Man vs Code : minutia

'foo' is a 'variable' but is used like a 'method'

aconrad — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:45:00 GMT

Over the last several months, because of my current project I have had to program in a bunch of different languages. (The reason for this will become crystal clear early next week). Basically, I have had to code in C#, VB, and IronPython while at the same time I have been trying learning Haskell and occasionally Ruby - and some Javascript just for fun on the weekends. To be brutally honest, this is a major pain.

For example, the difference in the syntax for calling indexers between VB and C#

Dim foo As List(Of String) = New List(Of String)

Console.WriteLine(foo[0])]

Will not compile with the error - "Error 18 Identifier expected."

If I use the VB syntax in C#, I get my new favorite error: 'foo' is a 'variable' but is used like a 'method'

Particular annoying is the differences in For Each between C#, VB, and Python - each which has a slightly different syntax. For some reason this has been tripping me up a lot during live demos.

Interestingly, the whole curly brace versus END statements versus tabs (python) deal doesn't bother me at all. Although, this shocked me.

Iceman lives

aconrad — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:02:00 GMT

Via Michael Brundage (the man without a blog):

http://www.sky.com/showbiz/article/0,,50001-1174806,00.html

The Next Karate Kid

aconrad — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:23:00 GMT

Maybe this movie was better then first thought? With two time oscar winner Hillary Swank + I am sure Pat Morita is right on the cusp of something big.

It seems like with the big oscar win for Eastwood with Million Dollar Baby – that he should have to return his "original lifetime achievement" award … aka the oscars for Unforgiven.

The wrong Farrell to play Sonny Crockett.

aconrad — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 17:58:00 GMT

When I first saw the headline, I mistakenly thought the fine actor Will Ferrell had been hired to play Crockett.

I wonder if the soundtrack is going to have any Phil Collins or Glen Frey songs… somehow I doubt it.

Washington Ski Season - DOA

aconrad — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 17:40:00 GMT

Because of the infamous "Pineapple Express", the Washington ski season has basically ended. See for yourself.

This has been the worst season in my lifetime. However, we do have water rationing to look forward to this summer.

Note enough commute time

aconrad — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 18:14:00 GMT

About a 1 ½ years ago, I decided to purchase an iPod and get a membership with audible.com (which I highly recommend) in an effort to “read” more. Since the birth of my second child in mid-2003, my amount of free leisure time had been drastically cut and hence my reading time had become almost non-existence.

I am pleased to announce that this experiment has been quite successful, and in fact – I am basically stopped listening to the radio during my 70 minutes of total commute time each day. My only complaints are that the lack of technical books available in audible form (Please – someone start this business!) and that I don’t seem to have enough commute time now. I have tried to maximize the latter by leaving at the worse times, driving under the speed limit and always stopping for yellow lights – but it does not really seem to be enough. Perhaps I should move east of the mountains?

To compound this problem, I down loaded iPodder over the holidays and have been trying to figure out which feeds to download. I tried.Net Rocks – but it was a little too fluffy for me. I have heard good things about Adam Curry’s shows – but haven’t checked those out yet. Any help from the BlogSphere would be appreciated. I am looking for a regular show focused on technology (mostly software related) which is not too long.

Fowler - The King

aconrad — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 01:25:00 GMT

For the IoC amateurs (like myself) out there - Fowler has a very good introduction using the style of P of EAA.

Also, some very good updates to P of EAA here.

The amazing thing is this guy writes stuff faster then I can grok it.

Back in the Saddle

aconrad — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 05:30:00 GMT

It has been a while since I blogged, almost three months. So what have I been up to – well actually quite a bit. I have left the WinFS client API team and moved back to my old group (formally the WebData team) now called Dataworks. To make a long story short, they needed some last minute work done for Yukon that was along the same lines of some of the Xml to relational stuff I did with the SqlXml team. Basically developing an ADO.net DataReader (“XmlDataReader) for Xml sources. (More on that topic at a later date).

It is a tight schedule with some interesting challenges – but it is invigorating again to be designing/ developing something near-term and with a solid vision. Feels a lot like those ObjectSpaces’ days last fall/ winter. Keeping busy with good challenges keeps me out of trouble.

Long term I will be working on XmlDataReader and the ADO.net DataSet going for the Orcas release of Whidbey.

This job change is probably going to slightly affect the topics of my Blog, but I still hope to discuss O/R mapping topics. Despite not working actively on O/R stuff the last few months, I have spent some time looking at what our competitors are doing – and generally what is going on in this space. That has given me a few ideas of how the current ADO.net stack could be used to implement some of the O/R functionality that ObjectSpaces had. I hope to post some blogs about this near term and maybe get a MSDN article written this winter some time. I also have been doing quite a bit of reading about the “light weight container” movement in the Java world and have some questions about that approach wrt O/R Mappping solutions and application development in general. This approach is quite different in a lot of ways to how we do things with the .net frameworks – so I have some open questions that have been puzzling me on this topic.

I also hope to discuss some of the DataSet improvements for Whidbey. Up till a few weeks ago, I was not aware of the significant improvements that they have made for Whidbey – particularly in regards to performance. I will leave specifics until later,

Same non-technical minutia will remain… plus I am quite steamed that Owen Wilson wasn’t invited back for “Meet the Fockers”.

Oh… and since I have been working closely with XSD lately – I have decided to revive my 10 “favorite” XSD gripes list, but with a holiday theme.

1984

aconrad — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:43:00 GMT

Just picked up Van Halen's 1984 album off iTunes on what is roughly the 20th anniversary of the original release. Actually, this is the second time I have bought the album, but I lost the cassette tape years ago.

For those of you lacking in-depth knowledge of 80's music, this was the album which made the keyboard player an accepted member of the metal band. (Note - I am using “metal bands” in context of the early 80's).

I am sure that the “alternative crew/ Pearl Jam apologists” out there would dismiss this album as fluff, but as a friend of mine from graduate school once noted, grunge music would have never existed if it weren't for albums like that.

Dodgeball: A True underdog story - comes out tomorrow

aconrad — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 16:55:00 GMT

See here. I am wondering what the other four best picture nominees are going to be this year.

Everyone's problem

aconrad — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 05:43:00 GMT

David - you're dangerous.

You've lost that lovin' feeling

aconrad — Wed, 26 May 2004 00:46:00 GMT

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the bar where several scenes from Top Gun were filmed is right accross the street from my hotel in San Diego.

I will be making a official visit tonight with several of my wingmen. If I had one of those “100 things I want to do in my life” lists, as of tomorrow, I would have one less thing to do.

Doug Kenney

aconrad — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 16:50:00 GMT

A (long) interesting article about Doug Kenney, the creator and co- writer of one of the greatest comedies ever. I would not consider it a “cult” classic though (as portrayed by the article), unless you consider every one under seventy who plays golf part of a cult.

being irrational

aconrad — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 16:32:00 GMT

Starsky and Hutch comes out Friday. For better or worse, in my opinion this film is going to be a “classic”, although I really have no choice but to say so. A little background here: a few years ago I was heard saying that "All Owen Wilson movies are classics." Now although I probably had a very good reason to say so at the time (I had forgotten that Owen was in Armageddon), I've painted myself into a virtual corner. That seems to be a problem in general with irrational generalizations.

Cold

aconrad — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 15:51:00 GMT

Last week I was visiting Fargo to do some work with the Microsoft Business Frameworks team. In the weeks leading up to the visit, our co-workers in North Dakota harassed us Redmond’ites with a variety of emails explaining how cold it had become. Since I have now experienced -22 Fahrenheit (or feels like -47 with “wind chill”), I will be the first to admit that those warnings probably had some technical merit. However, one of the emails suggested what seemed like a fanciful myth designed specifically to rattle us mild weather loving Washingtonians:

When the temperature is lower then -15 below zero, very hot water will vaporize immediately when thrown into the air.

After trying the experiment several times in person – I am now a believer. It is one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen in person. The interesting aspect to the experiment is that it does not happen with cold water. However, even stranger then the actual phenomenon is that not one of my science educated co-workers can explain to me in exact terms why the phenomenon happens. To me, that fact is even more bizarre since generally every computer science guy (including myself) fancies themselves as a renaissance man of the sciences.

However, I guess I can accept the fact that our collected amateur knowledge of physics has it limits. However, from what I can tell, there also seems to be nothing but speculation about the phenomenon on the web. Thereby, it would be much appreciated if anyone can explain to me this phenomenon… until then I will just have to assume it is “magic”.