So it's been quiet from the google camp lately, so quiet that they even got me wondering what they were up to...
Enter Chrome, a web browser by google.
Here's the comic book style announcement (thx dare)
Some very interesting stuff on how the app is built in the comic
What that last one does remains to be seen, but it's a good way to recruit some people..
So I've joint the masses..
Currently I'm running my development laptop, a dell latitude d630 with 4 gig RAM on windows server 2008 x64.
So far it's been awesome!
While Vista and WS 2k8 are basically the same codebase the end user experience is completely different.
I'm guessing the *few* services that are different make up for a more stable, faster OS.
lost of useful information can be found here
One note however:
If you are like me and download the iso from msdn, don't use the checked build! It's painfully slow and Hyper V keeps on throwing a BSOD when starting a VM.
back from ... euh, being gone.
some noteworthy releases have happened:
Ayende has been in Belgium to help out on one of Barts projects. I had the chance to meet up with Ayende and the members of the belgian ALT.net group, which was very nice (too bad I had to leave a bit sooner than everyone else, I had a train to catch )
In some more personal news, I had a birthday, went to a festival and got engaged.. all in a months time :)
It's strange how at times various sources all talk about the same thing..
The following reply by Greg Youn sparked off the this post - as it's the answer I often get from my fellow consultants.
I used to believe heavily in the writing of great software ... since then I have grown up and been knocked off my soap box. Now I understand that there is only one kind of great software and that is the one that best solves the issues of the stakeholders, the quality of the code generally has little to do with it.
I call this the 'as long as it works' reply...
I *get* this reply, even if it goes against a number of my personal beliefs.
The thing of note in Greg's reply is his mention of the stakeholders of the project/application.
Question is, who are these stakeholders:
Business
 | I'm guessing everyone knows 'the iron triangle', which is how most managers perceive software creation: a balance between cost, time and features. As a result, your acceptance criteria by which your customer will accept your product are directly based on the features of your application. This (in theory) should lead to adequate software, aka software that does what it's supposed to with no or little bugs. |
Technical
The technical department is the second stakeholder, which may or may not exist (depending on your client's size). If a technical departement exists, it often/mostly gives you some rules about the development or forces a framework on you, but only in extreme cases will it actually do code reviews.
To top it off, acceptance criteria often leave the technical department out of the loop..
Maintenance.
aka, the hidden stakeholder. If we can trust the numbers mentionned in facts & fallacies, 60 % of software costs are done in maintenance, and 60% of maintenance is enhancing of existing applications. So, roughly 40% of all software projects are adding features to an existing application, aka brownfield projects.
In my personal experience, projects that were produced with a 'good enough' approach tend be nightmares when you need to extend or correct them..
In the end I agree with greg's definition.. as long as all the stakeholders are sufficiently taken into account, software should be good.
Shelfari allows you to track what books you have read/own/want via a very nice UI :)
So this is my (uncomplete) attempt (because god what was that book called again?) to list the technical books I've read over the last three-five years
