Sad to hear of his passing. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair ZX80. Still have it. Have not fired it up in decades. Dad bought it from a CES in Chicago when it was still here. $99 IIRC 1K RAM with optional 4K module. BASIC lang. TV used as monitor. Cassette tape storage. Learned to program on it. Good memories except for having to turn the cassette player upside down every once in a while.

When I was about 10, my Dad was at the Consumer Electronics Show when it was in Chicago, IL. He saw and purchased a Timex Sinclair XZ80 there for $100. 1K RAM with the optional 4K RAM module! Saved programs on a tape recorder and cassette tapes. Display was an old B&W TV. Programming lang was BASIC. My Dad was a sheet metal worker who learned sheet metal skills while in the Navy. Also did HVAC and roofing. He was always the one who stressed education, especially learning how to learn things on your own. My Dad wasn't particularly tech-savvy like people are now. His own era's tech (TV, radio, stereos, plastics, etc.) always interested him. But he saw the future in computers and bought one when he had the chance so the whole family could learn. But that last part didn't happen. I was the only one in the family to gravitate to it. He worked with it a little and found it interesting. It came pretty easy to me. I was the one who could do 8-12 hrs/day learning and working with it. I wound up learning to program BASIC by reading and typing in programs all the time, mostly games, from programming books and computer magazines, studying a BASIC language reference guide and how the computer actually did things internally. He was the one who put it in my mind that computers are the future and I would be able to make a good, life-long living if you understand them and how to program them. To me it was fun and challenging. I knew what I was going to do with my life since I was 10. Dad passed away when I was 14, the summer between 8th grade and freshman year in HS. At the time we started programming classes in junior year of HS, I already had been programming for about 6 years on my own. One class was programming on an IBM System/360. Another was my first experience with an IBM PC, programming in (wait for it...) BASIC. And that was my first introduction to a company called Microsoft. Used their BASIC interpreter. Unfortunately, my Dad passed away about the time he and I started learning about the stock market, before anything there made sense to me. So I didn't know that I could buy stock in Microsoft as a company. I never put 2 and 2 together on that one around the time they went public. Had my Dad been around for about another year, I think things would have turned out a LOT differently for us in the financial arena. I outgrew the TS ZX80 and moved on to a Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo

Development manager here. Seems like you might need to differentiate between 2 different things: selling a packaged product and selling source code. In my experience purchasing products, buying raw source code is rare. But if done, this is a special situation with different terms that say (in essence), "The client is buying the source code. All maintenance and support are now the client's responsibility." This is typically at a much higher price that if you just licensed it to the client. They want to make a customized version of the functionality OR if you're a small shop, they may want the source code in case you go out of business, esp if it's something critical for their operations. Usually we see the finished product that is a compiled/built application that has an installer or something like that where you cannot see or get at the source code. (And if you do, please look into a code obfuscation product...) You are starting to hit on the problem in your question. You mention, "how you avoid problems/responsibilities when code is changed by the customer?" You do that with an agreement from the start. If you provide a product, you license it to them and provide support & updates. If they want the source code, then you have no reasonable way of controlling what is done to it over time, making support almost impossible. But if you want to do this, you can raise the price for the source code as I mentioned before. You can also sell your support services as a consultant to the client with the understanding that the source code is still their ultimate responsibility.

Especially Sheldon... Tell Howard, Leonard, and Raj first so they can make fun of him. Then Bernadette and Amy. Penny's always iffy...

I think it tried turning itself off then on again...

Yes. I don't use my phone (HTC One M8 - Windows Phone) as a music player even though I could. I generally keep it on silent (as in everything silent) close by, in my pocket, or in my backpack and only check it every few hours.

When I'm heads-down coding, I usually listen to a few things depending on my mood. But I don't want the music to have lyrics. To me, that's distracting. I use the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones connected to an iPod nano. 1 - Classical/Symphonic Music I have a play list of primarily tone poem works like Respighi (Pines of Rome, Fountains of Rome, Roman Festivals, Brazilian Impressions...), The Planets (Holst), La Mer (Debussy), Also Sprach Zarathustra (Strauss), some other works like instrumental concertos. A lot that I can just set it and just let it play for hours. 2 - Spa Music from Kohler Water Spa Had this for years since my wife and I visited there in Wisconsin for our 10th anniversary. Loved the music. Bought the CD then. Have used it since. Very relaxing music to block things out. Link[^] 3 - Dixieland Music 4 - Light Instrumental Jazz 5 - Classical Guitar

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

Try cooking exactly the same cake five times.

Ever work in a bakery?

I've heard that you can use procrastination against procrastination. "Because I have to get this done, I can procrastinate later." Or... "When I get this done, I'll have all the time in the world to procrastinate."

One problem I came across recently was in the TV series Scorpion. The tech "genius" of the Scorpion team was in a car chasing another car, trying to take remote control of the other car by using a tablet to hack into its on-board computer and stop the car. The person said, "I'm accessing the car's operational mainframe." ...to which even my 77 year Mother-In-Law went, "Wha...?" Thought the same thing for years. It's so annoying when blatant mistakes like that are allowed to make it into production. It won't matter to people who are not technical. But for tech folks like us, it's annoying because it takes you out of the story you are trying to be immersed in when you come across something like that. It's similar to the effect of a very noticeable anachronism. And it's so easy to fix! What would something like this be called? Is there already a name for it? If not, we have a naming opportunity! It is my understanding that there are script consulting companies out there that do help with this type of thing. But getting the director, producers, and writers to admit they should actually use them is one issue. The other they have to also know it's a problem to fix. To them, it's usually, "Sounds technical enough. Let's move on..." BTW There are also companies that create those fake UIs you see in the backgrounds of scenes too. But that's a whole other conversation/rant and I'm not going there.

You mean Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Ababwa?

Nice article. How about an article "Engineering Principles Every Developer Should Know"?

Assuming you already know your goals for the group... Get your basic standards for code development and testing down. Then focus on your processes: code management, build, etc. "Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we're just trying to accomplish something." -Thomas Edison

Hi OG, Couldn't agree more. I'm a C#.NET developer and I've had 2 DELL 19" for a few years now. It's great to have your dev app on one and the DB on another. I've heard that 3 is the sweet spot for productivity: 2 for dev apps and one for communcations (to be able to keep your email app, calendar, and any other comm app you need running). Check this out: http://www.adamelmore.net/office/[^] Found it here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Newsletter[^] John

"A modified hosts file spares me the angst of unwanted ads..." Interesting. Can you tell us more?

Hi there, I'm thinking about making my own type of Siri-like app but supplying a different voice. Even if it's not as comprehensive as Siri, I'm thinking about it as an interesting side project. Is there anything out there like dev libraries or products anyone would suggest to help with the development? Thanks, John

Good question for a Fri! I've discussed this exact question with a lot of people in my career over a number of years (and more than a few beers). I've been in both roles, progressing from entry-level programmer to manager of a 25 person dev & testing team over a 20 year IT (and entrepreneurial consulting) career. Consider this: Would it be easier/faster for a technical person to learn managerial skills OR would it be easier/faster for a manager to learn technical skills. There is a little wiggle room there to account for personality, likes/dislikes, etc. But it's been my experience that it's easier/faster for a technical person to learn and become proficient at managerial skills than the other way around. In general, this is mostly because the managerial skillset is vastly smaller than the technical skillset and changes far less often. Part of this depends on your definition of "management skills." It seems to me that each is a separate breed of people. But it's been my experience that it is easier to impart some critical management skills to tech people than the other way around. Also, by critical management skills I don't mean the specialized ones like finance, accounting, etc. More like people management, budgeting, project management, etc. I would definitely throw in project management skills in with [people] management skills as being critical to anyone wanting to go into "management." Let's take it one step further...what if you had a mentor for both situations? Would that speed up the learning and that person becoming effective? A management mentor will get a tech person to be an effective manager in far less time than a tech person trying to mentor a manager to become a tech person, programmer, tech architect, etc. I've been asked to do the latter a few times and it's never really worked out well for the managerial person. Usually, they get bored or overwhelmed with the skillset they say they want to develop and just drop it. Or they find they really did not need/want the tech skills after all. Also, most tech people have been doing it so long they have developed a set of solid best practices or fundamentals that can only be learned over a long period of time, learning and adjusting from mistakes. That you cannot learn and implement quickly. Happy Friday! John

Are you sure there isn't something in there? like a microscopic shard of metal or wood? I once went 2 weeks with a piece of metal stuck under my eyelid scratching my eye...luckily, not the cornea. Didn't know what was going on. Thought it was my allergies too. Took an eye doc with a huge magnifying glass, a very small pair of tweezers and a steady hand to get it out. He numbed the eye up first with some drops. Years ago, I also had a scratched cornea due to a piece of metal under my eyelid. Eye doc ("iDoc"?) got it out. Had to wear a patch over the eye for about 1-2 weeks and put drops in it to heal. The good news is that the cornea is one of the fastest healing parts of the body. Don't let it go too long. Best of luck... JT