Edge

It’s rather weird that i’ll complain about Windows Update, since i’m kinda anti-Windows in the first place, but why do Microsoft put a fugly JPG at the top of the Windows Update page? Haven’t they heard of PNG?

Welcome to Microsoft Update - notice the fugly pixels around the letters

Violinist

I am living in a four-story house. In front of my window¹ there’s a fifteen-story house and it blocks the view.

It basically sucks, but a violinist lives in that house, and she² practices all day long, which is very pleasant.

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¹ I wrote “Window” first. Why would i do such a thing? :)

² Does this make me sexist?

Dull

One of the things that i was happy to learn in my last round of job interviews is that although C# and the .NET environment may seem like the most important thing ever happened to the software development world, it is actually not the case.

Don’t get me wrong: C# and .NET are good technologies. They are well-designed, and ultimately they make it easier for the programmer to write good software for the benefit of the end user. I even respect Microsoft’s boldness to innovate instead of sticking to rusty technologies such as COM and Windows API. Going even further, Microsoft is working on some very interesting new technologies that combine functional programming paradigms with the very object-oriented .NET – Cω, F# and others; of course, i salute this. My only concern with .NET is portability – .NET development environment is good, and the software created with it may also be good, but they are all bricks from which a Microsoft-only world is built. (There are projects aimed at resolving this, such as Mono and DotGNU, but currently the solution they offer is very partial.)

But some – well, probably most people and companies don’t like to save time and money and to expand their user base by making their software portable and they think that working with Windows is just enough. Well, guess what – i am not going to work at such places. Some people are so deeply in love with .NET, that they won’t stand any criticism; if they see a job candidate that disrespects .NET, they will dismiss him immediately. “What?? You disrespect Microsoft, Windows and the Holy of Holies – .NET? Are you serious?!” Yes – it happens, not in these exact words, but it is implied. It happens, but not always. The good news are that there are people who don’t think that C# is the Holy Grail or even outright dislike it. At some interviews i was careful not to say anything bad about C#, not because i was scared, but because i just didn’t want to offend people. It’s a culture thing.

Again – i worked with C# a lot in the last year and i don’t think that it is an inherently bad language, and i even came to like it. But i am just glad to see that there are enough people in the industry, who exercise their right to think different.

The moral of the story: Diversity is not dead yet, and it is good that it is so.

People Speaking – Win

— “I would like to offer you a job developing testing tools. We need someone who has experience in C# and WinForms.”

— “Ehh … OK.”

— “Is it something that can interest you?”

— “Yeah, possibly …”

— “So when can you come to an interview?”

— “Where is it?

— “In Herzliya.”

— “Hmm … Tell me please – is it all Windows?”

— “No … it’s … developing testing tools … We need someone who has experience in C# and WinForms …”

— “Yes, but that sounds like the job is nothing but Windows.”

— “Well … there’s the part of developing testing tools … it’s WinForms.”

— “Yeah, but the ‘Win’ part of ‘WinForms’ means ‘Windows’.”

— “Oh. I see.”

— “And there’s no Linux there? Or Java? Or some special kind of hardware?”

— “No, at least not now.”

— “OK, thanks, but i think that it’s not for me.”

What an amazing feeling it was to say that.

S-P-A-C-E-D, spaced out

For the first time in my programming career i discovered a language which can have whitespace in identifier names.

Guess which language it is?

Hint: I learned it – or so i thought – long before Pascal, C and Perl, but a bit after GW-BASIC.

It’s the MS-DOS batch file language.

In all the languages i know, variable assignment operator is = or something similar (it’s := in Pascal). Any number of spaces are allowed before and after it; Curiously, in Microsoft’s own QBasic it is encouraged and even automatically inserted if you try to write something like A=42.

But in DOS batch files, if you write this:

SET A = 42
ECHO %A%


You’ll get nothing.

But this will work:

SET A = 42
ECHO %A %


And guess what, it will print ‘ 42‘, with a space in the beginning.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, unbelievable.

Sense

This is not for computer people only, although it might look like that in the beginning.

You try to install a program on a Windows PC. This application depends on functioning IIS – Microsoft HTTP server software.

When you try to start IIS, you get an error – “Unexpected error 0×8ffe2740″. This is not very helpful (talk about Microsoft’s user-friendliness…), so you search the web with this weird error message and you find that it means that some other application is occupying port 80. Port 80 is the standard HTTP port. But what is it?

Of course you can use cool command-line network monitoring tools and find the offending process. But for me a quick look on the PC screen was just enough: In the tray there was the familiar icon for Apache. I am saying “familiar”, because Apache is the main competitor of Microsoft’s IIS – it is the famous open-source HTTP server, on which most of the World Wide Web runs. So of course Apache was occupying port 80. The icon, appropriately for Apache is a feather:

Now why do i say “appropriately”? Because Apache is one of the Native American nations and Native Americans are known for putting feathers in their head. It makes sense to me and it makes it easy for me to remember that Apache’s icon is a feather.

Apparently, despite the fact that Apache is a very popular web server software and despite the fact that it’s quite easy to remember its icon, many people with whom i work didn’t see it immediately. I swear that i am not bragging – but i am quite surprised.

That’s how my mind works. I am not a genius, but i do try not to strain my head remembering things that make sense – if something makes sense, it just pops up by itself.