Forum Signatures

 

Due to a slight problem with my email I’m currently downloading 14000 emails over the last few years. I don’t know why Thunderbird suddenly decided to download everything agian, but I spotted some emails that I thought I’d deleted but are obviously still on the server.

Some of these emails were from forum posts made many years ago and I spotted some rather funny or thought provoking signatures in there. So, I’d like to share them:

Disclaimer: Because of heavy processing requirements, we are currently using some of your unused brain capacity for backup processing. Please ignore any hallucinations, voices or unusual dreams you may experience. Please avoid concentration-intensive tasks until further notice. Thank you.

“The moral of the story is that with a contrived example, you can prove anything.” – Joel Spolsky

“I still maintain that seeing a nipple is far less disturbing than seeing someone get their brains blown out.” — Chris Maunder

‘Java, Basic, who cares – it’s all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p’

I am an atheist only because fences are uncomfortable and the other side is filled with flames.

“In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins – not through strength but perseverance.” (H. Jackson Brown)

A working Program is one that has only unobserved bugs

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks

Hell, there are no rules here– we’re trying to accomplish something. – Thomas A. Edison

When all else fails, there’s always delusion. – Conan O’Brien

I’m going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.

Let’s put “civil” back in “civilization”

‘Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.’ – The Doctor: The Wheel in Space

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little past them into the impossible.–Arthur C. Clark

VB is like programming with crayons.

“Your village called – They’re missing their idiot.”

Open the fridge door, scream, and everything that doesn’t run into the corner is safe for eating.

Memes don’t exist – tell your friends

SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue 0
0 rows returned

“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” –Zig Ziglar

“I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.” – Bertrand Russell

“The different versions of the UN*X brand operating system are numbered in a logical sequence: 5, 6, 7, 2, 2.9, 3, 4.0, III, 4.1, V, 4.2, V.2, and 4.3” – Alan Filipski

Money talks, but all mine ever says is “Goodbye!”

My code isn’t buggy. Those are all fleatures.

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” – Bertrand Russell

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. (Douglas Adams)

Sessions submitted for DDD6

I’ve submitted three session ideas for Developer Day 6 in Reading. A 60 minute session on recruitment (which has been a recent theme on my blog and other places), a grok talk on taking the panic out of the presentation and a micro presentation on SQL Injection Attacks.

I guess I’m looking forward to the micro-presentation most because it is such an interesting format. 20 slides of 20 seconds each. I’m basing the topic on a presentation I did a couple of years ago as I still see lots of questions on SQL in forums where the original code is susceptible to attack.

The grok talk, “Take the Panic out of the Presentation”, it to encourage people to get up and talk at community events by letting them know how to get over their anxiety of public speaking – It isn’t as hard as it sounds.

The presentation that I’m doing really isn’t a presentation. I’m chairing a discussion on the subject of recruitment. There will be four panellists from across the UK and from different types of company so hopefully it should be a lively discussion as there is a lot of opinion out there about interview skills, what should go on a CV, technical testing and so on. The questions will be supplied by the audience in advance so that I can figure out what is most popular and devote time to these things. The audience will be able to interact as well and be able to offer their opinion too.

Of course, these sessions have to be voted in first.

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Glasgow: 14th November: SQL Server Evening

Held in Room 16 of the Continuing Professional Development Centre, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 0BA

Wednesday 14th November: Glasgow
Joint event with the Scottish SQL Server User Group
Speakers: Frank Kerrigan and Steve Phillips
Frank Kerrigan: Introduction to Microsoft Reporting Services
Introduction of Reporting services and it fits into your organisation and setup of backend reporting databases. Also a tour of getting started with reporting services with a look at best practices. Practical examples covering the how develop different types of reports. Briefly touches on integrating Reporting Services with .NET applications.
 
Frank Kerrigan has been in development and support of large enterprise systems for 15 years. He is currently lead developer for UK PLC Insurance Company; running a development team developing C# and SQL Server. First got the programming bug programming 6502 assembly while doing electrical engineering at College in the 1980s and moved quickly into IT. He has extensive experience in manufacturing, software development, consultancy and IT management as PKI security which he has written a few patents for two fledgling start-ups. He can be found hanging round Code Project and Scottish Developer community sites and has written a few articles in SQL Server, ASP.NET and Reporting Services.
 
Steve Phillips: SQL Server Managed Objects (SMO)
Although SMO was available for SQL Server 2000, in SQL Server 2005 the object model has vastly improved with just about every conceivable SQL Server object represented as a managed object. We take a look at a practical example of SMO as we build an MSI installer for a database.
 
Steve Phillips has been in development for 22 years with a short break to concentrate on network systems gaining an MCSE into the bargain. He is currently the development manager for a UK PLC Insurance Company; managing a development team developing in C# and SQL server for the .NET 3.0 development platform. Whilst at Southampton University in the early eighties he worked on a practical implementation of the B+ tree indexing model from a theoretical paper. Steve chose to write the indexing system in C, newly imported direct from Bell Labs USA. This indexing system formed the basis of the Sybase database management system later, under license from Sybase, to become SQL Server. His most significant achievement was, as part of the Human Genome Project, to project manage, and support, the building of a Windows network to connect the GlaxoWellcome (now GSK) project team to the data centre in Wisconsin, Canada for the recording and publishing of GSK’s part of the Human Genome. His most dramatic blooper was to turn down an offer from a tiny book publisher to assist them with putting their books onto CD. The publisher came to be known as Dorling Kindersley (doh!).

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Rant: I'm so frustrated I can't even think of a title!!!

 

My copy of IT Now, the magazine of the British Computer Society arrived earlier this week. I’ve only just got around to reading it. Their careers section got me thinking. There is a link to http://www.jobstats.co.uk in there and I had a little look around. According to that site roughly 10% of all IT jobs are for C# while 7.5% are for VB (any flavour). Staggeringly 1% of jobs still require VB6!

For C# developers the UK average is £39K. On the face of it, you could say that it is lop sided because it includes the salaries in the south east of England. However, you also have to remember that the figures will include graduate salaries from across the rest of the UK also.

If you want to drill in to Scotland and Glasgow the rates naturally come down. £33K seems to be the average. After all the interviewing we’ve been doing recently I’ve come to the conclusion that average means the ability to push buttons on wizards and copy and paste code snippets and then spend hours wondering why it doesn’t work. Average means not being able to read a simple 3 table ER diagram with some relationships. Average means not understanding a UML static class diagram with a base class and two derived classes on it.

In April this year, an article was published on the BCS website that stated that “Employers are finding it increasingly difficult to find job candidates with the right IT skills, putting the candidate in a strong position.” We are finding exactly that. We are getting quite a few candidates that are just in to get a second offer to play two companies off each other. However, after two months, we’ve not found anyone suitable enough to put an offer out to. I can’t help but think that there are some companies that are taking on board people that really don’t have the necessary skills to do the job properly.

I am increasingly of the opinion that software developers need to be licensed, at least for certain pieces of development, due to the risk of fraud or damage if the system breaks.

Earlier this week I was going through some code as part of a migration. The code was written before my time and by an outsourcing company. This was before the company I work for decided it was getting such a raw deal that it wanted to in-source its software development. I was searching the code base for a reference to a stored procedure that failed to script properly… And I found it… In the presentation layer!

Not only that, but it was referenced on line numbers exceeding 1500! Hadn’t these people heard of custom controls, user controls, 3-tier architecture, and the like.

What really got me was that the application was very much like another one that was being migrated. There were several places where some common functionality could have been extracted out, put in its own class then referenced from both projects. But where’s the profit in that! No point doing anything sensible like that when you can charge twice to fix the same bug.

I wonder how much it cost to get these things developed. I wonder what the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) actually is.

DDD6 – Proposed Sessions

It is now possible to propose a session for DDD6. It has only been open for a few hours and already there are a few good sessions available. Now I’m in a quandry. If this is the quality of all the sessions I’ll have no idea what to see. Not to mention that I’ll be submitting my own session idea.

So, if you have a session idea then get over to the DDD website and submit your session idea.

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Video promoting UK Community Events for Developers

http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf
Video: UK Developer Community

 

Transcript:

Dot Net Dev Net
Scottish Developers
Sharepoint User Group UK
Geek Dinners
MS Web Dev
Agile Scotland
Next Generation User Group… NxtGenUG
VBUG
Mobile Mondays

Guy Smith-Ferrier: So the UK community has a number of events. We’ve got WebDD, SQL DD, and the one that started it all is DDD.

Audience: Developer! Developer! Developer!

Dave McMahon: The usergroup community in the UK has got a great collaboration story. We have speakers from one user group, and organisers from one user group, speaking at different user groups all round the country. We’ve guys travelling from Newcastle down to Birmingham. We’ve guys travelling from London all the way up to Newcastle. It’s an exciting time to be here in the UK in the user group community.

Guy Smith-Ferrier: The grok talks in the lunch time sessions, we’ve got five or six grok talks. And not only are people excited to get up and have a go and do their bit wherever that may lead to next time, people want to see it as well. It’s interesting stuff.

Richard Costall: There has just never been a better time to be part of Microsoft and the developer community.

Craig Murphy: Microsoft are a great supporter of events here in the UK community.

Guy Smith-Ferrier: There are over 30 user groups in the UK

Sarah Blow: Between us, we all have a lot of user groups here in the UK.

Phil Winstanley: The online and offline world are both very active here in the UK community. We’ve got online forums. We’ve got user groups. We’ve got all manner of things all supported by MVPs, influencers and academics.

Sarah Blow: Microsoft are doing a great job of supporting women in technology and I’d love them to carry on. I really want them to keep doing this. They are key to getting more females in to the technology industry. Keep doing the good work.

Phil Winstanley: The power of the UK community is apparent in the way that it can pull in big name speakers purely with the view of the community itself. People like Scott Gurthie come over purely because the community ask them to.

Zi Makki: We’ve been working on the Grok talks and Park Bench lunchtime activities, which are on in about an hour, so I’m getting a little bit nervous at the moment.

Craig Murphy: I have to say that if it wasn’t for Microsoft’s support for the user groups within the country, they would not be as successful as they are today.

If this looks exciting, get in the thick of the action by attending Developer Developer Developer 6 (DDD6) on the 24th November!

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Community Update

I’ve been a bit busy recently, so I’ve finally got round to blogging about upcoming community events. As it has all stacked up it is all going in one post.

October:

Guy Smith-Ferrier will be talking to the North East Scotland .NET User Group in Dundee on the 2nd October about “Visual Studio 2005 IDE Tips and Tricks

Guy Smith-Ferrier will be talking to Scottish Developers in Edinburgh on the 3rd October about “Astoria” and Using ClickOnce and XBAPs to deploy Windows Forms and WPF applications.

SQLBits is full, although a waitlist is in operation, so you can always register and hope for a cancellation.

Jim Paterson, author of The Definitve Guide to db4o,  will be talking to Scottish Developers in Glasgow on the 10th October about db4o: An embedable database for object oriented environments.

November:

Frank Kerrigan and Steve Phillips will be talking to Scottish Developers in Glasgow in a joint event with the Scottish SQL Server User Group on the 14th November.

DDD6 has been announced. It will be held on 24th November and, as usual, it is at the Microsoft Campus in Reading. There is also a poll for to find out where you want DDD7 to be as they are going to move it around. At the moment the North East of England is winning! So, everyone from Scotland needs to get on that website and vote for Scotland!!!

December:

Rob Lally will be talking to Scottish Developers in Glasgow about GWT and GUICE on the 12th December.

2008:

Developer Day Scotland will be taking place in Spring 2008. Watch this space for more information.

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Oddball statistics about my blog

As I’ve mentioned before I’m using Google Analytics to see what people are
interested in on my blog and website. Some of the statistics are beginning to
settle down now. So, here are some interesting stats (well, they are interesting
to me)

Most read blog entry was about installing Visual Studio 2005 on Vista

Top three browsers are IE (69%), Firefox (28%) and Opera (2%)

97% of visitors use Windows, 2% use an Apple Macintosh.

95% of visitors have their screen resolution set at 1024×768 or higher. The
most common setting is 1280×1024 which accounts for 29% of visitors.

1% of visitors came from an IP address registered to Microsoft Corp.

What are developer forums for?

An interesting question. One that seems to have an obvious answer. But there have been a couple of people in the last week that seem to have asked a forum full of random software developers a question they should be asking their client/customer.

I’m not exactly sure why that might be, however, I can possibly guess.

A few weeks ago I asked the question Why is it so hard to hire good software developers? and my colleague also commented on the types of developer that pass through our recruitment process. After that experience I can understand that some developers might have been hired on being able to talk smooth throughout the interview process. Then they get the job and realise that they can’t actually do it. For fear of being fired they jump onto internet forums and seek any type of help they can.

Their lack of ability means that they have some difficulty in working out questions that they should already know the answer to versus questions that they really ought to be asking their client.

Lets take an example. One person was writing a tourist reservation system. He asked what should happen if a person makes a booking without going through a travel agent. This question can’t be answered on a forum for SQL Server. It can only be answered by the client or the business analyst that is liaising with the client.

The question I have to ask these people is: How would a random developer know what your business requirements are?

Another person was a bit more wide ranging in their request. They wanted to know how to develop a “real estate site”. Since the basic principle isn’t any different to any other interactive website surely they should have been asking their client what they wanted in the website.

Maybe I’m wrong in all of this, it is only my idle speculation. If you have a better idea of why some people are asking questions on forums that they should be asking their client or customer I’d like to know.

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