Comments and complaints on software and technology in general
The Architecture Journal just reached it's sixth edition. Fantastic! I've anticipated each edition and welcomed the dedication Microsoft has started to focus on architecture, design patterns, and best practices. That's one area where Microsoft development organizations have fallen short. The lack of guidance has stifled the community's growth a lot, in my opinion. The ease of VB classic definitely helped make up for this in the big picture, but standardized development with promising guidance has ......
UML and more. That's how an SD Times article covering VS05's new class modeling capabilities started to describe the new features. Unfortunately, I'd have to disagree. There are two main parts to Team System's modeling environment: System Designer and Class Designer. System Designer allows an architect to piece together systems based on generic components; and, Class Designer provides basic UML class diagram capabilities. The reason I say that Team System is not “_uml_ and more” is because ......
I was looking at the MSDN Architecture site a couple weeks ago and noticed several new features (new as in, it wasn't there 6 or so months ago). Check them out whenever you get a chance: Microsoft Architects Journal, update newsletter, and events ......
Just to let everyone know, I'm working on this again. It's become my main priority on a project that I'm working on, so I should have some good stuff to post. I've been pretty busy at work lately - including being out of town a lot - so I haven't had much time to put into posting. But, I'm hoping to have something up within the next week. There has been a lot of good talk going on in my previous Front Controller post, so hopefully I can help take that into account as I work on my next post. Let me ......
I thought Edmund DeJesus' article, Design for Success, was nice because it showed that [some] people realize the benefits of modeling. It brought up something that I've been fighting for some time, th database-driven design. I know that this is going to raise some eyebrows - especially in the Microsoft arena (i.e. VB6, ASP, .NET) - but here goes... It seems like most people who use Microsoft technologies have one or more individuals who take care of software and database development, instead of having ......
I read a short article by Mike Sax of Sax.net today. It talked about how you can be more competitive in today's IT job market. Basically, the article said you need to call yourself an architect, do a few extra things, and all of a sudden, you're indispensable. It'd be nice if life worked this way, but it's not as easy as Mike makes it out to be. I hope that nobody is dissillusioned about what it truly takes to become an architect. It sure seems like Mike is. Admittedly, he states that, “This ......
I'm severely disappointed in the first edition of Microsoft Architect Journal. I'm hoping for a bit more in the second edition, but won't be able to get to it for a while - I have a stack of papers to sift thru that have been piling up for a month, now. I'd be interested to see if anyone else had different opinions about it. Several of the topics seemed to be right-on, but they just didn't get to where I expected them to get. Oh well ......
I saw two articles that I thought were going to be pretty promising, but was partially disappointed. I approached the first, Death by UML Fever by Alex Bell, with the attitude that someone would be complaining about UML. I was expecting to hear someone explaining why UML was soooo bad and why nobody should use it. I have to say that I was actually surprised - both good and bad. The article didn't detail why people should stay away from UML. As a matter of fact, the article didn't say much at all. ......
One of my biggest problems with working in .NET (and especially back in my ASP and VB days), is that most .NET (or respective technology) developers don't approach n-tier development appropriately. The general ideas are sometimes followed, but even in those random cases, they are usually half-ass. Granted, this is just my experience, but I'd feel confident enough to say that this is the case in over 75% of the projects. I was surprised and relieved to see an an article discussing the importance of ......
As promised, here's my first contribution to HTTP modules and handlers. Although it has been quite belated, I hope you get something out of it. This is just an overview of modules and handlers that touches on a few topics of interest. This article was meant for developers who want to know what modules and handlers are all about. I tried to keep it to the point. As I mention in the article, I'll be working on an in-depth handler article over the next few weeks. I'm almost finished with my handler ......
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