Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet

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 18, 2001, 3:50 PM in Fun

Limerick

A programmer who coded in C
decided he hated GC.
"It's bogus" he said,
"I keep track in my head -
and always remember to free!"

Jason Whittington [jasonw@develop.com]
Private Email

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Thursday, Jun 14, 2001, 9:06 PM in Fun

The .NET

A parody of Eddy Poe's "The Raven"

Once upon a platform tired, while my code was stranded, mired in a pool of leaky pointers running up the mem'ry load, while I started to debug it, suddenly I screamed "Oh f*** it!", and decided to just chuck it in the hallway guest commode.
Then discovered: managed code.

Ah, distinctly I remember, bugs caused by a private member, and later having to call AddRefs and Releases by the busload, These things, they fill me with regret, time wasted on pointer management, Now, simply Fire And Forget! Oh the freedom newly bestowed!
Thank you, thank you, managed code.

Of course the bloat is sometimes scary, and IL can be kind of hairy, And there's this Tower of Babel thing that is threat'ning to explode. I mean, Perl and Python and Eiffel and all the scripting langs are just a ball but please, for God's sake, NOT COBOL! Java, even, but not THAT toad,
running in my managed code.

I traded in my GIT and SCM, my registry (which was kind of dumb) and in return I got C# and the CLR, my new abode. And VS7, though often crashing, as a tool is really smashing. I shan't bore you by rehashing the gifts .NET has bestowed.
Just be grateful: managed code.

Justin Gehtland [ justin@DEVELOP.COM]
brains@develop.com

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Friday, Jun 1, 2001, 8:27 PM in Fun

Why I Will Never Offer Don Box A Ride Again...

Read all about it...

Rohit Khare
Posted There: Fri, Aug 2, 1996 20:27:42 -0400

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Sunday, Apr 15, 2001, 8:27 PM in Fun

College Fun

I spoke at a college last week for a friend of mine who's an adjunct professor (Cal Caldwell). During the talk, one of the male attendees bolted <sigh>, but on his way out, trusted sources say that, when sighting a young coed whom our our bolter was clearly interested in engaging with in some way, he said, "Hey! Do you know who's in there? Chris Sells!" Clearly this young man was misguided in his attempt, but I'm glad to hear that someone thinks that using my name will help in attracting members of the opposite sex. It's never worked for me... : )

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Wednesday, Feb 28, 2001, 8:27 PM in Fun

College Fun

In Japan, it is said, the impersonal and sometimes unhelpful Microsoft error messages have been replaced with Japanese haiku poetry. Maybe in the next upgrade to our Windows...

Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

The website you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent and reboot.
Order shall return.

Aborted effort.
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No-one hears your screams.

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.

Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.

I ate your Web page.
Forgive me; it was tasty
And tart on my tongue.

First snow then silence
This thousand dollar screen dies
So beautifully.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

See how in Haiku
All error messages are
Somehow more peaceful

Richard Blewett
Ian Griffiths
George Shepherd
Internal Mailing List

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Tuesday, Nov 21, 2000, 9:12 AM in Fun

a poem

Dear MFC::CString
You were such a beautiful thing
I miss you so much
CComBSTR is painful to touch
WTL may restore my churning (out string manipulating code).

Phil Beck
ATL Mailing List

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Friday, Aug 25, 2000, 7:53 AM in Fun

These Days its only COM COM COM (Am I Crying)

There is no vacation when I am doing COM.
Some go through very well, but stuck are some.

I don't go to parties, so I feel I am IUnknown.
People talking to me, those days are gone.

Brother has a complaint, that I don't callback.
Which kind of apartment he has, I don't check

Everyone stares me through those windows.
I live in ATL* and that is what I chose.

*(short for Atlanta)

Sandeep Chawla
Private Email

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Tuesday, Aug 8, 2000, 10:26 AM in Fun

DM in the Wall Street Journal

Portland, OR, August 8, 2000 According to an article appearing in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal, DevelopMentor has developed a new technology for creating software applications. Attached is a photo of this technology in beta test at DevelopMentor's Portland Satellite office. DevelopMentor's device is attached to a user and using the latest LFM technology it auto-generates complete software applications. Evil Genius, Chris Sells, DevelopMentor's Senior Programmer, co-invented the technology with their Security Guru, the Prince of Darkness Keith Brown. Says Sells; "[our] new technology holds great promise for future generations of code warriors."

Cal Caldwell
Private Email

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Monday, Mar 13, 2000, 4:14 PM in Fun

Signs that you may be taking COM too seriously...

The family pet dies. The best explanation you can give the children is "Fluffy's reference count finally reached zero."
You've mailed more than three written petitions to the city council of Enumclaw, Washington requesting that the town prefix its name with an 'I'.
Your wife has a rather irritating habit of QI'ing you for IMowsTheLawn, despite the fact that for years you've been returning everything from E_NOINTERFACE to RPC_S_SERVER_TOO_BUSY.
The best thing about the new generation of wireless internet devices is that you will be able to receive the DCOM and ATL mailing lists from almost anywhere.
Part of your IPO research strategy involves calling the company's engineering manager on the phone and demanding a detailed explanation of apartments and threading.
The party you threw to celebrate the introduction of asynchronous RPC calls in Windows 2000 was significantly more expensive than your wedding reception.
Last Summer's family vacation to Redmond, Washington.
All those emails you've sent to Chris Sells trying to convince him that "ATL Internals" would make a really great movie.
Although it is humorous, there are a couple of items in the "Signs you've hired the wrong COM developer..." list that you can't help but view as personally insulting.
On your laptop there exists a half-completed manuscript entitled "The Tao of COM".
You refer to your Social Security Number as your GUID.

Tony Toivonen
DCOM Mailing List

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Thursday, Feb 10, 2000, 12:07 AM in Fun

ATL Borg

Jeff Smith
Thu 2/10/2000 12:07 AM
Private Mail

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Thursday, Jan 20, 2000, 8:38 PM in Fun

In defense of the VB Programmer

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Russ Huffman [mailto:russ@DEVAUTHORITY.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2000 8:39 AM
> To: ATL@DISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM
>
> Don't we already have a "bunch of programmers who have no
> idea about how the underlying systems work"? I think they
> are called VB programmers... ;)

I hate to break this to you, but I've met a lot of VB programmers trapped in the body of a C++ programmer. Unfortunately, many development shops place a lot of peer pressure on people to reject their yearnings to stop using semicolons and memory allocators. It's sad, but VB programmers today are where US Blacks were in the 30's and gays were in the 50's. We have yet to see the "Rosa Parks" or "Stonewall Riots" for VB programmers.

BTW, I have been preparing a keynote address in case I am ever asked to keynote a VB-friendly conference. If you want to look at a draft, go to http://www.develop.com/dbox/dream.htm [ed: MLK's "I have a dream" set to VB music]

...I have been to VB7. I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you...

DB

PS: Last time I checked, all programmers have selective ignorance. I know nothing about 3D graphics. I know a lot about COM. VB gets under people's skin because one can be ignorant of computer architecture and ASM and still
get a lot done.

Don Box
ATL Mailing List

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Wednesday, Dec 1, 1999, 8:38 PM in Fun

Abort, Retry, Ignore

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore."

Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices Solomon himself had never faced before.
Carefully, I weighed my options.
These three seemed to be the top ones.
Clearly, I must now adopt one:
Choose Abort, Retry, Ignore.

With my fingers pale and trembling,
Slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee
Finally I pressed a key --
But on the screen what did I see?
Again: "Abort, Retry, Ignore."

I tried to catch the chips off-guard --
I pressed again, but twice as hard.
Luck was just not in the cards.
I saw what I had seen before.
Now I typed in desperation
Trying random combinations
Still there came the incantation:
Choose: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw an awful sight:
A bold and blinding flash of light --
A lightning bolt had cut the night and shook me to my very core. I
saw the screen collapse and die "Oh no -- my database", I cried I
thought I heard a voice reply, "You'll see your data Nevermore."

To this day I do not know
The place to which lost data goes
I bet it goes to heaven where the angels have it stored.
But as for productivity, well
I fear that it goes straight to hell
And that's the tale I have to tell
Your choice: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

Anon

0 comments

Monday, Oct 25, 1999, 2:55 PM in Fun