You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Monday, Jun 13, 2005, 1:46 PM in The Spout
Love Reviewers; Hate Reviews
I took a quick glance at some reviewer feedback for the Avalon book and already I'm trying hard not to hate the folks that send it in. Mean, hateful things like "who is this guy?!?" and "well, he's never written a book" spring immediately to mind.
The thing is, reviewer feedback, especially harsh, blunt, spit-in-your-face reviewer feedback, is an extremely critical part of the book writing process (although, ironically, I most hate the reviews that sound like stuff I would write when I review...). Without reviews, authors don't have any idea how their writing will be received 'til it's published and we're bound to do all kinds of stuff that's reader or subject hostile that need correcting. Please, feel free to hit me with both barrels when you're reviewing my stuff; I won't promise to act on all the feedback, but I promise to consider all of it seriously.
I do have one request, however. This is something I try to do when I'm reviewing (and I've been known to make grown men cry): please start with something nice. This does two things:
- Gives the author a little ego boost before you chop his legs out from under him.
- Establishes your credibility as a reviewer. If you say something nice, especially if it's insightful, e.g. "Avalon data binding is a large topic, but I really love how this chapter presents practically all of it in an easy to follow manner," then I'm much more willing to take feedback like, "don't let the sample app drive the chapter, make the technology coverage drive the sample" (not to pick on anyone in particular : ).
Of the two things, establishing your credibility as a reviewer is by far the most important because w/o it, there's a good chance that the careful thought you put into your reviewer comments will not be fully considered (who wants to listen to a curmudgeon?).
Anyway, if you encounter me in the next month and I'm grumpty, it's 'cuz I'm spending my weekends dealing with reviews. I might be crabby and violent, but at least I'm slow and easy to see coming. : )
Saturday, Jun 11, 2005, 8:46 AM in Tools
Ajax.NET
If I were doing AJAX work in ASP.NET, Ajax.NET is the kind of thing I'd want to use.
Thursday, Jun 9, 2005, 6:16 PM in The Spout
Never Give Up, Never Surrender
I was reminiscing today that I've been turned away from most decent places in my career:
- I went to a stupid high school that raised my grades a full letter when I moved there from a decent school system, leaving me ill-prepared for college
- I was turned away from MIT, CalTech and Stanford out of high school, settling for the U of MN instead
- I didn't even qualify for a phone screen from either Apple or Microsoft during or after college
- I flunked most of my on-campus interviews and instead settled for a full-time position at the start-up where I'd worked during college (I was originally been hired there because it was run by alumni of my fraternity and I worked for beer money)
And yet, I got all I could out of every opportunity, performed all of the jobs I did manage to get with gusto, learned as much as possible and moved on to learn new things when it was time. Eventually, I found my "way" and I think I did all right, but only because I didn't let the door slams stop me. You shouldn't either.
Thursday, Jun 9, 2005, 5:09 PM in Tools
Col. Jessup on the .NET Performance Team
This is fabulous! Let me give you a taste:
"We use words like L2, swaps, and working set. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline."
Tuesday, Jun 7, 2005, 11:29 AM in Fun
Q: What is "funding the clubbing of baby seals?"
A: The reason I gave for wanting to cancel an extra credit card.
I bet they don't have that reason in their script! : )
Tuesday, Jun 7, 2005, 8:06 AM in The Spout
Career Path for Developers?
"Pete" email me the following questions:
"I'm a senior software developer, age 34, specializing in C# development for Windows Forms / ASP.Net, having come from a VB background. Having had some (if not most) of my enjoyment of development sucked out of me by my current employer, I'm contemplating my next career move.
"Thing is (and it's not just me, several of my colleagues concur), where do I go from here? What is the career path of a software developer? I.e. junior developer, senior developer, guru, author,...? Is there such a thing as a career path for a developer (or anyone, these days)?
"I surmise that developers such as myself (4th / 5th gen language developers) may actually be the first at the crest of this particular wave - I guess COBOL developers could have migrated into hardware / system maintenance, but what for folks like myself? I can't see myself being a developer until I retire (31 years later), but I don't really want to move into management either (perhaps software delivery manager, but not a full-blown person manager).
"Or maybe this is just a mid-life crisis. Maybe those COBOL programmers were thinking the same thing. Maybe you've thought the same thing, and said 'Sod it, I'll just learn as much as I can and write books.' Maybe my malaise is indicative of the general malaise within IT at the moment (still suffering from the dot com crash, companies more interested in fixing up their offices than investing in IT, etc), companies not knowing their arse from their elbow when it comes to IT spending, etc.
"We live in a world of ever-increasing technology, yet seem to be doing less development? Obviously there are still very clever people out there writing code for phones, text delivery. HDTV innards, etc., but is software development becoming stagnant? Are we still doing the same things with new tools? Why do we still not have modular development? Why are there many standards for Web Services? Where are the really, really cool applications?"
"Pete," those are all fine questions. I think there are a ton of interesting things to do for software developers in the world and being a part of a big company development machine is only one of them. I've done most of the rest (I consider Microsoft to my last job in this industry), so I can recommend start-ups, speaking, shared/open source development, consulting and writing as all valuable, interesting and fun experiences (although, as you might imagine, each of them has their downsides, too).
Or, even if you wanted to stay as a developer, I can recommend different kinds of software to be refreshing, e.g. I've spent a lot of time on code-based developer tools and now have moved to model-based developer tools (that's not a big shift, mind you, but hey, I'm growing! : ). Maybe you'd like to switch away from front ends to back ends or to databases? Maybe you'd like to switch from imperative to declarative or logic? Maybe you'd like to go all the way on front ends and build games? Or maybe you'd like a platform like a mobile device better? (I personally lust after this one!)
Your malaise-related questions are good ones, too. It seems like you've identified a bunch of "problems" in the IT industry. You've got two ways to handle this problem: ranting or doing something about it. You've done the former. Maybe you'd like to put on your "start-up" goggles where "problem" == "opportunity," bring some of your friends along and roll up your sleeves? Are you brave enough to risk the kid's college fund to follow your heart? I've done it a coupla times and there's nothing like it.
Monday, Jun 6, 2005, 3:13 PM in Tools
@this freaked me out
I saw code that looked like this today:
class
Class1 {static void Foo(object @this) {
Console.WriteLine(@this);
}
static void Main(string[] args) {
Foo("hi");
}
}
It freaked me out, but it's completely legal and kinda cool...
Saturday, Jun 4, 2005, 9:23 PM in The Spout
More Skype Love
I was chatting with Mike in Australia today and we pulled up Skype as we usually do, 'cuz it just works, e.g. no connection problems, no echo/feedback problems, etc. However, we couldn't get video4skype to work, so we tried switching over to MSN Messenger 7. The video worked just fine from MM7, but the audio was terrible, exhibiting volume, echo and feedback problems. So, we used a hybrid, i.e. MM7 for video and Skype for audio, which worked just fine.
This hybrid model is prevalent in my communications recently:
- queued messaging: email for text and files, vmail for nuance
- text chat: MSN Messenger 7 or Communicator, depending on whether the person is an employee or not
- video chat: MM7 or Communicator
- audio chat: phone, Skype, MM7 or Communicator
- person-to-person app sharing: MM7, Communicator
- group app sharing: LiveMeeting
Would it be too much to ask that one app do all of this well? Do I really need 6 different apps?
Saturday, Jun 4, 2005, 9:18 PM in The Spout
Realistic Conference Expectations
I was chatting today with a friend that complained that he didn't get any deep technical knowledge from a conference talk. I said that he had unreasonable expectations; the most he could expect from a good conference was the following:
- Networking opportunities (hard for geeks; often works via friend-of-a-friend in bars and restaurants, but only if you have at least one friend and s/he has at least two)
- "Info triggers," i.e. if you attend a 90 minute talk on MSMQ and you're having or are about to have a problem that MSMQ solves well, the talk should a) let you know that MSMQ provides a good solution and b) where to go for more info
- Entertainment (and that's only the good conferences)
In general, every talk should be structured like so:
- Name the thing
- What's the thing good for
- A demo of the major use(s) of the thing
- Here's where to go for more info
- Any questions?
- Please remember to tip your waitress
That's why I really love the idea of groktalks. If you attend 3 groktalks instead of 1 regular talk, the chances of you finding an info trigger are 3x, while still keeping your networking and entertainment chances even.
Friday, Jun 3, 2005, 10:23 AM in Fun
IanG Interview on ServerSide.NET
See IanG, my Avalon book co-author in crime, talk with Ted Neward about WinForms, Avalon and .NET. Nicely done.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005, 4:52 PM in The Spout
Every PC Should Have A Camera, Mic + Stylus
I've been doing a lot of remote collaborative communications over the last decade. Email, IM and phone calls literally enable me to be an effective remote employee (along with my wit and charm : ). However, to take it to the next level as MS Communicator, MSN Messenger and Skype get real a/v conferencing and app-sharing features (that actually works through VPN and firewalls), every computer needs some extra equipment.
Most modern laptops come with built-in mics, but very few come with built-in cameras. Why should I have to use a strap-on webcam when the camera lens could be built right into the LCD screen? Plus, the mics and software really needs decent noise cancellation (MSN7 and Skype do this well, but not all apps do).
Still, I've got my phone, so I can live w/o audio and once I've already met someone, video is just a novelty, especially when compared with the power of app-sharing (it's like you're sitting right next to someone!).
The thing that I really need that I'm missing is for my computer, and everyone's computer that I'm conferencing with, to have a stylus attached to their screen. The "let's just sketch something on the white board" is really the last remote collaboration frontier 'til we get some kind of fancy "virtual presence" stuff going.
I don't mean that every computer needs to be a Tablet PC. Frankly, I'm not very productive on a computer that doesn't have a keyboard. But, I want to be able to sketch something right on my computer screen like a tablet can and instantly share it as I do so. Plus, and here's the rub, I want everyone else to have a stylus, too. If they don't, they'll turn to the white board and I'm out of luck across the great divide.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005, 3:12 PM in The Spout
Blogging is not marketing copy!
As soon as corps hire bloggers as part of their marketing budget, they've missed the point completely. Marketing and PR folks are chiefly concerned with only saying the good things about their own products and (the good ones anyway) nothing at all about the competitor's products.
Blogs are about the whole truth, which is why are the best corp bloggers are constantly in fear of losing their jobs.
Does anyone see a disconnect here?!?
Monday, May 30, 2005, 9:50 AM in The Spout
URLs in the Footnotes?
Here's a question for folks. Right now, the 1st edition of the WinForms book has several footnotes like the following that include URLs:
"The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://www.codeguru.com/cpp_mfc/rsrc-simple.html."
Unfortunately, unlike the browser you're using now, while we can underline an URL in a book, we can't do anything useful with you "click" it, which forces you to type it. Since the URL above is by no means the longest in the book (MS likes to put GUIDs in theirs), I'd prefer not to put that burden on the reader if I don't have to. With the invention of shrinkster, I don't have to:
"The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://shrinkster.com/452."
The problem with this, of course, is that I don't really know if shrinkster is going to be around forever or if I want to tie my book to a single external resource that I can't control. The idea I had this morning was to use both, which increases the size of the URL in print but gives the reader a shortcut and doesn't hold me hostage to shrinkster*:
"The ntcopyres.exe tool can be obtained from http://www.codeguru.com/cpp_mfc/rsrc-simple.html (shrinker.com/452)."
What do people think?
*Don't get me wrong. I'm a big shrinkster fan, else I wouldn't be dropping their links into my books at all.
Sunday, May 29, 2005, 10:15 PM in .NET
IanG Builds a Real Magnifying Glass in Avalon
You've seen it in the concept videos, now see it for real: Ian has implemented a working magnifying glass in Avalon.
Saturday, May 28, 2005, 10:10 AM in Fun
Darth Vader vs. Yoda?
I just realized: Lucas took us through the entire 6 film series and we never got to see Yoda fight with Darth Vader! What's with that?!?
P.S. I like that "Vader" is in my spelling dictionary. Lucas changed the world.