Projects

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1

Got Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 with my MSDN subscription recently. Anyone can get a “hobbyist” version here (now everyone, all together, say “thank you open source” for forcing M$’s hand on that).

It looks nice, has a C++ configuration available for selection on the first-time run that has been fairly comfortable for me.

UPDATE: OK, I’m switching, this looks good and the VC++ 6 compiler has got to go. Read on for the details…

‘NUTHA UPDATE: I’ve seen blogs ranting about the class diagram functionality, which can operate in both directions, letting you add to the actual code by adding to the diagram, and vice versa… but generating one is not obvious. Hopefully not just hyped fanboy blogging… ’cause we’re WAY overdue for something like that… everyone knows the Rose Stinks… 😛

‘NUTHA UPDATE: It’s simple, just select Solution Explorer->YourC++Project->Add->New Item->Visual C++->Class Diagram (!). Give it a name and start dragging in classes. You can have more than one diagram in a project. OK, I have to say, I’m all about this, nice.

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Comments | Sunday, August 15, 2004

Chaotic– er, Agile– Development

What do you do when your budget gets slashed, your headcount is dropping, and your deadlines don’t relent? When there just aren’t enough resources to design high-quality software, but you still have to deliver? Redefine the criteria for success! Agile programming to the rescue!

We don’t need no stinkin’ requirements! We don’t need no stinkin’ design sessions! Heck, we don’t even need testers, just ship the customer the daily build and let them sort it out. They’ll be so utterly disgusted with the initial attempts at the product that they’ll be fawning all over the final release, even if it’s not much different from what they got at the first attempt. Make them suffer along WITH you!

Besides, that’s what we’ve been doing anyway, ever since the tech bubble burst. We haven’t had time for all that other fancy-pants stuff. We’re just finally acknowledging it. With a vengeance.

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And the stuff that “The Agile Method ™” gets right… small iterative steps, smart design and decomposition, concise variable naming… well… no duh.

[Yawn] Wake me up when the next hot fad has something truly new and useful to offer…

Comments (1) | Thursday, August 12, 2004

Cyrus + Squirrelmail + Sieve are a go!

I have finally gotten cyrus imap and sieve up and limping along. I don’t even want to begin to document the pain it was to set up… the only thing I’ll say is… USE A PRE-COMPILED CYRUS IMAP PACKAGE if possible – after struggling along for weeks, the Fedora Core 2 RPM installed in seconds with zero problems. Fedora Tracker is da bomb. My cyrus setup isn’t perfect yet… but I can pull up my email in 4 seconds instead of 300 now…

Bottom line: if you want an email account on thedigitalmachine.com, now is the time to ask. :>

Comments | Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Red Hat 9 To Fedora Core 2

With Red Hat dropping support for Red Hat Linux (duh!), it was only a matter of time before I made a move to a new distro – when it comes to running an internet-exposed server, a little guy like me has no choice – I HAVE to run an up-to-date auto-patched distro. With cyrus playing the role of the proverbial straw, I decided to upgrade (sidegrade?) to Fedora. Read on for all the gory details – just kidding, it’s not that bad. In fact, in retrospect, yum made it downright smooth.

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Comments | Friday, June 18, 2004

wxWidgets: DiskSpace

Core and I have been making slow progress with wxWindows – it’s a GREAT library, I have just been very busy. We’ve made an app that displays your free space remaining on your drives. The linux version only looks at “/” right now. Download the Windoze version by clicking the screenshot. We’ll be continuing to work on it.

A couple notes on setting up wxWidgets under Windoze (Core, let’s have some notes on the linux setup too, if needed):

under Windows, copy /include/msw/setup.h to /include/setup.h

define wxUSE_EXCEPTIONS in your project so you get proper RTTI functionality

build either the debug or release version of wxWindows-2.5.1srcwxWindows.dsw

add the paths to wxWindows lib and include to Venereal Studio