Jack of all trades; Master of one.
What goes around, comes around. Microsoft steals Anders Hejlsberg as C# chief architect; Borland picks up former Microsoft developer divison honcho Tod Nielsen as CEO. Admittedly not an apples-for-apples comparison, i.e. development vs. marketing, but it is interesting none-the-less. Given his tenure at MS’ devdiv, I’d be surprised it Tod doesn’t do a good job of …
Continue reading “Borland gets Tod Nielsen, former bigwig in the Microsoft developer divison”
Yesterday when I blogged about simplicity I forgot to mention Clayton Christensen‘s take on simple technology. Clayton’s ground-breaking book was entitled "The Innovator’s Dilemma" and is a must-read for any developer who wants to understand the business dynamics between market incumbency and innovative uses of technology. From his extensive research Christensen states in The Innovator’s Dilemma …
What’s the next big thing? AJAX? Ruby on Rails? PC Virtualization? Open-Source Software? Data Security? Open Office File Formats? Windows Vista? Windows Live? Apple’s iWhatever? Yeah, all those things will get lots of hype, but the next big thing is something we’ve had access to all along: Simplicity Are my thoughts revolutionary? Nah, I’ve been …
Continue reading “Technologies are best when they are simple”
I just spotted the new free VMware Player. This is totally cool. I can envision companies using VMWare Player to demo complete environments, like an ASP.NET & SQL Server Express application; just configure the virtual machine to have everything needed! This basically eliminates most potential configuration problems that could cause a vendor to loose a …
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Last month I wrote a really long blog about the “My” Classes in VB 2005 with two hypothetical scenarios regarding the future of .NET and development because of the introduction of the “My” classes. I had a lot of fun writing it, but afterward realized it was far too long to get across my key …
Continue reading “Just Say NO to Extending the “My” Classes in VB 2005, Redux”
Readers of my prior posts about the "My" Classes planned for VB 2005 know that I am pretty enamored with them: here, here, and here. I think the "My" classes have the potential to become one of the most significant productivity features of VB 2005 and beyond, and could result in a huge reduction in …
Continue reading “Extending the “My” Classes in VB 2005 … Just Say NO!”
There’s a very interesting review of .NET licensing systems at VB.NET Forums: a full review of Desaware Licensing System and a partial review of Xheo Licensing. I can’t say that I haven’t had similar experiences in the past. If you are considering the purchase of a licensing system for .NET, you definitely owe it to …
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Several months ago I blogged about the need for a much simpler way to get into .NET, and I named my proposed solution VBScript.NET (in hindsight the name was a poor choice because people assumed I was proposing porting VBScript to .NET instead of providing a simplified VB.NET, but highsight often is 20/20…) And I …
Continue reading “Mort, the “Hobbyist”, and the “Occupational” Programmer get their due”
Disclaimer: I run a company (Xtras.Net) that sells .NET components and other programming tools so this topic significantly affects my own livelihood as well as that of my company. Over the past 10 years, since we launched our first printed VBxtras catalog, the state of Windows-based programming has changed. In those days most Windows programmers wrote …
Continue reading “Where do you buy your .NET Components and other Programming Tools?”
We’re halfway through the month so its time for me to re-post the offer to get a FREE XDN Professional if you are a .NET Bloggers, in case you missed it the first time. You can click here to learn how to get your FREE XDN Professional membership. For those who don’t know about XDN it stands for …
Continue reading “FREE XDN Professional for .NET Bloggers, Redux”