Hug a Developer!

Being a developer is not all fun and giggles you know

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Daily Builds

Smalltalker from JP Morgan talks about the daily build process. Man, these guys have a monster image

Developers always start with a fresh image each day. They then ensure that all of their code loads into that fresh image. They don’t like saving images, because it leads to working on older snapshots. The build process they have takes 40 minutes, but it ensures that all developers are always working on an image that can be reproduced from scratch. A saved image cannot necessarily be reproduced.

More…

Technorati tags: Smalltalk, JP Morgan, ESUG

Microsoft tweaks anti-piracy check for Windows XP

 

Microsoft has updated software that verifies whether a copy of Windows is genuine in its Windows XP Professional edition, making it similar to the notification in Windows Vista and thus more persistently visible to users.

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Barry Carr on Oxygene Part 2

Here’s the second part of Barry’s talk.

Technorati tags: Community, Barry Carr, Oxygene

Barry Carr on Oxygene

Recently I caught up with local speaker Barry Carr and got him to tell me a bit about his new favourite language Oxygene. The screen cast is broken into two parts as YouTube will only allow broadcasts of 10 minutes or less.

Part 1.

Technorati tags: Community, Barry Carr, Oxygene, Web Cast

Dawkins, Darwin and Digital DNA

Right now Channel 4 is showing a 3 part series, hosted by Richard Dawkins, entitled The Genius of Charles Darwin. In the second episode of this series Richard was putting the idea of intelligent design to the sword, as only he can, holding up the facts of the fossil record and DNA to prove evolution.

His argument is simplicity itself. He argues that the fact that common DNA can be found in all living things shows that we all grow on different branches of the same family tree. He further argues that the fossil records show the evolution of skeletons, for example, over millions of years.

It is a powerful argument and whilst I believe in evolution, I do believe Richard Dawkins’ argument is flawed and this is why.

I have been a software engineer now for (say it quietly) 18 years. If you were to survey the sum total of all the code I had written in that time, you would see a common thread of "DNA" running through it. The way I prefer one method of flow control over another for example, or the names I most regularly use for common variables for another. You would also see a "fossil record”, recording the structure of my applications, in the frameworks that I have used. You would see the .Net version 1.0 "skeleton" change over time to .Net version 2.0 for example. Yet, all this code was create by (if you forgive the immodesty) an intelligent designer, namely me.

So, whilst I favour the theory of evolution over other theories, Dawkins’ argument is not water tight in my opinion.

Technorati tags: Richard Dawkin, Charles Darwin, The Theory of Evolution, Intelligent Design

Why Britain Should be a Secular Society

Up until recently, I’ve never had particularly strong feelings either way about religion. People who put the decisions of daily life into the hands of a “superior intelligence” were just coping out, as far as I was concerned; not having to take responsibility for the failures that come along in life from time to time. As for religious wars, where two or more countries fight over who has the biggest imaginary friend, well that just seems ridiculous in the extreme to me. However, up until now, I’ve considered that “their business” and let them get on with it.

However, religion has started to have an impact on my life in an utterly unacceptable way.

The Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) causes 70% of cervical cancers in this country and is passed on during sexual intercourse. It is, by definition, a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

From next month (September) 12-13 year old girls, in Scotland, will receive a vaccine against HPV, in a bid to cut the deaths cause by this form of cervical cancer, currently running at around 100 per year. I have two girls who will receive this vaccine (allbeit one who will receive it as part of a “catch up” program for girls over the age of 13).

Along with this vaccine, the girls will receive accompanying literature, explaining that HPV is an STD that causes cervical cancer and that they have now been immunised against it.

And there is the rub. They have been vaccinated against one STD, NOT ALL STDs. It should be obvious to the youngest fool that the accompanying literature should point out, as clearly as possible, that this vaccine only protects them against one STD and that further, barrier contraception, MUST be used to protect against the legion of other STDs that are out there.

No such warning will be included in the accompanying literature.

At this point, every right minded person must be wondering, why on earth such an obvious warning should be missing from this very important document. Well the reason is quite simple. The Catholic Church are against any form of “artificial contraception” and had threatened not to back the program unless any and all reference to barrier contraception was removed from the accompanying literature.

Now, what the Scottish Executive should have done was to tell the Catholic Church that they were introducing the bill, it would become law, and if the church did not implement it in their schools they would be held accountable.

However, they chose not to do this, and instead reach a controversial agreement with the church promising not to give our children the information that they needed in the accompanying literature.

That fact is bad enough, however, according to the Director of the Scottish Catholic Education Service

“We wanted to make sure that any support materials were appropriate in the Catholic schools and we didn’t want HPV and cervical cancer to be linked with artificial contraception. The factual information about the vaccine and cervical cancer are still there, but it doesn’t promote particular kinds of sexual behaviour. We had discussions about it, we looked at various forms of words and came to and agreement. It took some months.”

I believe a couple of points that the Director makes in his quote are worthy of emphasis, so let me draw them to your attention. Firstly he says

“We wanted to make sure that any support materials were appropriate…”

That’s right, the information that your daughter will be receiving has to conform the the Catholic Church’s view of the world, regardless of your faith or whether or not you are religious at all.

The other point I wish to draw your attention to is

“…we looked at various forms of words and came to an agreement. It took some months.”

It took some months! Are you serious?! A medical program to be rolled out across the entire country and designed to protect girls from cervical cancer, was held up “for some months” because the Catholic Church are against “artificial contraception”.

This is an utter disgrace!

Somebody please remind me, we are living in the 21st Century are we not?

Technorati tags: Catholic Church, Vaccine, Contraception, Cervical Cancer

DevExpress Outtake Video

Things don’t always run smoothly when we’re filming the DevExpress videos. Jeff, our videographer, has put up a short video on YouTube of Oliver and myself, not so much messing up, as not really being able to get started in the first place. I’ve included it below for all of you who think being an product evangelist is easy.

Technorati tags: DevExpress, Videos, Comedy, Gary Short, Oliver Sturm, Mark Miller

Mining for Silver(light)

Who remembers Manic Miner for the ZX Spectrum? You do? Well if you pine for those days then pine no longer as a couple of the NxtGenUg guys have reproduced a few levels of the game written in Sliverlight. Why? Well for the fun of it of course and as a technical showcase, oh, and ‘cos they have waaay to much spare time on their hands.

If you used to love the game and you’d like to play again then check it out here.

Technorati tags: Manic Miner, Sliverlight

Google Street View in Dundee Soon

This morning I took a walk across the road to fetch the morning paper, as I do every morning; only this morning as I did so a Google Street View survey car passed me and I managed to get a snap of it with my phone. So, it looks like Google Street View will be coming to Dundee soon.

Technorati tags: Google Street View, Dundee