blogs.teztech.com

Linq is some of the coolest new stuff to happen to programming in a long time. The idea was tried in the past with things like “embedded SQL” for Cobol and Fortran, but I think this time, Microsoft finally got it right (or at least has things headed in the right direction). With the Standard Template Library (STL), we got a uniform way to access and navigate type-safe and efficient memory based data containers. With Linq, we have finally a unified way to access and navigate data stored in just about any form. Yeah, I know, Linq really isn’t new, but I’m just now getting serious about using it large projects. Some of the interesting Linq related links I’ve seen recently:

• Why Linq beats SQL
• IQToolkit (for building Linq data source of any type)
• Linq to IMAP (looks very useful and a very cool demonstration of the possibilities)

I’ve been waiting on a phone like the Droid for years – an Internet connected miniature computer I can put in my pocket. I skipped Windows Mobile because it was lame: Poor resolution, poor open source application support, poor UI experience (poor Microsoft). I skipped Blackberry because the phones are ugly with small screens and the software is just awful. I skipped the iPhone because I’m not into platforms you can’t tinker with… app stores are fine, but, as a developer, I don’t want to be forced to use one. And Objective C should be something programmers either choose (or not) on its own merits – not due to Apple strong arming.

The G1 was almost good enough, but I heard it was slow and slow computers drive me crazy. Finally, my Droid has arrived. I’m not thrilled that Java is the recommended programming language, but at least you don’t have to program in Objective C. I’m on day 2 with my Droid and I’m really just getting started. The first challenge I ran into was moving my contacts from Thunderbird and my old Casio “Boulder” phone. (more…)

Recently, a friend of mine asked me about hiring friends. I’ve read a lot of books about team management and I have a lot of hard won experience in this area. Posting this up in public may come back to haunt me, but I’ve decided to bumble on anyway and try to document some of my suggestions here in the hope that it will make the world a better place. A lot of the post below details what to do when things aren’t working out, but I don’t want you to think things are all “gloom and doom” – I love to work and I’ve had really good times at work. One of my very best friends today is a “success story” about hiring friends.

It’s All About the Money

Many surveys and studies of programmers suggest that job satisfaction is more important than money, but my experience is that you have to take care of money issues first, or you’ll keep coming back to them over and over. The ideal situation is:

1. Everybody feels that they are being generously compensated (some of the generosity can be in deferred compensation - see #2)
2. Any type of deferred compensation (sales commissions, stock options, profit sharing, etc.) is “icing on the cake” and not necessary for the person to pay their normal living expenses
3. You don’t directly control the person’s paycheck (you both work for somebody else)

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I just spent a large part of the last week troubleshooting a GoogleBase data feed. (more…)

A couple of years ago, I needed a way to convert Microsoft Word documents to Pdf from a C# program. The application I was working on processed hundreds of documents and was run by the system scheduler every day at around 3am, so manual conversion was not an option. I wasn’t in control of the source documents, so I had to accept the documents the way they were given to me. I needed to do additional processing on the documents, so I wanted to convert them into a universal format. I already had a good library for reading Pdf files. After researching my options, I settled on using OpenOffice to do the conversion. OpenOffice has a pretty good Word filter, the ability to create Pdfs and an automation interface accessible to all .Net languages, including C#, so it was a good fit. I know there are commercial solutions and ways to automate Microsoft Office, but the OpenOffice solution was free and fairly easy to use.

Recently, I upgraded my development system from OpenOffice 2.x to OpenOffice 3.1. I can’t remember now the main reason I upgraded, but I was looking forward to being able to add the ability to convert docx to pdf (Office Open XML support was added in OpenOffice 3.x). I figured the upgrade might require some minor changes to my document conversion code, but it turned out not to be so simple.
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Wow, this has been a busy few months. In addition to the usual flood of small projects, since November, we’ve published these brand new sites:

http://www.lotterygold.com/ This was an interesting and very large project that recently went live. The application we created for this site is general purpose and can support many types of e-commerce. The backend of this site is very comprehensive and highly automated. Due to its sensitive nature, the there are multiple layers of security and a dedicated audit trail facility.

http://www.mountainhighoutfitters.com/ This site is based on our very comprehensive and sophisticated online store engine. Our client’s goal is to compete head on with the likes of rei.com (who probably have spent hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars on their online store). We have a very full featured marketing capabilities, integrated product catalog management (with lots of JavaScript to make it friendly and easy to use), integrated order fulfillment and automated integration with in-house store inventory. Since Google is the source of so much traffic (both paid and non-paid), we support every service that Google offers: Google Base (a.k.a. Google Products and Froogle), Google Site Maps, Google Adwords, Google Checkout and Google Analytics. We have some interesting payment solutions for vendors that want to sell to non-traditional markets (overseas). All our web applications support our standard skin and content management system (see below), so just about any look and feel can be created without any programming or database changes. There is a lot of power and flexibility under the hood that is probably best demonstrated in a meeting.

http://www.hudhomeschattanooga.com/ This is a standard ListingsTech site to market HUD homes in the metro Chattanooga, TN area. One interesting thing about this project is that we allow visitors to search across subsets of two different listings databases. We needed to do this because the databases contain all HUD listings for Georgia and Tennessee, but the site is only for Chattanooga. Another interesting idea here is the general approach of keeping the site as simple as possible – we are trying to get visitors to the information or service they want in as few clicks as possible… Want to see listings for Walker County? Click the search term on the left. Need to get prequalified for a loan? Click the link on the top of the page and fill out the form. Need more information about a listing? Click the ”Contact Us for More Info” link and type your question.  

What is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)? For sure “IDE” means different things to different programmers. Some probably think an integrated GUI form editor or WYSIWYG HTML editor is critical. Others may think that the most important parts of an IDE are the text editor and code browser. Others still judge IDEs by their code “refactoring” tools.

For me, the IDE goes back to the days of Borland’s Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. They didn’t have GUIs much less GUI form editors, HTML wasn’t yet invented and I don’t remember the text editor being anything special. What turned them into IDEs was the super efficient work flow… A typical “Hello World” program was mostly a matter of typing in some code and pressing the Run key. If you wanted to debug, you would set your breakpoints right in the editor, then press the Debug key to start your program under the integrated debugger. (more…)

This is a question I get a lot. Notebook computers are extremely popular… everybody is tired of all the wires and space required by a traditional desktop computer. People are printing less and not everybody needs a big tower case that can hold the latest and greatest $500 video card! Kids want a computer they can easily take to college or class. They problem is that the typical budget notebook runs $700 – $800 (both online and in the stores), but everybody wants to pay $400 – $500. (more…)

Teztech is in the process of upgrading one of our customers from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007. Exchange Server 2007 requires a Windows 2003 or newer domain controller. This client happens to still have a Windows Server 2000 PDC, so we first have to upgrade the PDC. We decided to go ahead and dive in and replace the PDC with a server running Windows Server 2008.

After promoting the 2008 server to a domain controller, I noticed that our file server running Debian Etch could no longer resolve Windows domain usernames and groups. (more…)

For web site designs, I like a simple, clean look. I also favor a flow (also called fluid or liquid) page layout with no big margins wasting space around the edges. These things make sense to me on a technical basis and I like the aesthetics and usability of these kinds of sites. However, they don’t always lead to the most pleasing look for some tastes.

Here is an article I found interesting: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/25/1935215

Notice how the high brow, traditional designers favor fixed width layouts with lots of wasted space in the margins. Every single one of these sites is fixed width. Most have top and bottom margins – a waste of valuable screen real estate, IMO
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