A (near) perfect project for 2008

/

A (near) perfect project for 2008 would be:

  • Use WPF for front-end (or WPF/E silverlight)
  • Use LINQ for business tier (C# 3.5)
  • Use SQL Server 2008 for the database

Bonus points

  • Use XNA libraries (hmm starting to sound like a game!)
  • Pay lots of money (no, can't be a game then)

If you have a project like above, and are after an experienced .NET developer email me NOW!

jliu

Undisciplined Software Development

/

When I was overseas in Asia I had an opportunity to observe some "undisciplined software development".

I think it is a cultural issue.  The project is driven top-down by money (as it is with western software development), but by the time it gets to the project manager, the project is pretty much "results-driven".  The faster the developers can produce results, the better.

This leads to basically hacks.  Hack this and hack that to create results.  Don't worry too much about bugs - create results first and fix bugs later.

When a new customer wants something that is somewhat similar to your old product for an existing customer, copy and paste the entire source code branch and make your changes in the new folder hierarchy.  It all sounds incredibly to me, but I think I view it as a problem with the project management.  The project team doesn't understand values in terms of zero-defect programming, test-driven programming, maintainability.

I believe they would do well to migrate to an agile-based development, but it must be driven top down from the project management and preached to the developers.  Some of the ideas are so foreign that I'd even imagine resistance from the developers.

jliu

My register lost johnliu.net domain and didn't even tell me

/

I don't know if I had blogged this before, anyway, I've owned johnliu.net for a couple of years.  In 2006, It expired into redemption period (because I've changed email and didn't follow my old email address, my bad).  But I was able to save it in time.

In 2007, it again expired, but this time I received no email notification from the domain register.

They were not able to re-secure my domain, so now it's parked by some evil domain squatter.

The register gave me john-liu.net for free.  But it sucks when you can't trust your register to remind you that your domain is expiring.  (The same register seem to send me a lot of spam mail promoting their SEO technology).

I think this year, I'm going to go for an external host and have john-liu.net redirected there.  I'll probably keep using spaces for blogging.

December 2007

/

Is gone.  Lina and I went to New Zealand for a visit, with our unborn child (the little guy is probably sleeping through the whole trip). 

I don't know if I expected NZ to change a lot, I feel it changed, but not much.  One Tree Hill is no more, there is no tree now, and the whole place is just the Park Summit.

No more George Pie.

Auckland Grammar School has about 4 or 5 more buildings which is kind of crazy.

My old place is still there, but it's now inhabited by strangers who has planted new and strange plants in the garden.

The road to Cape Reinga is being resurfaced and they've removed the shop (and the post office).  There is a mail box though, but stuck between two Portable-Loos it's just not the same.

We still had heaps of fun.  Thanks NZ.

jliu