like legal gambling:  The stakes are high, the odds are against you, but with persistence and good luck, you could strike it rich.  But as the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money, and software startups can burn through cash like a brush fire through Silicon Valley.  So the trick is to find enough capital to fund your startup until it can sustain itself with customer revenue, without giving up too much ownership and control to your investors.

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Tags: Angel Investors, Funding, Software Startup, Startup Company, Startup Funding, VC, Venture Capital, Venture Capitalist

What makes a C# blog good?  Pretty much the same thing that makes any blog good, but with a focus on C#, of course.  Good C# blogs have:

• Useful news, information, tips and code samples
• Regular updates
• Original content, not a splog or news feed
• Good organization, including categories and tags
• Healthy discussion and user comments
• Personal insight and humor, but not too much personal drivel

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Tags: C#-Blogs

Following are some simple but useful FREE tools for software developers.  Each tool is freely distributable and includes the original C# source code so you can modify the tool to your needs.  These tools are not supported.  Enjoy!
 

  Color Gadget

Select a .NET KnownColor or other color, copy RGB and hex values to the clipboard.

Free Download

  Guid Generator

Generate a new globally-unique ID and copy it to the clipboard.

Free Download

  Hex Converter

Quickly convert between hex and decimal numbers.

Free Download

  Shortcut Replace

Search/replace the path and working directory in a collection of shortcut (.lnk) files.

Free Download

  Visual Studio Toolbox Installer

Console program that installs/removes tabs and custom controls and components in the Visual Studio .NET Toolbox.

Free Download

  Window Watcher

Shows the form and client bounds of the active window.

Free Download

Tags: C#, Color, Guid, Hex, Search-Replace, Tools, Visual Studio

For the disabled PC user, every mouse click and keystroke can be a major effort or literal pain.  So disabled users will often go to great lengths to automate repetitive tasks and minimize the steps required to perform each task.  This includes the use of macros, voice recognition, mouse and keyboard utilities, and special hardware such as head-controlled mice and programmable button boards.

But in spite of these efforts, disabled PC users are often confounded by all-too-common problems found in today’s Windows and Web applications. 

Following are 20 problems with PC software that may be minor nits for many users but can be a huge problem for the disabled.  These are presented in no particular order, as each problem’s severity depends on the situation and individual.
 

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Tags: Disabilities, Software, User Interface

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework v3.5.  These upgrades enable .NET software developers to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and reliable applications and take advantage of new features found in Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.

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Tags: .NET, AJAX, C#, LINQ, Tools, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Visual-Studio-.NET

Though by profession I am a software developer, like most developers I am also a voracious software consumer.  My job requires me to use many different software tools, and I also use software to automate and manage many aspects of my personal life.

So naturally when it came time to produce a photo book for my parents’ joint 75th birthdays, I jumped on the new wave of “Print-On-Demand” (POD) book publishing.  With POD, you create your own book in a word processor or desktop publishing program, and then you can publish one or many professionally-bound copies of your new hardcover masterpiece for a very reasonable fee.
 

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Tags: Blurb, Booksmart, Personal, POD, Print-On-Demand, Software

Microsoft has announced that it will release the source code for the .NET Framework with .NET version 3.5 later this year.  Microsoft will release the code under its Reference License.  This is essentially “read-only mode,” meaning that you can view the source code for reference and debugging, but you cannot modify or distribute the code.  This is Microsoft’s most restrictive shared-code license and should not be confused with “open source” code such as Linux and the projects on SourceForge.Net. Continue reading »

Tags: .NET, Open-Source, Visual Studio, Visual-Studio-.NET

Great empires often fall from within. 

The death knell for Visual Basic is premature, but it’s true that VB has deviated from its original vision as an “Application Construction Kit” for the masses and has lost significant market share as a result.  

Tim Anderson summed it up best:

It sounds like perfection.  Microsoft had perhaps the largest number of developers in the world hooked on a language which in turn was hooked to Windows.  Yet Microsoft took this asset of incalculable value and apparently tossed it aside.  Back in 2002, Microsoft announced that the language was to be replaced by something new, different and incompatible.  That caused rumblings that continue today.  Developers expressed emotions ranging from frustration to anger.  They felt betrayed.

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Tags: .NET, Alan-Cooper, Bill-Gates, C#, Development, Languages, Microsoft-.NET, Popfly, Silverlight, Software, VB, VB.NET, VB6, Visual Basic, Visual-Basic-.NET, Visual-Basic-6