Category: programming

ACM

I’ve been playing around today with the online book access I can get through ACM. You can get access to about 500 books from Safari and 400 from Books 24×7. Mind you, there are thousands of books on the main Safari site, and thousands more on the main Books 24×7 site. A regular Safari subscription is $20 per month, and Books 24×7 is about $450 per year, so both those options are a bit expensive. There are some useful titles among the limited library of books available through ACM, but not too many recent ones. For instance, there’s a good bit of stuff on .Net 1.1, but very little on .Net 2.0. I don’t think I could just stop buying computer books, based on the selection available through ACM, but there is some good reference stuff there. There’s also not much you can do in the way of printing from either service, within the ACM section. Still, I’m going to try to keep this stuff in mind before running out and buying any more computer books, and I’m going to try to remember to seach these services the next time I’m trying to solve a programming problem.

New Jersey Code Camp

I went to New Jersey Code Camp yesterday, but I only stayed for the first two sessions, then I left to go off and take care of something at work. I like the concept. One of the sessions I attended went over my head, I think, while the other one mostly covered stuff I already know. It would have been interesting to stay through the whole thing and see how some of the other sessions shaped up.

Code Complete

I bought Steve McConnell’s Code Complete about 10 years ago. I never quite finished reading it, but I dusted it off at some point last year, and I’ve been reading a chapter every once in a while, when I get the chance. I just finished chapter 18, on code layout. Most of the stuff he’s writing about is stuff I know from experience at this stage in my career, but it’s still worthwhile to reinforce good habits occasionally. And, sometimes, he points out something that hadn’t occured to me, or brings up something I’m not familiar with. There’s a second edition out now that’s probably worth getting, but I think I’ll just try and finish the first edition before I worry about that.

Version Control

If you want to set up a relatively simple yet powerful version control system on a Windows server, and you don’t want to spend any money on it, I recommend CVS. Start with CVSNT. Use Tortoise CVS as a front-end. Then, check this page for a quick and easy way to set up ViewCVS. Worked for me.

Python

I had to learn Python this week for a little project at work. (OK, I guess I didn’t have to learn Python, but it seemed like the best tool for the job.) Just for reference, here are some key sites, if you’re going to try to pick up Python:

I’ve also found that the Python 2.1 Bible is a decent book to get started with.

PHP

Check out phpmac.com for information on running PHP on a Mac.

I’ve just started playing around with PHP a bit, since there’s a chance we’ll need to do something with it at work. Everything else we’re doing is ASP.NET, but we’re outsourucing something that’s liable to be done in PHP. As usual, I’ll probably end up supporting it after it’s delivered. I’ve got nothing against PHP, but it sure would be nice if I didn’t have to learn yet another scripting language!

Blast from the Past

No C# tonight. I’ve been paging through some old issues of DDJ from 1996. Ah, for the days when articles about PowerBuilder occasionaly appeared in mainstream programming magazines. And Java was new. And the Year 2000 problem was just starting to freak people out. I let my subscription to DDJ lapse in 1996, and I’ve had the last few issues just sitting, unread, under the microwave since then. Time to finish them off and put them out at the curb, methinks.

IIS

I managed to install IIS on my XP Home machine today, but the whole thing was a little iffy. I couldn’t bring up pages in Mozilla, only Explorer. Other stuff was not as it should be. It was just, you know, odd. So I gave up and uninstalled it. I got an interesting error doing that. It worked though. It went away. So now I’m resigned to NOT doing ASP.NET stuff on my home desktop machine for now. My laptop (running Win 2K Pro) should be able to support IIS, and hence ASP.NET, so maybe I’ll give that a go at some point. And I can probably do other .Net stuff on the XP Home machine, like C# with SharpDevelop. I’ll let you know how that goes. (Whoever you are.)