Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Finally made the break from Brinkster
I have been a customer of Brinkster since 2000 when I had my first .Net web site on their alpha servers.
Unfortunately this year they sent me a greatly inflated demand with, would you believe, a charge for attack protection and wind-power!!
Jared, I don't give a hoot about whether you use wind power or not. Green power is demonstrably cheaper, or should be if your government was to adhere to carbon cap and trade but they wont. I don't give a hoot about attack protection either. How you secure your infrastructure isn't up to me!
The plain fact of the matter is that I pay for the service of putting my pages on the web. Your service is 11+ dollars per month for a site with no database and no high traffic demand. Twice as costly is twice as costly whichever way you cut it.
Unfortunately this year they sent me a greatly inflated demand with, would you believe, a charge for attack protection and wind-power!!
Jared, I don't give a hoot about whether you use wind power or not. Green power is demonstrably cheaper, or should be if your government was to adhere to carbon cap and trade but they wont. I don't give a hoot about attack protection either. How you secure your infrastructure isn't up to me!
The plain fact of the matter is that I pay for the service of putting my pages on the web. Your service is 11+ dollars per month for a site with no database and no high traffic demand. Twice as costly is twice as costly whichever way you cut it.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Older Software Developers Improve Over Time
This article shows that a study at the North Carolina university says that we older chaps get better at software development and can beat the young cubs at their game.
Sunday, April 07, 2013
CTO or CSO? What do companies need?
I have used the title Chief Technology Officer for some time and have fulfilled that role either by that name or as Technical Director or whatever for a few years. During that time I have become more and more convinced that the role of CTO is inadequate to describe the requirements of some posts and that companies might be better off with a role of Chief Science Officer.
Science has a specific meaning and has connotations of research that may be confused with a pure technology role but as I go through my business life I see more overlap than ever between the two.
A concrete example of that being a task that requires a multi disciplined approach to problem resolution that would fall outside of a pure technology role. Designing a product today might have aspects of electronics, engineering, software technology choices and even chemistry or biotechnology that would outstrip the skill-set of a career technology manager.
I have recently been involved in such a project where the requirements of electronic design, knowledge of software systems, some physics and engineering all have to come together in the right order to create a product and the research aspects of the system are quite demanding.
Perhaps in the not-so-distant future a CSO role will become more important as we begin to integrate diverse technologies into everyday items. What do you think?
Science has a specific meaning and has connotations of research that may be confused with a pure technology role but as I go through my business life I see more overlap than ever between the two.
A concrete example of that being a task that requires a multi disciplined approach to problem resolution that would fall outside of a pure technology role. Designing a product today might have aspects of electronics, engineering, software technology choices and even chemistry or biotechnology that would outstrip the skill-set of a career technology manager.
I have recently been involved in such a project where the requirements of electronic design, knowledge of software systems, some physics and engineering all have to come together in the right order to create a product and the research aspects of the system are quite demanding.
Perhaps in the not-so-distant future a CSO role will become more important as we begin to integrate diverse technologies into everyday items. What do you think?
Facebook Home. Are they truly mad?
I just saw the announcement of the Facebook Home "wrapper" application and I am utterly horrified at the possibilities that it presents.
While I understand that free software needs to be paid for somehow and I am all for getting services in exchange for a little of my data I balk at the idea that allowing something as intimate as my entire smart-phone experience to be run by Facebook.
One can be guaranteed that the recipients of your phone calls would fairly soon be in receipt of "Thought you might like..." SMS messages purporting to be from you but in fact via the great Facebook machine. How about voice recording and analysis of your phone-calls by their server farm to harvest as much data as possible? What about interjecting spoken word adverts into long pauses in your phone conversations?
Honestly, anyone who signs up to use Facebook Home must be among the most naively stupid and gullible twerp on the face of the planet. Either that or they simply have no sense of or desire for privacy whatsoever.
While I understand that free software needs to be paid for somehow and I am all for getting services in exchange for a little of my data I balk at the idea that allowing something as intimate as my entire smart-phone experience to be run by Facebook.
One can be guaranteed that the recipients of your phone calls would fairly soon be in receipt of "Thought you might like..." SMS messages purporting to be from you but in fact via the great Facebook machine. How about voice recording and analysis of your phone-calls by their server farm to harvest as much data as possible? What about interjecting spoken word adverts into long pauses in your phone conversations?
Honestly, anyone who signs up to use Facebook Home must be among the most naively stupid and gullible twerp on the face of the planet. Either that or they simply have no sense of or desire for privacy whatsoever.
Friday, April 05, 2013
C# changes places with Objective C
Every now and again I like to take stock of the Tiobe index that shows the relative popularity of programming languages. In a perhaps not too surprising turnaround this year C# falls to fifth place where Objective C rises to third place. A complete reversal of the situation with respect to figures a year ago.
C# has generally been a riser on the index for the last decade but the continued popularity of the Apple iDevice range and the shift from desktop to tablet based computing has greatly changed the programming landscape.
My personal view despite its popularity is that Objective C is a less expressive and more cumbersome language than C# but as I've said before, it's all just ones and zeros really so the most important thing to remember is that the algorithms are what count.
I program happily in both languages and appreciate the C like style of both of them. It is evident from the results however that the popularity of the programming language is greatly influenced by the platform upon which it runs and Microsoft has had a fairly disastrous year with the lacklustre release of Windows 8 and that awful decision to cripple the ARM based version of the operating system by restricting it to only running applications sanctioned by the Microsoft store and produced through their developer program. This, to be honest, was a trick that Only Steve Jobs had the cajones to pull off and Microsoft should have recognized that.
The massive success of the Apple IOS platform and the plethora of applications that are available for it now will make Objective C an even stronger choice for young up and coming programmers in the future. However, there is a catch inasmuch as Objective C only faces that one platform whereas C# is becoming more popular as a cross platform tool. I have been using C# very happily on Android and IOS platforms thanks to Xamarin's most cool MonoTouch and MonoDroid tools and the leverage of my .Net skills is still good on those.
For the future? I predict that next year we will see a significant rise in the popularity of Python due in no small part to the auspices of the Raspberry Pi. The part it will play in the popular computing market is almost assured and I am very sorry to say that unless Microsoft does something very clever indeed, C# will show more of a fall this coming year.
C# has generally been a riser on the index for the last decade but the continued popularity of the Apple iDevice range and the shift from desktop to tablet based computing has greatly changed the programming landscape.
My personal view despite its popularity is that Objective C is a less expressive and more cumbersome language than C# but as I've said before, it's all just ones and zeros really so the most important thing to remember is that the algorithms are what count.
I program happily in both languages and appreciate the C like style of both of them. It is evident from the results however that the popularity of the programming language is greatly influenced by the platform upon which it runs and Microsoft has had a fairly disastrous year with the lacklustre release of Windows 8 and that awful decision to cripple the ARM based version of the operating system by restricting it to only running applications sanctioned by the Microsoft store and produced through their developer program. This, to be honest, was a trick that Only Steve Jobs had the cajones to pull off and Microsoft should have recognized that.
The massive success of the Apple IOS platform and the plethora of applications that are available for it now will make Objective C an even stronger choice for young up and coming programmers in the future. However, there is a catch inasmuch as Objective C only faces that one platform whereas C# is becoming more popular as a cross platform tool. I have been using C# very happily on Android and IOS platforms thanks to Xamarin's most cool MonoTouch and MonoDroid tools and the leverage of my .Net skills is still good on those.
For the future? I predict that next year we will see a significant rise in the popularity of Python due in no small part to the auspices of the Raspberry Pi. The part it will play in the popular computing market is almost assured and I am very sorry to say that unless Microsoft does something very clever indeed, C# will show more of a fall this coming year.
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
CTO? Whatever happened to passion?
How do you or your teams know when they are hiring the right person? If you were running a racing team with formula 1 cars would you hire someone that didn't know where your team stood in the world rankings? If you ran a film studio would you hire a director of photography that didn't take photographs?
Why then do so many technology companies hire managers and team leaders that don't give a hoot about the technology they work with?
Over the years I have worked with some of the best and brightest people in the technology business and I can say that the most valuable people are not necessarily the ones with the best on-paper qualifications. When you hire in a manager for a technology team you need to look for someone with good experience and good qualifications sure but when you ask that person what they like to do in their spare time you will tell the ones that are dedicated to the technology by the kind of things that drive their passions.
When hiring these days we are faced with a minefield of human-resource oriented do's and dont's about the questions that we ask but when the interview is over and the technical grilling is done take time to get a feeling for the passions of the person. If you're hiring for a technology post and the passion is mountain bikes and scuba diving then you might get a perfectly competent and wonderful person who can't wait to leave on a friday to hit the beach or the mountain trail. On the other hand, if that person builds robot cars or has automated their apartment to respond to voice commands a-la Star Trek then you can be reasonably assured that their passions will be applied in their work and they will be constantly training themselves for your benefit - for free!
Why then do so many technology companies hire managers and team leaders that don't give a hoot about the technology they work with?
Over the years I have worked with some of the best and brightest people in the technology business and I can say that the most valuable people are not necessarily the ones with the best on-paper qualifications. When you hire in a manager for a technology team you need to look for someone with good experience and good qualifications sure but when you ask that person what they like to do in their spare time you will tell the ones that are dedicated to the technology by the kind of things that drive their passions.
When hiring these days we are faced with a minefield of human-resource oriented do's and dont's about the questions that we ask but when the interview is over and the technical grilling is done take time to get a feeling for the passions of the person. If you're hiring for a technology post and the passion is mountain bikes and scuba diving then you might get a perfectly competent and wonderful person who can't wait to leave on a friday to hit the beach or the mountain trail. On the other hand, if that person builds robot cars or has automated their apartment to respond to voice commands a-la Star Trek then you can be reasonably assured that their passions will be applied in their work and they will be constantly training themselves for your benefit - for free!
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