Areas that fascinate Programmers
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
Let's ignore for the moment those of us who will choose or avoid one article or the other based simply on which technologies we're currently (not) using...
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies
I think your assertions are largely correct, but perhaps miss the underlying reason... Every article needs a hook. Something to drag you in and keep you there, interested, until you reach the end and vote. For eye-candy articles, that's easy - make a pretty demo and throw some good screenshots in your article. You need a bit more than that to make an article that'll catch and hold folks' attentions, but not a whole lot more... But for a "behind the scenes" article, you don't have that easy hook; instead, you have to tell a story. It need not be an elaborate story; "this was my problem, this is how i solved it, this is how you can solve it too" works quite well most of the time. Some authors are able to take this idea and run with it, including a detailed back story, leisurely character introductions, a thrilling narrative, and an exciting conclusion (in which he shares his completed library/program/solution with the reader). These authors are a joy to read even if you'll never actually deal with the problems they describe, nor use their provided solutions. Sadly, a fair number of authors exhaust their inner raconteur writing the title; with that completed, it's as much as they can do to put together a brief description of what their code does along with maybe an API summary; this is where so many articles on "behind the scenes" tech fail, as they never manage to actually introduce the problem they propose to solve, much less relate it to their readers in any way. Some, sensing the danger, try to find a way of introducing some visual dazzle, perhaps by constructing a fancy demo or some nice charts; but while these can grab our attention, ultimately they (unlike the eye-candy screenshots) are not the point of the article and cannot make up for a lackluster story.
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
Neither, they both look like Web crap.
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
The end result may be what you summarised in 1 and 2, but for me personally it would be better described as: 1. I prefer working in things that a relevant to me. At the moment, I work totally in the desktop space focusing on visualizing data. 2. I am less interested in things that are less relevant. After examining and playing with WCF/WF I found them overengineered and irrelevant to my space.
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
I hate to give the seemingly obvious answer, but... My coding interests are subject to change, usually based on my current project. The language / version I am locked into plays a pretty big role in this. I'm not going to spend too much time reading about .Net 3.5 features if I'm still using 2.0. The beauty of The Code Project is that everying is archived, so I can search for an article after it has become relevant to my current needs / curiosity. For a long time my fascination was based around architecting clean data access layers. Right now I'd definitely skip over both of those articles. Although if I had to choose, I guess I'd look at article #1 over article #2, since I am doing a side project in Silverlight as a learning experience. Article #2 sounds too in depth, and my eyes would probably glaze over unless it was something I was actually implementing. I used a Code Project write-up on creating custom web config sections for my current project. I can not imagine reading an article like that for enjoyment though. My wife gets on my case for being on the computer enough as it is. RE: UI vs behind the scenes? Both. I've always been into coding and architecting, but the effort to make a nice presentation layer is almost always appreciated by clients. In fact, I usually get more praise for UI work than for coding complex functions. This has caused me to force myself into the realm of UI (behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated). Fortunately, I've found that UI work presents its own set of interesting challenges, and is equally (or sometimes more) rewarding. Right now, my bread and butter work has not involved excess UI work. But I am spending some time on Silverlight in the hopes that the market will want more presentation candy. Jordan
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
Article 2 has .NET in it. I would never read it. Fortunately I can make my living with open standards like Java. I used to be all Microsoft.....thankfully.
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
I chose the first because it contained the words 3d and wizard. I immeadiantly conjure of ideas of what that article might be about. I didn't choose the second because it had to many "technical" terms in a row i.e "cross-domain web proxies" and "asynchronous HTTP handlers", which almost immediatly turned me off to the article. In the end i would have probably read both because of my inquisitive nature but for the layman which i guess i am compared to the majority here on the CP.
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
I will read them both, but I will prefer the first. This is because the result is easy to explain to users (just show them what you did). Even I must know what is "behind the scenes", I cannot get feedback from users if I did it well or worse unless there is visible problem. Creating an UI is quite more simple. Just give it to the users and they will give an ideas what to add, to remove or to modify. (Note that this way is "lazy way" in feedback). P.S. Nice results give a programmer a satisfaction. Satisfied programmer wants to program again as soon as possible.
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I hate to give the seemingly obvious answer, but... My coding interests are subject to change, usually based on my current project. The language / version I am locked into plays a pretty big role in this. I'm not going to spend too much time reading about .Net 3.5 features if I'm still using 2.0. The beauty of The Code Project is that everying is archived, so I can search for an article after it has become relevant to my current needs / curiosity. For a long time my fascination was based around architecting clean data access layers. Right now I'd definitely skip over both of those articles. Although if I had to choose, I guess I'd look at article #1 over article #2, since I am doing a side project in Silverlight as a learning experience. Article #2 sounds too in depth, and my eyes would probably glaze over unless it was something I was actually implementing. I used a Code Project write-up on creating custom web config sections for my current project. I can not imagine reading an article like that for enjoyment though. My wife gets on my case for being on the computer enough as it is. RE: UI vs behind the scenes? Both. I've always been into coding and architecting, but the effort to make a nice presentation layer is almost always appreciated by clients. In fact, I usually get more praise for UI work than for coding complex functions. This has caused me to force myself into the realm of UI (behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated). Fortunately, I've found that UI work presents its own set of interesting challenges, and is equally (or sometimes more) rewarding. Right now, my bread and butter work has not involved excess UI work. But I am spending some time on Silverlight in the hopes that the market will want more presentation candy. Jordan
I think this is the very point of it all... Making usable interfaces. The rest can be done by any competent developer (in more or less time). Interfaces provide an actual challenge where you can always improve. Of course you can optimize 0.1 sec out of refreshes or page loads, but the real difference between your application and the concurrent is usability, not performance, data representation or module architecture.
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
To the OP: I'd say you're pretty close. It applies in my case; what drew me to programming in the first place was the multimedia potential. (My first program was a sprite editor for the Commodore 64, and I spent most of the rest of that seminal year writing animation and music programs.) Still, there are outliers in the bell curve. I know at least two people who would have answered 2) to your original question, as the abstruseness and exclusivity of such endeavors are the main draw for them.
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I think this is the very point of it all... Making usable interfaces. The rest can be done by any competent developer (in more or less time). Interfaces provide an actual challenge where you can always improve. Of course you can optimize 0.1 sec out of refreshes or page loads, but the real difference between your application and the concurrent is usability, not performance, data representation or module architecture.
UI can be broken into two sections: look and usability. It fascinates me that Craigslist is so popular; looks-wise it is ugly, and usability-wise it is just OK. While I'm at it, the new Monster UI really annoys me. Looks-wise it is pretty. Usability-wise it is bloated. It makes me mad that hitting the enter key after typing in a new search beeps three times. I remember my dad sitting in front of the Tandy 1000-SX complaining, "there is never a good reason for a computer to beep." Jordan
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UI can be broken into two sections: look and usability. It fascinates me that Craigslist is so popular; looks-wise it is ugly, and usability-wise it is just OK. While I'm at it, the new Monster UI really annoys me. Looks-wise it is pretty. Usability-wise it is bloated. It makes me mad that hitting the enter key after typing in a new search beeps three times. I remember my dad sitting in front of the Tandy 1000-SX complaining, "there is never a good reason for a computer to beep." Jordan
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Monster, you meant the job search site? I didn't know it beeped when you search... It's probably trying to alert your boss that you're looking for a job during work hours :laugh:
Yeah, Monster.com. I just tried it again to verify. Actually it beeps like 10 times; sounds like a phone ringing. Extremely annoying, and definitely could alert the boss. ;)
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
I agree. I'd say it's the same as viewers of the Overhauling show will be more interested on checking those nice wheels rather than what kind of fuel injection system the engine will use.
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Let's ignore for the moment those of us who will choose or avoid one article or the other based simply on which technologies we're currently (not) using...
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies
I think your assertions are largely correct, but perhaps miss the underlying reason... Every article needs a hook. Something to drag you in and keep you there, interested, until you reach the end and vote. For eye-candy articles, that's easy - make a pretty demo and throw some good screenshots in your article. You need a bit more than that to make an article that'll catch and hold folks' attentions, but not a whole lot more... But for a "behind the scenes" article, you don't have that easy hook; instead, you have to tell a story. It need not be an elaborate story; "this was my problem, this is how i solved it, this is how you can solve it too" works quite well most of the time. Some authors are able to take this idea and run with it, including a detailed back story, leisurely character introductions, a thrilling narrative, and an exciting conclusion (in which he shares his completed library/program/solution with the reader). These authors are a joy to read even if you'll never actually deal with the problems they describe, nor use their provided solutions. Sadly, a fair number of authors exhaust their inner raconteur writing the title; with that completed, it's as much as they can do to put together a brief description of what their code does along with maybe an API summary; this is where so many articles on "behind the scenes" tech fail, as they never manage to actually introduce the problem they propose to solve, much less relate it to their readers in any way. Some, sensing the danger, try to find a way of introducing some visual dazzle, perhaps by constructing a fancy demo or some nice charts; but while these can grab our attention, ultimately they (unlike the eye-candy screenshots) are not the point of the article and cannot make up for a lackluster story.
That was one of the most cogent comments I've ever seen! Alas, now my work is cut out for me...searching for everything you've ever written. :-D
*** insert pithy comment here ***
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
I'd go for #2 myself. Mainly because I'll skip any title with 'Wizard' or 'Silverlight' in it as an automagically useless article. But that's just me.
The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
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Quick Question ------------------------------------------------- Let's say you see only the title of two article here at CP. 1. Building and Animating a 3D Wizard control using WPF and Silverlight. 2. Building cross-domain Web proxies in ASP.NET using asynchronous HTTP handlers. Which one are you likely to check first? ---------------------------- My guess is more people will choose 1 no matter how simple or complex it is compared to 2. How correct I am in my assumption? Based on the articles rating here at Code Project and my own personal experience, I have concluded two things: 1. More programmers like to work on building UI and like falshy UI so technologies like WPF and Silverlight appeal to them more. This is based on my observation that any article with flashy UI almost gets rated high. 2. Less programmers are actually interested in "behind the scenes" technologies such as WCF/WF. Am I right?
I would probably go for the first one, since it has '3D' in it. Then, when I saw that it was about WPF and Silverlight, I'd ditch it because I don't care about either of those. Lastly, I would go look for an alternative that used DirectX or something, not find it, and lose interest. I'm very interested in behind-the-scenes stuff, such as the Windows kernel and subsystems. It's just that the second item looks like meaningless jargon when I scan it- it needs a couple read-throughs before I understand what it actually says.