Michael Rozlog

Presenting at ESDC in March

03
Feb

You may ask yourself, what is ESDC?  Well, glad you asked… it is the new Enterprise Software Development Conference that is being held in San Mateo just outside of San Francisco, March 1 - 3.

Some of you may remember SD West or Software Development West, this was a who’s-who of software development, which included great speakers, good information, and people excited about learning.  Well due to the economy SD West was discontinued in 2009, but ESDC is here to take it’s place and move forward in providing cutting edge education and industry thought leaders in one great location.

So what will I be presenting?  On Wednesday March 3rd, from 11:30 to 12:45 I will be presenting on "Five Static Code Audits Every Developer Should Know - and Use." As many of you know who read my blog, I think that both Audits and Metrics are vastly underused in our profession and I’m excited about showing developers that it is worth their time to learn, implement, and broadcast the results of good software design.  One of the main focuses with this demonstration/workshop… (I know it is only an hour, but I hope everybody leaves with information they can put to work immediately when they get back to work) is how audits fit into the Agile approach.

Of course I know that I’m a value, (joke) however there are a ton of other great speakers at the conference including our own David I who will be presenting on "Software + Database Archeology (Part 1 & 2)" on Tuesday March 2nd, from 1:30 to 4:45 pm.  Plus, some of these that I will be attending:

108 - The Productive Programmer
Neal Ford
The Productive Programmer consists of two parts: mechanics and practice. In the mechanics section, we’ll focus on four principles of productivity: acceleration, focus, automation and canonically. This session defines the principles and describes their use, but the primary focus of this class is to present real-world examples of how you can use these principles to make yourself a more productive programmer. The second part of this session teaches you 10 ways to improve your code, derived from the practices section. This class includes tons of examples, all culled from real-world projects.

202 - How to Suck a Little Less at Software Project Management
Larry O’Brien
Do you need to fine-tune your Kanban board to accurately reflect the unexpected absence of one of your pair programmers while maintaining your current six-week delivery iteration? If so, this is not the class for you. Are you, instead, dealing with a project that feels like it’s stuck in the mud, with delays cropping up constantly, taking one step forward and one step back, relying on the effort of superstar programmers and mandatory overtime? If so, you’ve got more company than you might think.

In this fast-paced talk, SD Times columnist Larry O’Brien will talk about increasing productivity and quality in a world of lowest-bid offshore contractors, over-hyped technology and, horror of horrors, clients who "did a little programming in college." What matters? Rapidly delivering value, establishing trust and developing for evolution. The lecture will be structured as a series of lightning talks on team and individual productivity, iterative development and delivery, coordinating a distributed development team, and the critical Agile techniques of unit testing and continuous integration.

304 - Principles of Test Driven Development
Robert C. Martin
Testing is not a verification technique. Testing is a design, documentation and specification technique that incidentally verifies that the software works as intended. This class discusses and demonstrates the disciplines and techniques of Test-Driven Development (TDD). Demonstrations are in Java using the JUnit and FITNESSE frameworks for Unit testing and Acceptance testing, respectively.

705 - Agile Modeling: No, It’s Not an Oxymoron
Terry Quatrani
So you have adopted an Agile process and think you don’t need to model. You should think again. One of the key principles of Agile development is communication. One of the best ways to facilitate communication is by using a model. Even though Agile modeling is different than traditional modeling, you will still be modeling. Requirements are needed in order to build the right system. Architecture is key; no one just sits down and writes code. Testing is imperative; "Test early, test often" is a mantra often heard. Come to this class to learn how modeling and, yes, even UML can be used effectively in an Agile development process.

802 - Comparing the Cloud: Google App Engine vs. Amazon’s EC2
Andrew Glover
Several years ago, a few smart companies took advantage of the commoditization of hardware (and related software) by building systems made up of a lot of cheap machines, knowing that the entire infrastructure would continue to work even if individual machines broke at some point. Those smart companies-like Google and Amazon (to name a few)-have enormous infrastructures that they can literally rent out to people like you and me (and keep their core business running smoothly at the same time).

This class will teach you about Google’s and Amazon’s Cloud infrastructures, and the two are quite different. Google’s App Engine is more of a platform for developing Java Web applications. Amazon’s EC2 offering is less of a development platform per se and more of a generic infrastructure service that hosts virtual machines (which can be Linux- or Windows-based) on which you can run anything you’d like.

Open-source solutions combined with borrowed infrastructures are changing the character of Java development, letting teams deliver better software quickly and at a low cost. Come to this class to learn how it works, and how to get started.

Just don’t take my limited ones; here is a link to the conference catalog: http://www.go-esdc.com/pdf_files/ESDCcat.pdf

I know the economy is tough and I know budgets are tight, but if you are a software professional and you want to raise your development game, I think this is an excellent value for you and your company.  Remember, when asking the boss to attend a conference like this, you have to make a few promises and then follow-through if the company is paying for you to attend:

  • Summary email at the end of each day to the boss and team
    • This should include things learned and things that could be implemented in your organization and how it could help
    • Any summary information or links as value add
  • You have to have at least a 1 hour review of the conference when you return with your boss and the team.  I recommend using the summary emails as a great starting point for this review.
  • Finally, try to put something you learned to use as soon as you get back and show the boss the results.  This includes even bad results, at least now you know that ‘x’ sounds good but may not work for you or your company.

So if you can make it to San Mateo on March 1 - 3rd, I would recommend hanging out with us.  To register go here:  http://www.go-esdc.com/register.html Early bird rates end 2/12/2010.

I hope to see you there, and yes I will be showing Delphi… plus, C++ and Java.

All 12 holiday videos with RAD Studio 2010

06
Jan

Hello All,

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season.  Here is the combined list of videos I created for the holidays using RAD Studio 2010.

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40281 (Unit Testing)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40283 (Sync Editing)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40282 (Editor)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40280 (Audit DCC)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40279 (UML Visualize)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40284 (LiveTemplates)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40285 (DelphiPrism Hello Calculator)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40288 (Background Compilation)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40289 (Classic IDE Look & Feel)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40309 (Debug Visualizer)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40310 (GUI Components found in 2010)

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40311 (Creating and consuming unmanaged .dll’s in RAD Studio)

I hope you enjoyed the subjects and if you have one that you would be interested in drop me a line and let me know and I will see about creating one on the subject that you would like!

Please don’t forget the Delphi 2010 User Survey, if you have not filled it out, please follow the link and do so.  The information we get is most valuable.

I also posted the Top 10 (11) I.T. Predictions for 2010.  If you are interested in that post check it out HERE!

Again, I hope you had a great and safe holiday and I wish you a great 2010!!!

Mike

More to come…

Happy New Year, the last video of the RAD Studio 2010 Videos of the Holiday Season - Video 12: Writing, comsuming Dll’s in RAD Studio

05
Jan

Happy Holidays All,

Here is the twelfth of 12 videos around RAD Studio 2010.

This quick hit (also a little longer) video shows the creation of an unmanaged dll in Delphi, being consumed in both Delphi and Delphi Prism.

Click here for the video:

Enjoy,

Mike

More to come…

12 RAD Studio 2010 Videos of the Holiday Season - Video 11: 2010 GUI Tricks and Tips

04
Jan

Happy Holidays All,

Here is the eleventh of 11 videos around RAD Studio 2010.

A quick video (A little longer one - 20 minutes) will show how to use some of the new GUI components found in 2010.  It will also give some tips on using certain aspects of the new features.

Click here to see the video:

Sorry for not getting this published sooner, the person that helps me was very sick over the holidays and is not just getting back and I’m greatful that he has been willing to help get these videos published.  This one is not on YouTube because it is over the 10 minute limit, but I think the things I cover are worth it.  I hope you like it.

Enjoy,

Mike

More to come…

Rozlog’s annual Top 10 I.T. Predictions for 2010

31
Dec

Just a quick review from last year’s predictions can be found here:  Last Years Predictions

I would say that I got about 7 of them right.  Now it can be said, that "right" is in the eye of the judge, but since I’m judging me, I say I got them right.  I did get 1 or 2 wrong; number 10 - RIA’s will show increased signs of weakness and number 8 - Groovy will gain more followers.   RIA is still as strong as ever.  There were some hits on it for security and a few other things but overall, people are still moving to RIA’s as a solution.  As for Groovy, while I believe it did get more followers, it is in my opinion that it is again just another on a long-list of web technologies for Java.

Now on to the predictions…

Never one to only want to achieve expectations, I always want to exceed expectations, so I give you the Top 11 Predictions of 2010!

11. LinkedIn will be the first big Social IPO

Social Networking is all the rage and in one sense it should be.  FaceBook now has over 350 million users of which 50% log inn, on any given day.  Looking at it from a historical perspective, you have the old and now considered out of date MySpace, the it is ok for the masses FaceBook, and the new up and comer Twitter.

However I think the big news for 2010 is going to be a very strong IPO for LinkedIn, one of the older social networking sites devoted to business.  They have stayed up with the times, linked into various sources and offer some great information about business people and their contacts and relationships.

10. CUDA will be important

This one sort-of goes with last year’s number (7 - Specialized chips (task oriented) will become standard on mother boards in an effort to move green).  However, CUDA is in the opposite direction.  It is advancing the high-performance computing with parallel processing around NVidia’s software platform.  CUDU stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture is a software platform for massively parallel high-performance computing on NVidia’s GPU (Graphic Processor Units).

There are over 100 million graphics cards out there today that can take advantage of the CUDA approach and it seems to be well regarded and well adopted among the technical savvy and science community.  If you are not familiar with CUDA, I highly recommend checking out:  http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/55972/220401_Reprint.pdf

9.    JSON will overtake full XML as default standard

In my opinion, XML is cumbersome, bloated, and slow, plus it is plain text, but don’t get me started.  JSON - JavaScript Object Notation (http://www.json.org/) is much easier to construct, has less overhead, and is still plain text.  There are a few downsides; things like firewalls, networks, and security protocols are not as complete as it is for XML, but that is just a maturity issue.  As 2010 will show, JSON is the easier, faster, and less resource intensive way to integrate.

8.  Google’s Android/Chrome was Mr. Roboto

This may be dating myself, but Android/Chrome are the Mr. Roboto of the computer industry.  If you are not familiar with Mr. Roboto, it was a character from the 1983 concept album from the music group Styx.  More information on Mr. Roboto can be found here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Roboto

These two platforms, one a mobile platform and the other a browser platform, have started to morph into the Google Chrome OS.  Google ‘Google Chrome OS’ for more specific information on it.  Just like Kilroy from Mr. Roboto, Google is showing one look while the real work and agenda is underneath the surface.  Look for the Google Chrome OS to make significant inroads in adoption and support next year.

However, don’t think it will be a Windows or Mac OSX or Linux replacement, remember and look how long those OS(s) took to become what they are.  This is a long-term process of building a new platform and OS to support it.

7.    Oracle will not close Sun, until 2011

Wow, two great powers, the EU and Oracle, are faced off in the battle for Sun.  The bad news for Sun is that the time it is taking Oracle to close the deal is hurting Sun’s market share.  I do agree with Mr. Ellison that the market will return once the deal is done but the reports of Sun losing 100 million per month is very eye opening.

However, the EU wants to show its power and hold Oracle to certain business criteria and Oracle wants to show its power and do what all companies want to do… dominate and win.  Putting these two things together means that someone will have to blink and that means more time, which I see as being 2011 before it is done.

6.    Google wave (approach) will replace email in 2 years

Have you watched the Google Wave video on YouTube?  If you have not, take a look at it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

In my view of the world there are 3 types of geniuses in the world:

*One that can create something new from nothing, a totally new idea, concept, or approach that has not been thought of before.

*One that can take an existing thing and make it better

*Finally, the last is the genius that can take a part from here and a part from there and put them together to make a new thing.

This is exactly what Google Wave is; it takes some of the best features from email, IM, and social networking and puts them together to make a new communications platform.

Now I’m not willing to say that Google’s Wave will take over, but I am willing to say that the approach is compelling and that the way we communicate in the future will be based off the Wave approach.  Google could own it, but it will take a very long time… other companies can implement something similar and have broader adoption with established install bases.

5.    Browser wars will not be settled in 2010, 2011, or 2012!

However, this is not a bad thing.  Competition is good!  I love the fact that we have 5 major web browsers that people are using today.

*Microsoft IE; the standard for the Microsoft OS.

*FireFox; the standard when not using Microsoft’s IE browser

*Chrome; the new up and comer, look at #8 for more

*Safari; the Apple standard

*Opera; still a kicking browser that is very fast and very compliant to the standards

Every time one of the above browsers offers new features or capabilities, the others are sure to follow and offer even more, which makes the others adopt and exceed expectations.  This is all good for the end users, who get new features, and faster, safer, and more compliant browsers than ever before.  Long live the browser wars.

4.    Thunder clouds all around cloud computing

Cloud is an exciting new evolutionary platform, however there are significant issues that are still unresolved that could slow or even stop Cloud computing in its tracks.

*ISPs limiting access and bandwidth; since everything is accessed via the internet, having limitations on bandwidth or access could really be a problem.

*Security issues; many things to be resolved, especially around private or classified information like health records, and special data being available in the cloud.

*Standards; there is a massive push for establishing rigid standards for the cloud infrastructure.  While I’m all for standards eventually, it is important to have massive innovation to overcome some of the issues surrounding the cloud today.  Standards will stifle that innovation and may kill the cloud approach, before it actually gets going.

*Many, many others…

3.    Microsoft patent case to have serious ramifications to general computing, especially around XML processing!

Microsoft may have to stop shipping Office for a while… not the big story… read on and become very worried!

This one is a real bummer because there are long reaching consequences for these rulings around the Microsoft Office patent case.  While most in the industry will applaud the ruling against the evil Microsoft, I for one am not and I’m actually worried that Microsoft was only the beginning!

If you are not that familiar with the case, you can find more from a fairly good article in ComputerWorld: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136539/Injunction_on_Microsoft_Word_unlikely_to_halt_sales

The scary part is the patent (http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=y8UkAAAAEBAJ&dq=patent:5787449) that was granted for:  "Method and System for Manipulating the Architecture and the Content of a Document Separately from Each Other," really???

I’ve taken the abstract from the Patent and I want you to really take a second to read the description and tell me if you don’t have software today that does this technique in some form or fashion:

Abstract from Microsoft Patent Case
Abstract from Microsoft Patent Case

Reading the above, could this relate to COBOL and PIC clauses?  It allows me to "transform" the data representations, it is used by software developers, it removes dependencies on document layout and encoding… it generally fits the above fairly closely.

If that is not enough to scare you, then here are some additional questions that may cause some thoughts…

    • What is a document?
    • What are metacodes?
    • What are views?
    • What is a map?
    • What is content?
    • Could this not be interpreted as doing XML transformations?
    • Could this be a suit against XML and the general concept of XML?
    • Could the i4i’ come after really anybody that stores a document as XML?

    What is the answer?  I don’t know?  The whole case goes to show that judges and juries that don’t have a technical background most likely should not be making decisions on such things.  Don’t think of it as Microsoft, think of it as the way you do computing… interesting where this could lead.

    By the way, Since Microsoft is now in the process of removing the DOCX format, isn’t it interesting that all the huge complaints by open source for Microsoft not supporting the open XML Document format.  More info here: So, Microsoft does support it and now they are the ones getting taken to court.  However, does this not bring anybody who is doing this type of processing under the same jurisdiction or is Open Source project immune?

    2.    Video games are bigger than Hollywood, DUH!

    This has been true for a while now, but when you start thinking about the work, effort, and amount of people it takes to create and produce a movie, I wonder if many of the new story tellers are going to move away from Hollywood and move towards gaming.

    The time it takes to build a solid game may be longer than a movie in some cases,   but the ability to make more money and spend less building a game has to be enticing.  Look at Avatar from James Cameron and 20th Century Fox, it is projected over the next year to generate 1 billion, maybe.  However, the cost of producing the film was rumored to be more than 300 million and it took 3 years to get to the screen.

    Now take a look at Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 the video game.  The L.A. Times reports that it took around 40 - 50 million to produce and has already hit over 750 million in sales in less than a month and is projected to do well over 1 billion before the end of January 2010.

    So taking all this into account, if I was a story teller I would be looking for a few good programmers.

    1.    Magic Touch!

    Touch will be the biggest change in personal computing since the original Macintosh introduced a wide audience to the mouse.  I understand that the original mouse shipped back in 1981 with Xerox, but the first wide commercial release was in 1984 with the Macintosh.

    People back then thought it was a novelty and a fad for the Macintosh, but look at where it has gone.  Today, you would not consider working with a computer without a mouse in most cases.  The same is going to be true for touch.  Now that hardware is becoming mainstream and inexpensive, the Apple iPhone has made touch also very mainstream… the acceptance of touching a screen to get work done is very common place.

    Now if only the OS manufactures would support it… oh, yeah, that’s right, they do.  Well, now if only there was software to make it easy to program touch interfaces… oh, yeah, that’s right, RAD Studio 2010 (Delphi, C++Builder, and Delphi Prism) all support the approach and make is simple to implement.

    Just like the keyboard is still needed, the mouse will still be needed, but very soon you will not have to ask for touch enabled hardware, it will be part of the standard system, just like a mouse is today.

    12 RAD Studio 2010 Videos of the Holiday Season - Video 10: Debug Visualizers

    30
    Dec

    Happy Holidays All,

    Here is the tenth of 12 videos around RAD Studio 2010.

    This quick-hit video that shows how to use the new visualizers introduced in RAD Studio 2010.

    Click here to see video:

    Enjoy,

    Mike

    More to come…

    12 RAD Studio 2010 Videos of the Holiday Season - Video 9: Classic Look & Feel

    29
    Dec

    Happy Holidays All,

    Here is the ninth of 12 videos around RAD Studio 2010.

    This quick-hit video is around the new support in RAD Studio 2010 for the classic IDE layout found in Delphi 7 and below and also in C++Builder 6 and below.  The video shows how to configure the IDE for many different looks and also how to set it to look like the classic IDE.

    Click here to see video:

    Enjoy,

    Mike

    More to come…

    12 RAD Studio 2010 Videos of the Holiday Season - Video 8: Background Compilation

    28
    Dec

    Happy Holidays All,

    Here is the eighth of 12 videos around RAD Studio 2010.

    This quick hit video on using the new feature introduced in RAD Studio 2010 allows the developer to set the compiler to work in the background.  This allows the developer to continue editing files, setting and modifying breakpoints while  the project is being compiled.

    Click here to see Video:

    Enjoy,

    Mike

    More to come…

    12 RAD Studio 2010 Videos of the Holiday Season - Video 7: Delphi Prism

    27
    Dec

    Happy Holidays All,

    Here is the seventh of 12 videos around RAD Studio 2010.

    A quick video on how to use Delphi Prism and doing a Hello Calculator.

    See Video Here:

    Enjoy,

    Mike

    More to come…

    12 RAD Studio 2010 Videos of the Holiday Season: Download of the videos

    26
    Dec

    All,

    Here are the videos to this point in the 12 videos of the holidays.

    http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40281 (Unit Testing)

    http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40283 (Sync Editing)

    http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40282 (Editor)

    http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40280 (Audit DCC)

    http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40279 (UML Visualize)

    http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40284 (LiveTemplates)

    http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40285 (DelphiPrism Hello Calculator)

    As always, feedback welcome and have a happy holiday.

    Mike

    More to come…

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