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Blog has moved : http://www.flanders.co.nz/blog

Ivan Porto Carrero — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:06:00 GMT

I've moved my blog to http://www.flanders.co.nz/blog

Please update your rss reader to http://www.flanders.co.nz/Blog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss

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Django vs ruby

Ivan Porto Carrero — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:33:00 GMT

Ruby looks to me like a hack. I'm not the only one with problems there :)

http://tabo.aurealsys.com/archives/2005/10/11/django-or-why-i-chose-it-over-turbogears-and-ruby-on-rails/

The following is from his blog post :

I decided to ignore Ruby for the moment and focus on Rails. What i noted:

Very simple to install and set up new projects
You create a database and it’s tables, and Rails will handle them
Things get messy when you want to write SQL instead of using the framework to access the data model
URL generation is simple but not flexible
Rails templates looked ASPish, horrible, almost cthulhian. I couldn’t stand the sight of them. There is too much code in them and worst of all, I couldn’t find a way to change the template system (Clearsilver in Rails anyone?)

Modern web design time division

Ivan Porto Carrero — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:13:00 GMT

My friend Miel found this site from poisoned minds.

They have a nice breakdow on how time is really spent when developing a website. Of course this is good for a laugh :)

I think they do have a point with the pure css lay-out. I for one am a dropshadow fan because if I put 2 divs on top of each other they need to look like there is some distance between them. I like the depth af the whole idea. Up till now I haven't found a way to create a rectangle with rounded corners and a dropshadow (like in photoshop or fireworks dropshadow) using only divs. I can do it easily using tables tho.

But IE users must die. People love to attack microsoft stuff and I think those that complain about the quirks in IE start developing their site for other browsers than IE and that's where those people make a thinking mistake. The logic behind it is : if 95% of the users use IE why would you start developing a site that does not target this browser primarily.

Essential Tools for web development

Ivan Porto Carrero — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 12:17:00 GMT

Peter has a post giving an overview of some tools that are essential to him as a developer.

http://jonesie.net.nz/EssentialTools.aspx

I would say that I use most of them but not all and I would like to add a few to the list because i mainly do webdevelopment and that's a different story then winforms.
Obviously I made the choice to go for The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework so I won't sum up any other ajax frameworks. That is reserved for a separate post.

AJAX/Web development:

Internet Explorer :
Fiddler - a tool to view http traffic (that gets sent through IE)
WebdevelopmentHelper BHO - A tool written by Nikhil Kothari and I consider it crucial
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar - This has got a lot of cool things you do want to know about your page sometimes.

Mozilla/firefox :
Greasemonkey - makes firefox highly extensible.
WebDeveloper toolbar - This has got a lot of cool things you do want to know about your page sometimes.
Venkman Javascript Debugger - Javascript debugging is a must :)
Greasemonkey Http Trace script - does the same as the BHO or fiddler for IE.

Collaborative development:
We are mostly using team foundation server to do continuous integration. However sometimes when a lot of different parties are involved we can't use the team foundation testing suite and then we use other tools to do our integration.

TestDriven.NET - does nunit testing and code coverage in VS 2005 - this used to be free but it isn't anymore.
CruiseControl.NET - does the builds based on nAnt or msbuild build scripts etc. It's the continous integration server alternative that we use
GhostDoc - essential for documenting your code.

Guard your knowledge or share it ??

Ivan Porto Carrero — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:38:00 GMT

I'd go for sharing thank you :)

I've learnt a lot from other people's blogs etc.

I try to give some of it back but am affraid i don't do so much exiting stuff :)

Kathy Sierra has a much longer post about whether you should share or guard your knowledge. In my opinion there is only one thing to do with knowledge and that is to share whatever you have, maybe somebody else can put it to better use than you can :)

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/06/mosh_pit_as_inn.html

.NET User group meeting tonight

Ivan Porto Carrero — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 00:04:00 GMT

Tonight we had a user group meeting on XForms.

First let me tell you that I think it is a big shame that we don't get Xforms capabilities in IE6 or in IE7.
It would get rid of all the javascript hassle and hoops we have to go through to get the simplest things done.

Anyway, I've been working with The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework a bit more now. And it is really cool just a shame that i can't use other libraries in conjunction. But I still have to explore the animation api maybe if i can do things that i consider cool enough I don't need other libraries any more.

Back to the user group meeting. Peter Nunn, the driving force behind a .NET XSP server application, came to give us a very passionate explanation on how xforms work and how they implemented them.
The effect you get is very similar to what I'm doing with The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework for the moment. Async pages that just get data from webservices, some might even call it SOA.
Where The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework gets cluttered combining 3 technologies in one page, Xforms does everything completely through xml. More clean... yes sir, more reusable .. yes sir, easily queriable.. yes sir.

Conclusion : we want more of where that came from but this time on every platform. Just once everybody should agree.. would make the life of a lot of developpers a lot easier :) Would probably put a lot of people out of business too.

Would i use it ? In the case where i develop for intranet applications i might be tempted to do so. As for my applications for uncontrolled environments (the internet) no thank you.
Xforms is only supported in firefox and while everybody is telling you how great mozilla is, my stats still show over 90% of my visitors use internet explorer. That being said, people trust plug-ins that are widely accepted like the flash plug-in. But people don't tend to trust obscure plug-ins from sourceforge, or other unknown companies in my experience.

So I'll continue the The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework path that I chose to take until there is cross browser XFORMS solution that has penetrated deeply enough in peoples living rooms.

Vista Beta 2 has to go :-(((

Ivan Porto Carrero — Wed, 31 May 2006 12:03:00 GMT

The company that hosts one of the servers that I use online is using OpenVPN as their vpn server.

And there are no drivers available voor the enhanced security model of Windows vista. Yep let's call it enhanced security model instead of f***** security dialog boxes that pop up whenever you want to do something that is not an installed program on your pc.
I am loving vista absolutely so I'm not uninstalling because I don't think it works.

I just think that in my case it is too early to make the move untill openvpn has support for vista in their range. Otherwise I can't connect to my online sql server and server which makes my life at lot more stress free but eventually their would be less money coming in :)

Weird vista stuff

Ivan Porto Carrero — Tue, 30 May 2006 12:12:00 GMT

Apart from the fact that my bluetooth headset won't work with vista. I do have a few other things that keep my mind busy.

I think it sucks I can't debug my asp.net apps when they are hosted on a UNC share. (this behavior was already present in XP)

If you are like me then you rarely turn off your pc and have it do a lot of stuff for maintenance during the night. This would be nighthly spyware checking, nightly virus scanning and defragmenting on certain days of the month.
Well if I leave my pc on during the night with a IE window open and outlook my internet is sluggish up to the point that I just gave up. I had a look on other pc's on my network and internet was indeed working fine. So I restarted my vista box and yes sir we have somewhat fast internet again.

Anyway i still can't find anything wrong with office 2007 ==> probably because I don't look for stuff to be wrong. And I do like new Outlook interface with the new sidebar on the right. Keeps me better informed :)

Mauricio has a few more things to say on vista, and probably he will be a better source for information than I am.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/blogtrack.asp?postid=597

Vista : a first glance

Ivan Porto Carrero — Mon, 29 May 2006 23:51:00 GMT

I installed vista on my laptop yesterday.

And the whole install is very hands-off and painless the price you pay is that it takes ages to complete. But it did install and upgrade my windows XP machine.

After booting my new system twice I grabbed the phone and ordered 2GB of extra memory because before vista i was already pushing it so now it's just a necessity to get it.

Vista works surprisingly well, it's a shame though that I still can't debug my asp.net applications when they are hosted on a network share instead of on my pc. Sure i can remotely debug them but that experience is not as nice as locally. I do put everything on a network share because of backups. If you ever get your laptop stolen with a few weeks worth of work on them without a backup you'll never let it happen again

My favourite new feature would be the navigation in explorer over the folders. and the way you can quickly backtrack your path etc.

My least favourite new feature would be the never ending security warnings. If I say unblock on a program that wants to access my firewall then I mean it and I don't need to be asked 3 times. you don't read them but it kind of sucks that it freezes your screen.

All the animations are really cool :) but due to my ram limitation for the moment they aren't as fluent as could be. I hope the Dell people will be quick to send me my new mem.

I don't really know what to say about office because i rarely use it. I do use Outlook a lot, Word I also use but all the other programs are wasted on me because I just don't need them. Once or twice a year somebody sends me an access database. This database gets turned into sql very quickly ;).

But that toolbar thingy in word : VERY cool and accessible :D

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