Are you a developer / programmer? Which car do you drive?

Yesterday while surfing Internet I came across a very interesting post titled -

If programming languages were cars…

After reading the post I was wondering if a developers choice in automobile do depend on the kind of language a person deals with, lets find this out. If you do think your personality does match the car that you drive, do leave your comments and how your behaviour matches your vehicles …

Here are some of the better known languages and there relativity to vehicles, hope you will help in refining these relations by leaving your comments -

• C   is a racing car that goes incredibly fast but breaks down every fifty miles.
• C#   is a competing model of family station wagons. Once you use this, you’re never allowed to use the competitors’ products again. (I am a C# developer and I drive Toyota Corolla)
• Visual Basic   is a car that drives you.
• HP   is the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, it’s bizarre and hard to handle but everybody still wants to drive it.
• Java   is a family station wagon. It’s easy to drive, it’s not too fast, and you can’t hurt yourself.
• Python   is a great beginner’s car; you can drive it without a license. Unless you want to drive really fast or on really treacherous terrain, you may never need another car.
• Perl   is supposed to be a pretty cool car, but the driver’s manual is incomprehensible. Also, even if you can figure out how to drive a Perl car, you won’t be able to drive anyone else’s.
• Ruby   is a car that was formed when the Perl, Python and Smalltalk cars were involved in a three-way collision. A Japanese mechanic found the pieces and put together a car which many drivers think is better than the sum of the parts. Other drivers, however, grumble that a lot of the controls of the Ruby car have been duplicated or triplicate, with some of the duplicate controls doing slightly different things in odd circumstances, making the car harder to drive than it ought to be. A redesign is rumoured to be in the works.
• Cobol   is reputed to be a car, but no self-respecting driver will ever admit having driven one.
• Assembly Language   is a bare engine; you have to build the car yourself and manually supply it with gas while it’s running, but if you’re careful it can go like a bat out of hell.
• Basic   is a simple car useful for short drives to the local shops. Once popular with learner drivers, it has recently been stripped down to a shell and rebuilt by a major manufacturer, The new version has been refurbished for longer journeys, leaving only cosmetic similarities to the original model.

I wonder what Designers drive? especially those Apple MAC type personalities.

Why software developers should do code reviews?

As we all know, reviewing code takes a lot of time and is pretty expensive based on the amount of time it requires and consumes. It appears that everybody in  a tech company starting from your manager are eager to get the software project finished and thrown over to the software testing department.

Here are five reasons why code reviews should be a must -

• First and foremost is it encourages team bonding.
• It brings in discipline and sense of consistency and quality across the project.
• Improve a coders own programming skills.
• Coders know that there code will be evaluated so they keep the code detailed oriented by leaving proper comments.
• Its an opportunity for mentoring and enhancing coding skills of team members as a whole.

So next time your manager rush your project without a code review, just say plain NO.

"Success stories happen very often when performing code reviews," says Dave Katauskas, senior architect at Geneca. "But the best success story is the pattern that develops once a team has gelled. The longer you’re into a project, the better quality code is created. This is all due to the code review process and governance that occurred up stream in the beginning of the project."

Microsoft layoffs coming soon!! while Google layoff staff silently.

Microsoft is gearing up for layoffs due to the current global economic recession, with some speculation suggesting it could go as deep as 10 percent of Microsoft’s 91,000 full-time employees.

Another 9,100 people out of work is not a good thing, no matter how much you may dislike Microsoft. And on the another thought I want to see Microsoft giving Google real competition on the Web, just as I’m glad to see Google forcing Microsoft to innovate on the desktop again. It may well be that Microsoft will be a stronger competitor for pruning its workforce, and I’m a big enough believer in the free market to think that in the long term, the people affected will be better off, too.

But I still don’t want to see Microsoft layoffs. Not this Christmas. Not when the market can’t absorb the displaced employees. Microsofties have families, too.

On another note there were news in the market that Google is silently laying off staff. The workers affected are those employed on contractual terms (and full time basis), and their employment does not come with all the generous benefits other personnel are enjoying.

The layoff was reported to have begun back in August 2008 but it is being done in a ‘silent mode’, as not many people are aware of the development. Under the US law, a company must make its layoff plan public but Google has found a way around it by classifying the contract workers under the ‘operational expenses’. With the classification, the company can hire employees with minimum wage, and provides no medical benefits, no insurance, and no stock options.

Help your relatives fix common computer problems

"My computer is too slow?" "Can you take a look at my computer?" "Internet explorer is not opening up." "I am getting a blue screen when I try to start my computer." "My computer responds very slowly" "My computer has become too slow with all the games installed by my kids."

If you are a web geek or an IT guy I am sure one of these is the dreaded question your clueless family member will ask when you’re home for the holidays. And for some reason your uncle’s and aunt’s think its your moral duty and responsibility to fix there computers since you are off your regular work.

And yes you guessed it right saying "NO" is never an option. Even if that machine sits at your home office desk for days and days. Last week, I had a Apple Macbook, and 2 windows machines sitting at my desk waiting to get fixed and a phone call every other day to give status updates, this is more stressful then your boss calling you at home :)

Let’s review some common computer complaints and the easiest solutions.

"It takes forever to start up."

If your loved one has installed any software on the computer, there’s no doubt unnecessary items have planted themselves into its startup. Follow this to get rid of the stuff they don’t need, and save CPU cycles and time on boot-up.

Go to Start –> Run –> Type in msconfig –> Hit enter (Shortcut - you can press Windows Key + R to bring the RUN box)

This will bring up a Microsoft’s configurations panel, click on start up tab and clear unnecessary stuff. This will not initialize these programs on startup and thus saves a lot of memory and boot time.

"I keep getting a pop-up saying I need to pay for my antivirus software."

The default trialware antivirus software that came pre installed is now bugging your clueless relative to pay for a subscription, uninstall it. There are a lot of free good antivirus softwares available, one of them is AVG. You can use AVG or if you want to buy subscription you can go to vendors web site e.g. Norton and can buy a copy.

"When I get on the internet things look weird" or "I keep getting these annoying popup ads."

Thoroughly check your PC for evidence of malware: like a hijacked web browser that redirects google.com to an Asian porn site, unsolicited pop-up ads, or suspicious programs named things like "Keypress Watcher." If you suspect nefarious software has glommed onto Windows, get to scrubbing. Go straight for a copy of Ad-Aware Free and Spybot Search & Destroy to get started. Or if there is not any important data on C drive or if data is backed up, then you can wipe / format the drive and reinstall windows. Most of today’s computers come with a copy of windows on the hard disk and you just need to follow some instructions to reinstall it. For more info you can contact your PC vendor or call the manufacturer of your computer.

And then you can download and install Firefox, set it as the default browser, and replace all the IE shortcuts labeled "Internet" with the Firefox.

"I can’t find the digital photos I downloaded last month."

Install Picasa 3 and scan your entire hard drive for digital photos to add them to the library.

Relatives who take digital home videos should also get a free copy of VLC installed to insure that they’ll be able to play any clip they’ve got.

"The internet stopped working."

The worst family tech support situation to get in is one that involves no (or a very slow) internet connection. TechRadar compiles a list of fix-it tools you can take with you to the family holiday get-together.

I am always available as a support, in case you have questions just leave me your comment and I will reply back hopefully with a solution, and don’t forget to share your experiences by leaving your comments.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER - http://www.twitter.com/coolwebdev

Google’s Christmas Card Innovation

I was reading tweets the other day (Follow me on Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/coolwebdev) on twitter. And I came across Sampad Swain’s post on the Innovative way of Christmas greetings by using Google Apps.

You need to provide the name and email address of your friends you want to send the greetings to. Here is a screen shot of the video, a part of which is created dynamically based on the info that you provide. That info is embedded on certain frames of the video using the code which is fantastic.

The Christmas card is hosted at a non-Google URL on App Engine, one of Google’s developer products which lets any developer host their application on Google’s infrastructure for free. The one thing that is not hosted on App Engine is the SWF file of the video, which sits on Google servers because App Engine is still in beta and can’t yet handle big files.

I added - [Where is MK?] and you can view the screen shot of video with my name on the newspaper. This is an awesome Christmas greeting. I would highly encourage you to use this service to send Christmas greetings to your friends and family and amaze them with your tech side :)

Here is the link to view the video and after the video finishes you will be taken to the page to customize the video and send it to your friends with your name in the video, isn’t that amazing -

http://www.channel6tvnews.com/story/agc2dHZuZXdzcgwLEgRjYXJkGNnJBww

The people in front of the camera are mostly Google staff. Mrs Santa is called Rebecca Michael, she is an associate agency relationship manager in the Google UK sales team, but as a child she played Janine Butchers in Eastenders.

The exceptions are Santa - he’s the real Selfridges Santa, this was filmed the first part in their grotto, and the reporter - she is a friend of the video producer, they do red carpet stuff together, so she agreed to take part as a favor.

Enjoy the greetings guys, and wish you a MERRY XMAS.

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