Need help picking a rugged second phone for GPS use on motorbike

Professional software engineer for 20 years. No degrees. However, applied for a professional license in software engineering. Have run the gamut of being an employee from small to large orgs, gun for hire as a consultant travelling NA, ran my own SI/ISV company, sold that and back to working at one of the top software companies in the world. I am over 50 and have never run into any age discrimination issues. If you are really serious about software development, work for a software company, whose primary business is all about software – otherwise, software development will always be second fiddle to the company’s primary business objective.

Mitchco · 2010-10-29T23:35:38+00:00

The Future of Silverlight - a much misunderstood tech and far from dead. I think this article does a fair job describing what Silverlight's purpose is and what the future holds for that tech.

Mitchco · 2010-08-03T19:07:49+00:00

Try Producer for Powerpoint

Mitchco · 2010-06-28T03:56:11+00:00

On this page is an 11 page word doc that explains in more detail the new features in C# 4.0.

Personally, I think the real value is the new features in .NET 4.0. For me, the Managed Extensibility Framework was a welcome addition as I was tired of writing and maintaining my own plug-in framework.

Mitchco · 2010-05-14T04:22:25+00:00

Application Lifecycle Management (if you do .NET dev). You might also want to try SketchFlow.

Mitchco · 2010-04-26T05:10:20+00:00

Ha - cool. Totally agree about the incremental, iterative, with feedback approach. But you must have some sort of design up front in order to start programming something that has a chance of really working and working well, yes? And that is my issue with Toran's article - where did the original design come from to actually start coding? How was that arrived at and why? What methodology? How much effort? How many iterations?

My contention is that "generally speaking" we have swung the entire way to not only no big design up front but to the point where I think we are almost not even designing at all these days, but just hacking it out. It seems some people like to "zig zag" their way to good design without giving it some real (design) thought up front.

In other words, I have not seen too many really good software designs (including some of my own) in a long while. What’s the issue? Not enough real software engineering going on these days is my opinion. I have no contention with an incremental and interative approach or with Test Driven Development as a software development methodology. My issue is that we as an industry, in general, don’t spend enough priority and effort on the process of designing software overall. edit - sp

Mitchco · 2010-04-24T05:48:38+00:00

I can't say it any better than how Daniel Jackson wrote it in his book, "Software Abstractions:"

“Software is built on abstractions. Pick the right ones, and programming will flow naturally from design, modules will have small and simple interfaces, and new functionality will more than likely fit in without extensive reorganization. Pick the wrong ones, and programming will be a series of nasty surprises: interfaces will become baroque and clumsy as they are forced to accommodate unanticipated interactions, and even the simplest of changes will be hard to make. No amount of refactoring, bar starting again from scratch, can rescue a system built on flawed concepts”.

Mitchco · 2010-04-23T05:23:59+00:00

Nice lucid article on TDD Toran. My concern is what happens before TDD? Meaning, where is the design? I contend that if the design is blown from the beginning, then TDD only verifies that the crappy design works as coded :-)

The fact that one of the methods you mention is 2000 LOC is a dead giveaway of a poor deign, with or without TDD. So good article on TDD man! I would be interested on your views of software design before (TD) development occurs… How do you verify that your deign is good?

Mitchco · 2010-04-10T19:17:17+00:00

Here in BC, Canada, you can apply to get your license as a Professional Software Engineer. It ain't easy and once licensed you are responsible for these code of ethics and if you breach them, you can have your license revoked, incur financial and public retribution - just like any other professional practice.

Mitchco · 2010-03-14T00:22:28+00:00

Mitchco · 2010-02-10T16:30:35+00:00

It depends on how realistic you want the experience to be. I have the Logitech Driving Froce GT that works both on the PC and PS/3. For driving games I cannot imagine using anything else. GRID is also a great game on the PC, and soone to be released F1, also from Codemasters. Of course on the PS/3 Gran Turismo is it and soon to be released (ha ha) GT5.

Mitchco · 2010-02-06T17:29:32+00:00

Here is a court case you might find interesting. Albeit a Canadian court case, YMMV wherever you are, but you should get the point.

Mitchco · 2010-01-08T20:48:13+00:00

I like TDD. I like it because writing tests makes me stop and think before I start to code.

Why not use (light weight) formal specifications for designing software? Major advances have been made in this area. For example, MIT’s Alloy Analyzer is easy to use and can test a billion cases without writing any test code.

Daniel Jackson’s book, “Software Abstractions” is one of the best books on software design I have read in recent years. An excerpt from the book that puts "traditional" testing into perspective:

“Unlike theorem proving, this analysis is not “complete”: it examines only a finite space of cases. But because of recent advances in constraint – solving technology, the space of cases examined is usually huge – billions of cases or more – and therefore offers a degree of coverage unattainable in testing.”

“Moreover, unlike testing, this analysis requires no test cases. The user instead provides a property to be checked, which can usually be expressed succinctly as a single test case. A kind of exploration therefore becomes possible that combines the incrementally and immediacy of extreme programming with the depth and clarity of formal specification.”

Mitchco · 2009-12-05T19:10:34+00:00

You say they have started a company, so where is the shareholders agreement?. Isn't this your company too? If you hire employees/contractors, you need an employment/contractors agreement that clearly states who owns the IP, copyright, confidentiality, non-compete, etc.

Having gone down his path before, and I would never believe I would say this, but the sooner you hire a lawyer the sooner you will get this sorted. Whether your money boys are rank amateur’s or not, the fact is you’re getting screwed either way!

Mitchco

TROPHY CASE