Developer hell

The one who knows would understand me veeery well.

I'm now working on the project which looks in the following way. It started to be developed 8 years ago. There were about 4 teams of long-term hired outsourcers and a couple of consultants sustaining that sh%t-code for these 8 years.

And now - just listen - the code looks the following way.

• .Net 1.1 windows application, which has a tree on the left, and different panels showing up on the right, depending on the node selected in the tree.
• Sometimes on the right .Net winforms components are shown. Sometimes, ASP.NET 1.1 pages within hosted browser (IE ActiveX) are shown.
• There is a couple of situations, when inside that ASP.NET 1.1 pages shown within IE Activex shown within Windows Forms application, Visual Basic 6 ActiveX control gets up.
  
• Haven't you lost the story thread yet?
  
• And - the best one. Where do you think does that custom VB6 ActiveX take data? You'll never believe. From the ASP.NET 2.0 Web service, which is published on the same server where the ASP.NET 1.1 pages containing that VB6 ActiveX are published.
  

Have you ever thought this is possible.
And - the last.

Users of this system were completely satisfied with this state for almost 2 years, and only after that lifetime system started to slow down...

Would you like such a job? :D

Google Docs

This is not an advertisement.
It's just a short story of how today's services can be used in order to perform some daily tasks for free.

So, here's an example.
We have:

• Document in M$ Word format, created elsewhere
• Laptop with Linux installed on it
• OpenOffice on linux which does not open correctly the M$ Word document (styles are shifted and paragraphs are misplaced with text
• Need to port this document to PDF in order to e-mail as CV.

Instead of installing Word application on the virtualized XP, we can do much simpler thing:

• Just forward an e-mail with document attached to the specific email address which is found in the Google Docs setup page, on Upload tab.
• Log into Google Docs.
• Open the document (it is already imported - Google has imported all the attachments as separate pages.)
• And from menu select Save-As PDF File
• That's all - you can now dl it!

So, economy is completely understood. How much does Microsoft Word license cost?

MInimalizm

First of all, sorry for showing plain thoughts, without specific technical background.
I have found, that I like minimal things. I like:

1. Ipod shuffle 2nd generation - it does not have screen. It has only the blinking led. It has only one hole through which it gets charged, filled with data and into which your favourite headphones fit flawlessly.
2. TRAC. Yes, this is an abbreviation. http://trac.edgewall.org/ This is a tracking software (for bugs, change requests, some planning, for vivd documentation and for having all this stuff interlinked well. THis really works hard.
3. Awesome window manager. http://awesome.naquadah.org/ THis drives me crazy. Perfect thing for professional works with computer. It is tiling window manager, it does not have nor window headers neither borders, windows don't get overlapped normally, all is powered with keyboard. Result: you don't spend time on working with windows - dragging, resizing, etc.. You just spend time on working.

I hope to explain more of this stuff in the future posts, but tendency is prominent.
Things take your time. You need some things. So, you need things which take minimal amount of your time - MINIMAL ones.

Audio feeds

Never used podcasts before. Tried JavaPOSSE.
They seem to be rocking, but again - for me it is too lightweight style.

I'd like to see them more strict and technical.

Time, endless short time

KISS.
We have all heard of this principle, we try to use whenever we can.
There are tons of books about programming that use this principle - XP KISS system design, KISS code, which is easy-readable.

I have spent about 3 hours fighting with Ubuntu sound systems. I have discovered that there are several different sound servers/systems/modules that do use sound devices on different level of abstraction and HAVE NO COMMON INTERFACES.

Know what? My sound disappeared: I could not call with skype, I could not listen to music; no sound at all. I tried to revert to the original configuration, back and force - no sound at all.

And know what the problem was? My pcm device was muted in the mixer. I spent few minutes checking and fixing that. And three hours finding out what the hell is going on.

So, KISS.