Blogs

Windows update should let you flag updates as things you dont want. You should be able to add some text if you want; so it can remind you why you didnt want it, and say to it “don’t show me this one again unless I ask…”.

There’s an interesting discussion going on on the ACCU’s mailing list at present. It’s about the value of comments in code. This is one of those topics that comes around every so often and this time I decided to dive in with some controversial suggestions. The discussion started with someone saying how they’ve just had a code review where the reviewer insisted on adding the following comment: // Checks the name length void CheckNameLength() This moved into a discussion about block comments in headers and my position was that as soon as any of them start to get out of date the value of any of them starts to diminish.

I’ve spent the last couple of days back with The Refactoring Project. They’ve done well in my absence. They managed 3 releases; all correctly tagged and repeatable. They started some refactoring of their own and, at first glance, it looks like they’ve taken on board lots of the suggestions I’ve been making over the last months. They’ve fixed a couple of new bugs in the FX code and whilst doing so found that a) the bugs were easy to locate, b) they were easy to fix with very localised changes, and c) the new code was much easier to work with!

I’m looking at adding SSPI security to the socket server code for a client; first stop is MDSN and the samples section. Although I can understand why the MSDN samples are generally just ‘here’s the API, this is the order you call things in, run along now’, I think it would be nice if they were better; especially since I often find pieces of pretty much untouched MSDN sample code deep within client’s applications… I guess it’s not really something for Microsoft and the MSDN team to provide though… Pity.

I’m spelunking around in some code for a client looking for a nasty bug that’s hard to reproduce. The code is less than ideal… It’s the kind of code that’s been put together by what I refer to as ‘Frankenstein programming’; lots of unrelated bits and pieces have been collected from various places and stuck together to make something that looks about right. Unfortunately we’re at the point where we need a vast amount of power to give this thing life, and I for one don’t see a thunder storm on the horizon…

I’ve been editing videos on a PC for far too long. It’s a lot easier than it used to be, but it still feels like it’s not quite ready for prime time for non professionals. At least it’s now reasonable easy to find room to store the masses of data that you need to manipulate when editing DV video, and the editing programs are better, and the special hardware is cheaper or no longer special.

Krzysztof Kowalczyk on Alan Cooper on software business… “Alan Cooper argues in this article that a way to win in the software business is not by cutting costs of production (i.e. number of programmers and their salaries) but by investing more in creating good software (i.e. hiring more programmers).” My emphasis; I don’t think that’s what Alan’s suggesting. Updated 3rd May 2023 to fix broken links Alan says: “You must invest more time and money on the research, thinking, planning, and design to make your product better suited to your customer’s needs.

Just holiday snaps…

The 2003/04 ski season has started. Well, for me at least. We spent the last week in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, in the hands of the Warren Smith Ski Academy. Great fun, hard work, highly recommended. The snow was wonderful for the time of year. Much more like winter snow than spring skiing. Sure it was a bit hard first thing and a few slopes got a little sugary by midday but all in all we couldn’t have asked for better conditions.

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