Pragmatic Prose

At one point in time it was thought that writing a Windows Service (then an arduous task b/c it required C++) was the ultimate solution for automated business processing.  However, the state of practice involved a VB application running in the Windows Task Scheduler.

However hokey it may have seemed, the Windows Task Scheduler (like *nix's crontab) is the most robust way to run processes on a scheduler. 

Here's some validation from Jon Galloway:

http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/10/24/428303.aspx

A Windows Service is the wrong solution to scheduling one-off custom processes. The right solution for scheduling simple processes is the Windows Task Scheduler.

Scheduled tasks are awesome and server most business process purposes just fine.  Reporting could be better and Windows Vista takes the task scheduler to a whole new realm of bizarre complication, but all in all, it's not bad.

Now, why do all the "smart" engineers at Apple, Google, Sun, etc, decide to design their own "always on" services to run either all the time or to start at boot time?  Don't they know about the Windows Task Scheduler?

I'm sure they do.  I'm guessing at some meeting some project manager looked at the way Sun has done their Java updater for the longest time and thought this was right.  After all, the user could turn off the task scheduler service and we NEED to make sure that Java/Picasa/Chrome/iTunes is updated every day/week/month/year.

In the end, the simpler solution is usually the best one.  Windows task scheduler has worked well for me for years. 

I've played around with Windows Service projects in .NET but thankfully, I've never actually had to put one in production.  There are so many simpler (and arguably) better solutions.

I'm venting some frustration here. Just upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 on another blog and the UI has changed drastically. And in a small point (2.6) to (2.7) update no less.

Gmail changed it's UI a few weeks back. Now google reader has changed their UI as well.

I upgraded to Windows Vista a while back and the interface has changed for Add/Remove programs. To be specific, it disappeared. I had to search for how to remove a program. WTF?

Many of these changes came without reason. Why did these changes need to happen. Did I gain anything? No I lost productivity.

Has everyone lost their copy of "The Design of Everyday Things"? Sigh.

I came across a post today bemoaning the state of python web development.  Yes Python is a "better" language so why does PHP win in the web space?

This is an interesting questions as I contemplate how much easier it is to run WordPress than dasBlog.  I'm currently using dasBlog for hosting the blog but at the present time I can't update it because the updater project from SourceForge won't compile and I honestly don't have enough time to mess with it.

At the same time with my Wordpress blogs, I simply use the appropriate svn commands and then go to the upgrade.php page and I'm magically updated to the newest version.

But Doesn't PHP Suck?

I've been asking myself that question for awhile now.  The more I consider it though, the more I consider the beauty of PHP suckiness.  PHP just works.  There's something to be said for that.

In fact, I'm thinking about creating my new web site in PHP even though I'm an ASP.NET developer by trade.  Why would I do that?  A few reasons but mainly, worse is better.

My php sites just always work.  The hosting and "framework" for php are so realiable I never have to worry about them.  On the other hand my virtual server hosting for windows/asp.net/iis is always crashing.

This isn't to say that Windows hosting is unreliable, in fact at work our servers run for months/years at a time with no problems.  However, a php plan is 6.99 a month where a windows plan is 5 times that.

Python Just Isn't a Good Web Language

Why?  Whitespace.  PHP just blends end with the tags of an html page.  The same could be said of JavaScript and C#.  C family code can survive the hostile web environment and the inevitable munging of scripts as they are combined to form whole pages.

It's survival of the fittest not survival of the most technically pure.  Our DNA holds all kinds of junk like retrovirus dna and all kinds of crazy antiquated things like the code for our appendix.

However, through it all, DNA keeps on trucking. 

PHP is Good Enough

Just like C is good enough, php is good enough for your web development needs.  Once you combine cheap with easy and good enough you have a market winner.

It's kind of depressing at first.  I'm an ASP.NET guy and I love the new features in C#.  However, there is the whole economics and ease of use factor.

For instance, building my new online store for my software apps.  If I use asp.net, I'm much less confident that my website will stay up and running.  With PHP I'm more confident because my own experience has taught me that php/linux is almost bulletproof (and dirt cheap).

I really feel for all those python programmers looking for truth and beauty in web site coding.  I know Python can be used as a server side scripting language, but I don't think it's ever going to be as easy to use as PHP.  If this were 1997 there might have been a chance, but the world has moved on.

Python is awesome for admin scripting and processing.  However, I just don't think it can beat PHP in the web arena, no matter how much "better" it is.

If you use dasBlog and you've got a ton of comment/pingback/trackback spam, here is a good post for your. Go here: http://www.resquel.com/ssb/PermaLink,guid,ac6327d4-b323-4b92-9311-50f47efd137a.aspx Download and use the tool. I ended up using a wildcard (*) to just delete all the pingback/trackback stuff as there was so much spam I couldn't deal with it all.

My blog is now much cleaner. However, since I've taken this step, I think I need to go a step further an either update to the latest version of dasBlog or try something like blogengine.net.

Of course there is always wordpress...

Another classic hard problem:  how do you name controls on a form?  Do you follow a certain guideline?  What are the options?

1. Hungarian Notation
2. Full name
3. Something Better?

Hungarian notation in it's true form tries to indicate something about the variable, not just it's type.  If you have a set of variables dealing with database values such as indexes that name all such variables idxIndexName.  This is a nice convention, especially in hostile (non Visual Studio) environments.  Consider this usage in JavaScript and SQL.

Full name is popular in WinForms and ASP.NET forms.  Something Like CustomerDataGridView.  While very descriptive, it's also very long.  I've tried this format and I find it unsatisfying.

Something Better?

From the Irritated Vowel Naming Convention page, we have modified Hungarian.  Instead of using the full name, like above, we use a short prefix like ui or ux to indicate a User Interface or User eXperience element.

At first I rejected the Irrated Vowel naming suggestion out of hand.  But now I've been reconsidering it.  Why?

This convention avoids problems with changing control types (textboxes to drop-down lists, or simple text box to some uber textbox, or text box to date picker, for example), and groups the items together in intellisense. It is also much shorter than most Hungarian conventions, and definitely shorter and less type-dependent than appending the control type to the end of the variable name. I will use generic suffixes which allow me enough freedom to change them around.

The freedom to change controls without changing names is pretty useful.  In the absence of any compelling naming convention, the one with the most pragmatic points wins.  So I'm going to try the modified Hungarian in my next project and see how I like it.

This is a killer feature that almost every other decent text editor has. So it also pained me that I couldn't get something like this in Visual Studio, at least for free.

It turns out that Slick Edit Gadgets enables line highlighting along with a ton of extra features. The best news it that Slick Edit Gadgets is free.

So I downloaded it and tried it out. It works great and it's customizable also. Not often does free software "just work". I highly recommend the Slick Edit Gadgets.

Window's Vista has some weird font issues.  Notably, it uses all kinds of different fonts, including fonts from Windows 3.1.

I came across a post on how to fix Vista font rendering issues.  It's a simple registry hack.  Simply download the .reg file.  Run it and restart. 

You'll notice right away that many web pages look much better.  In fact, this fix maps many crappy fonts to the new improved Segoe (see-go) font.

I'm still getting used to Vista.  The look is sometimes cartoonish and I'm not sure it's a change for the better.  However, some part of me likes using Vista.

I find myself liking the Vista machine more and more as I use it.  My machines at work are using XP for the time being.  Not much I can do about that.  But my home machine is running Vista with no problems.

I've been gaming and coding on it and so far it's been the most stable Windows I've used yet.

I'm not really sure what all the negative publicity is all about.  Maybe I'll run into a real problem sooner or later but so far, so good.

A remarkable chain of thinking sparked while reading Object Thinking has lead me to a new thinking.  Simple phenomena can be easily classified, studied and repeated.  Think levers, steam engines, motion of planets.  However, complex systems (the human body, computer systems) benefit from empirical research and study.

This is not really new.  The question is, where is the boundary between complex and simple?  I think that this border only exists in the human mind.  In fact the border is movable and depends on the individual mind.

Nothing is complicated to Nature (the universe).  Everything just is.  Confusion and complication only arise in the human mind while trying to understand the universe.

Complexity is a function of our capacity to assimilate, store and process data.  If we were suddenly twice as smart, some complicated problems would seemingly become simple problems.  The problems themselves did not change, only we changed.

For software developers, it means that we struggle against complexity that is often artificial and even worse, is often of our own making. 

This means that managing complexity and striving for simplicity is an important function.  We can't just upgrade our wetware.  Humans have a limit (at least for the near future).  So we can only manage our abstractions and our creations.  We have to tend towards simplicity both in ordinary life (index funds over actively managed funds) and in software creation.

This would tend to suggest using tools that provide the most straight forward implementation route.  We should look for tools that allow for conservation of complexity.

If I as a sole developer running my own business can push complexity somewhere else (using a framework from a reliable source) then shouldn't I do that?

Does that mean that I must avoid unproven or untested frameworks?  The complexities haven't been discovered so I wouldn't know how to deal with them.

Interesting.  It's at least food for thought.