Getting Stuck Into VB.NET

by Kieran

I’ve taken some time out today to go over some of VB.NET’s language features and general "dialect".  It’s a very odd language and seems as if it has been patched together from remnants of a shabby past.  There are language features that still exist in it which are both nonsensical and medieval, for example "Sub" which doesn’t seem to relate to anything.  Modules are a way to call statically from a console application, instead of starting the application through a form, yet are more of a deprecated VB6 feature.

Everything I’ve worked with feels to me as if the VB6 developers just really didn’t want to let go of the language after it became a language of the past with competing languages steadily overtaking.  The grammar behind it has been changed into less understandable things based on everything that is taught in the computer science field such as static memory, public, private, and protected access modifiers which are a common grammar amongst many-a-language.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with coding in it, and I’m already getting the hang of it, but it just feels as if pushing .NET on VB was a "last hope" of making the language last another 5-10 years.

Sure, it’s all a part of the .NET framework, so the language doesn’t particularly matter all too much, but I honestly don’t see the big hype around it.  For a start, it’s nothing new, runtime environments were around for years before .NET came on the scene.  The library features just feel like a direct copy of the JDK (another reason why I shouldn’t have much of a problem with getting on with it), and the language itself has just been made to be more understandable, although I believe that’s far from the truth.

Understandability, of course, doesn’t just come from a natural use of language when it comes to software development.  As developers, we’re taught to use a standard set of language features, and these are typically copied over into other languages.  Compare, for example, C, C++, PHP, Java and more.  If you can get on with one of these, then there’s a good chance you’ll feel comfortable with the rest.  Some other languages overstep the bounds however, although it does confuse me greatly, because C# fits into a category snugly with Java.

So finally I have to sum it up as follows:

  • It’s nothing new
  • In effect, it could reduce productivity due to its highly different nature
  • It’s all a part of .NET, therefore language doesn’t have much of an impact, this is down to familiarity more than anything
  • It’s an old language that has been revived

Again, this doesn’t mean I have a problem with it, and I’m more than happy to work with it, and what I have learnt so far is great as I’m feel more comfortable with it.  Perhaps I’ll learn to love it even more so in the future, but I’m honestly shocked at how vastly it is used in the industry today.  In fact, a good four or five colleagues of mine are using it in full-time jobs.  I guess of course, it’s entirely dependant on the application being developed.

How To Screw Up Your Degree

by Kieran

I’ve just got back from a two hour exam on data structures and advanced programming.  I know the course content like the back of my hand, yet today I’ve left that exam room knowing I’ve got a 2:1 in my degree.  Why? You may ask.  Because I spent almost three quarters of an hour answering one of the biggest questions of a breadth-first topological ordering of an acyclic directed graph where I later found that I had missed out one of the vertices in the adjacency list.  That’s right, it does screw up the entire answer, so guess what I spent the next half an hour doing? Almost having a panic attack.

Additionally, this exam was the ultimate finish to my degree, because if I had got a first in it (which I haven’t) I would’ve got a first in my degree.

How pissed off am I? I’ve just thrown a first class honours degree down the drain all because I messed up one question in the exam.  One bloody question.  I feel physically sick.  Oh, and we did figure out the markings afterwards, and I haven’t got every other question correct as was rightly pointed out to me.  Because I ended up panicking so much I ended up screwing up some of the final questions.

Joy to the world.

EDIT: Well, due to my extenuating circumstances (that is, because I’m officially not supposed to be at university this year due to illness) I’m allowed to defer meaning I can retake the exam in July and still get the maximum amount of marks.  It does mean however that I’ll need to re-study the course material, and I will have a different exam paper, but it gives me an extra chance to get a first class grade.

A Safe Landing

by Kieran

I’ve always enjoyed watching anything to do with space on TV, especially with all of the Mars landings.  Today the Phoenix craft landed successfully, and after watching the videos on the landing process I was amazed.  It’s quite a futuristic landing using thrusters to come to a halt and then just dropping.  Usually craft of this type just make their landing using just parachutes, but I assume they couldn’t in this case because the probe isn’t designed to move, therefore the parachutes couldn’t get in the way.

The one thing that gets me is that when you see the videos of the probes, you don’t get a real feel for it, especially for their size as they seem so small.  Well, I ran across this picture today showing the real size of it, and it’s a crazy amount bigger than I thought.  It’s "little" digger arm must be quite large.

Why An Upper-Second Degree Classification Is Okay

by Kieran

In recent months I have been obsessing over my degree classification.  Based on the methods of calculating my degree there are a few that could possibly apply, but the most appealing one would require me getting a first class grade in an exam I’m about to take on Tuesday.  The likelihood of me getting this grade is quite slim, not because I don’t know the course material, but because of the style of questions presented in third level exam papers which instead of asking logical questions with single answers, instead ask you questions you would have never seen before and challenge you to find an answer and how you reached that answer.

Many colleagues around me have already got their first class degree based on their average from last semester, unfortunately for me however I concentrated on a particular field more so than others which sure enough gave me one of the best grades in the class, yet it meant I suffered in other areas.  I asked a friend of mine what their degree classification was and they gave me some interesting insight into their degree which made me feel quite satisfied and less worried as to my future.  "Your degree classification should reflect your natural ability, not your pushed ability, unless of course you want to be stressed in your future jobs".  Listening to this made me feel content, that’s for sure.  I’ve been pulling my hair out over my degree classification for the reason that I’m currently averaging 71% meaning that I need to get 75% in my next exam.  This means that if I fall short, even my a couple of percent, then I’m miss my first class grade.

What I don’t realise, in the bigger scheme of things, is that (supposedly) a 2:1 grade is in fact above average in my particular field of study, which shocked me.  The thing with degree classifications is they work differently from what we’ve experienced our entire lives.  A’s, B’s and C’s fell into areas such as 80+, 70+ and 60+ where as degrees fall into "if it’s more than 70%, you’ve got yourself a first" which doesn’t feel like much, but relative to degree-level education, it’s actually quite high.  As family and university staff have pointed out to me - being a perfectly valid point - is that just over a year ago I lay on a hospital bed on a life support machine.  Now I hate to use this, I really do, because I’d rather not use it for an excuse, yet disregarding the fact as an excuse it is an observation worth taking note of.  The truth is that the doctors told me I definitely wouldn’t go back to my job (I was on my placement at the time) and I may - and they used may in the strongest sense - be able to go back to university.  Here I am after almost 9 months of university still battling on with my exams.  My illness has caused some prolonged effects which have had an impact on me in the last few months, of which I will not go into details.  Let’s not forget that I’m getting married in just over two months either.

Whether I get a first class grade, or an upper second grade, what I have to realise is that I am still an achiever regardless of how I may compare myself to others around me.  I will still enjoy my work, I will still be able to perform, and I will still be employable in my field of work.  A first class grade is an added bonus, sure, from here on out I’m looking at a more exciting future with more experience being gained than ever before with extra time to concentrate on the things I really love doing.  The problem I have is that every single friend I seem to have either has a first class grade, or is definitely going to get one.  I say, good for them, and I really am pleased for them, but I’d rather be happy then obsess over it, not achieve it, then spend the next few years being bitter over it.

I want to be happy as an average university student, and that’s what I’m going to do! :D

(just as a side note, some exciting things are about to happen over at reformsoft!)

Stupid Web Payment Systems

by Kieran

I have a serious hate towards web payment systems that fail to load on the final booking page.  It’s happened to me before, then I’ve ended up making two payments.  Tonight I booked our boat trip back home for when I finish university only to find the final page didn’t load up.  After waiting for quite a while it was obvious nothing was going to happen, so I just closed the page.  I then checked my e-mails to see if I had got a confirmation and waited a while to make sure the mail server retrieved everything that was most up-to-date and nothing came through.  Knowing it hadn’t confirmed it I re-booked the trip (they’re not cheap either), which went very smoothly and I was presented with the "success" page for the payment.  I then check my e-mails to find two confirmations, one for the previous attempt, and one for the one that worked without a hitch.

I understand what it’s like to code web systems, I’ve had to do it before, but there needs to be something more rock-solid in there checking against pages which don’t load.  Otherwise, customers have to look at it, know it didn’t complete successfully and either phone up the company they’re dealing with the next day, or phone their bank to see if any charges have been made.  It all causes unnecessary hassle.  Perhaps the web systems should notice payments made with the same details and give the user a warning that a booking under the same name / card has been made in that evening?

Either way, we’re going to have to phone up on a high-tariff line just to cancel a booking which their system screwed up.  These things annoy the crap out of me.

Patents, Why I Disagree

by Kieran

I’m sure we’re all familiar with what patents are, those exclusive rights an "inventor" has over an invention.  Sure, there’s a strict process that must be met in order to file a patent, but anyone and their friend can patent an idea, and some of them are just absolute BS.  I’m going to whack a fork on the end of a pen so businessmen can eat and write at the same time, it’s a great idea, it might help the world a whole lot, but you know what? I won’t let anyone else use the idea unless they pay me lots of money.  (Please note, that IS a joke.  We could always patent "KNIFE WREEEENCH!" - Scrubs rocks.)

I didn’t really think about patents much until a friend of mine shared information about patented shadowing techniques which were widely used in rendering engines.  The idea was nothing new, and had been implemented a great many times before.  Here’s a few reasons why I hate, hate, hate patents.

  • Money grabbing fiends
  • Inhibiting the world from using new ideas
  • Ideas aren’t necessarily new, they’re just patented (look at LZW encoding twenty years ago)
  • Stopping the development of the world

I could sure go on and on, but the more I hear about them, the more I dislike them.  I think the patent system should be abolished completely.  You can still make money from unoriginal ideas, and you should share with the world what you have created.  If you’re really up your own arse about it, then just make some rule such as "slap my name on it if you do release it so I can suck up all the glory".

I should patent patents, that’d mess the world up.

Death, Death, and more Death

by Kieran

I’m not sure what it is recently, but the news has been plastered with just death.  Let’s start out with the individual killings in Great Britain.  One boy, 16, killed in broad daylight over something most probably meaningless.  I saw another one in the paper today about a 22 year old being killed in Oxford street (yes, that’s probably the busiest street in the UK).  Then moving onto worldwide disasters.  I’m sure everyone has heard of the Burma cyclone/typhoon that has killed in excess of 22,000 people (if you check the original story, they said only hundreds… oh how the death toll rose).  Then moving onto China’s earthquake which has killed in excess of 12,000.  And finally, the bombings in India that were mentioned tonight on the BBC.

So, in the last 2 weeks or so, we’re looking at a death toll of just over 34,000 just from natural disasters alone.  Is it only me who notices this? Or are people just glancing over the news recently? Because I’m deeply moved by things like this and it heightens my "we live so ignorantly" sense.  I think as Britons we have become so complacent about the going-ons of the rest of the world that we prefer to kick our feet up, drink our cup of earl grey and watch the death tolls rise on the news.  Either that or we switch over to Doctor Who and the likes.

Of course I do understand that we’re unable to help from so far away, and we’d lead an unhelpful life if we were to just give up our jobs and chase the next disaster that happened.

Colour-Blindness Fun

by Kieran

If you’re colour-blind, you’re going to hate this (click here). It’s the first game I’ve played in a while which is actually quite challenging and really tests your ability, despite its simplicity.

Reformsoft Rebirth

by Kieran

Recently myself and a colleague have been discussing where our future part-time software development should be directed. Although we have many ideas, and have indeed in some cases started work on some areas, we thought it would be a good idea to carry on with reformsoft, which was started some years ago to help groups of us to congregate together to make software. Hopefully with the multiple developers to each project there would be a higher rate of quality in each product.

The idea isn’t necessarily open source, whilst we do enjoy open source, but instead we are planning on working on both free and commercially viable software. Each of us “own” a project within the team, and the rest of the team will be assigned roles to each project. This way, we’re all managers, we’re all developers, and we’re all designers. As for languages and types of projects, we’re not entirely sure, although we do have a heading on where we want to go (of course we’re not revealing any information just yet).

Some old projects will be started up again, and some new ones will begin. The environments we develop in will be quite varied, and hopefully some web systems will be developed also. Personally, though, I will not be working on any commercial products and instead plan to release free software only, and as it’s part of the team it doesn’t look as if it’ll be open source (though that’s okay too).

Hopefully this will give me lots to keep busy with in the evenings ;)

Facebook Overtaking Google?

by Kieran

Here’s an interesting read for the day. The BBC have looked into staff moving from Google to Facebook, and there seem to be a great number of them who are doing so. The article moves on to saying things like “the Google of yesterday” without any clear notion of why. Because employees are shifting from Google to Facebook? Let’s get something straight here. What on earth is similar between the two? They may both be working with the web, but their areas are in almost opposite directions. Social networking versus a large scale search giant providing a multitude of AJAX-enabled web tools to perform desktop-esque tasks. Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t see how the two can be compared, the fact is that there’s still a big load of brains out there in the world that Google could quite easily snatch up.

In spite of all this, there’s still some observations I would like to make:

  • Facebook have acquired Google staff, in what ways will this benefit social networking?
  • How would Facebook possibly take over services that Google provide?
  • If Facebook do compete with Google, surely they will lose the entire point of Facebook and start fanning out to areas they’re really not meant to?

It annoys me when I hear crappy news articles like this trying to compare apples and oranges. What they don’t realise is that staff shift from big company to big company all the time, just because it’s happening to the “hot” stuff at the moment, doesn’t mean it’s not happening elsewhere. When I worked in the industry I personally met some of the big shifters and whilst it was talked about a significant amount, it wasn’t something the press would get hold of, and it wasn’t something the press would have been interested in.

Anyone who thinks Facebook is domineering companies like Google because of their staff acquisition is quite simply misguided.

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