Raby Whyte - my Blog

Just read an interesting article on BBC News pointing out that in the UK less and less children are learning how to programme computers and more and more children though are learning to be end users, I slightly disagree from what i have seen in all honesty. When I twas a child i hadn’t even heard of such things like computer code etc. I had no idea at all with the exception of what a word processor was maybe.

Today children seem a LOT more educated in subjects related to computing, even if these subjects are not in detail, the concept of what a computer does and there importance is a message well received.

News article here:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7324556.stm

When working nine til six five days a week I find it really hard to sit myself down and read or code in my spare time, and I have loads of ideas and little jobs to code as well as loads of subjects I want to read up on, i miss being a student!

I came across an interesting website just now called Keyword Map.

You type in a key word and the ‘engine’ spits out many related words to the word you specified that are on the web. The site has a back-end database holding loads and loads of website addresses etc… like a search engine, except instead of giving just results of your search as web-pages themselves, it gives you some words that can help you refine your search with further, or give more accurate results.

Clever idea, except it is only based on websites kwmap ‘knows’ about which is not entirely accurate… but a Nobel idea nonetheless.

Throughout the last hour at work i have been designing an extension to an existing web application, what pages link to each other, what values are passed on the query string, where post-backs must occur and database connections are opened close - that sort of thing. I have found several times now that it is far easier to think and ‘brainstorm’ on paper and with peers away from the computer than it is using MS Visio or word to write your thoughts, ideas, diagrams etc…

I don’t think it is the software at fault, is it more a psychological thing?

Why is it far easier to think and express your thoughts on paper than it is when on a computer? I know others who feel the same too including old tutors at college as well as some Maths lecturers I have spoken too…

Do we associate computers with remedial tasks and this is blocking the left side of our brain? Does pointing & clicking a mouse interfere with thinking?

I just thought i would place a seed for thoughts to spring from with this post…..

Why does everyone call this something different? Screen Capture, Screen Dump, Screen Flash, Screen Save, Print Screen, Frame Capture….

Is there a definitive REAL definition for this function of a personal computer?

Why does everyone call it something different? It’s like an accent of IT literate speech. Well my accent is ’screen shot’ hence the title… whats yours?

I had an interesting debate in the office this morning about different database types and the pros and cons of both, a subject i knew little about so i listened in for some information. MySQL came into the debate which turned the conversation towards the title of this post: Open Source vs M$.

I was very shocked to hear that several developers in the office are AGAINST open source, they say that allowing all to update a piece of software provides it with instability, little support and errors that are annoying to fix.

Some people in the office actually prefer M$ dominating software development technologies as everything would be ‘the same’ and ‘easy to use and find answers to questions’.

Some other developers argued for open source saying that support is plentiful, updates are quicker and bugs are easily fixed or avoided due to a massive community of developers updating the software continually.

So it seems from my limited time in the IT industry you are either FOR or AGAINST open source, there seems to be none without an opinion in IT.

Went onto facebook this lunchtime as I usually do for a break and noticed something revolutionary… (well kinda :p) People have been complaining that the introduction of facebook applications has ruined the simplicity of facebook (Kieron has also talked about this here). And I agree.

The simplicity is what made facebook so appealing and IMO what ’stole’ users from the top social networking site at the time: yes MySpace. 

Some applications are beneficial and fun to use, and as these applications can be developed by all, this makes facebook a true web 2.0 experience, so i see why Mark didn’t want to get rid of them! What they have done to keep the users happy is have the option to put unused or irrelevant ‘profile boxes’ belonging to third party facebook applications within an extended profile which can be accessed via a link at the bottom of what i am labelling the ‘primary’ profile. What a wonderful idea! It keeps all happy, as the application profile boxes are still accessible without scrolling to the bottom of the page via the ‘quick links’ below a users profile picture.

Bravo Facebook, Bravo! For listening to your users wants. impressive. 

The purpose of this post is to let people know how I’m getting on at CSC and what i have been up to 5 days a week, paying particular attention to what it is like in the industry to prepare people at University in my year.

I have been working for CSC now for 4 months on an industrial placement. In these 4 months I have learnt and experienced an immeasurable amount of skills working in the IT industry. I have got to say i definitely don’t regret taking a year out from my degree (although there was times where I thought I wish I was in DEC10 pulling all nighters with the crew), I definitely recommend it.

I have increased my technical skills over the last 4 months but I think what i have learnt most of all is how a software development environment works, how people think in the industry, how people develop and interact with peers/ managers, how we interact with users. All this stuff from a students perspective is perceived as wishy washy irrelevant stuff, but it is essential (Owen knows! Owen is right!)

Linking the software development to business cases is pivotal too, as it is a business after all and we need to try and quantify the savings a company gets from better software, so we get paid for coding it! Although sometimes this can be a challenge, especially within the NHS!

Another important point to note is being a ‘Software Engineer’ (yes that’s my job title, sexy i know d:)  from my experience working on a small development team is more than coding, a lot more.  Testing, deploying code, designing interfaces and models, documentation both in and out of code, configuration on servers and local machines, management of databases and resources and user involvement are all just as important.

Technically speaking I have had experience in a good number of different technologies, some at greater depth than others. A few i have listed below:

• Programming in C# and the .NET environment.
• ASP.NET, XHTML, CSS, AJAX with JS
• XML
• SQL SERVER  and T-SQL scripting
•  using O(i)SQL/MSDOS scripts for deployment
• Crsytal Reports
• VBA (this is not as easy as it sounds)

So… what do i actually code i hear you asking? Well I’m going to deliberately leave that out of this public blog post because of confidentiality and such (:

Overall I have had a good 4 months!

I am off for 10 days for family time + food @ xmas then partying with friends + drink @ new years before i return to the routine of 9 till 5 until August.  This is the one thing that’s a drag sometimes, the same routine every day, I like variety and impulsiveness as some days I’m in the zone and lovin’ coding and getting loads of work done then some-days I’m tired.

But Overall I am liking my year out and would like to thank all that have supported and helped me be where I am now.

Any questions, feel free to ask.

This post is a reply to Chris’s post (found here ), which spawned from Kieran’s post (found here )

The original post compared programming languages…but not in the traditional sense where one compares the actual syntax, performance, support, openness or usability etc. but comparing the amount you get laid correlated with the programming language one ‘codes’ in!

Chris makes a fair argument saying .NET is the language of sex i must say, as all my colleagues who I work with are also all in relationships (although…almost all of their relationships started prior to them using .NET, but lets leave that out for the purposes of humouring ones-self d:). And One of them is a girl! yes, a female!

Is it the parent child architectural structure of windows programming having an affect on humans mind as we are predisposed to reproduction…?

Is it like Dan Zambonini said, that programmers working with tools visually like those admin people use (including hot secretary’s and receptionists (; ) bridges the gap between genders in the workplace?

studies are needed to try and answer these big questions… d:

Thanks for the mention Chris, particually impressed you went to the effort to get a pic of me and my sexy friend lol 

A friend in the video games industry has made me aware of a new programming language that is in beta release at the moment named ‘Processing’. It is a language based on Java and is purely Object-Oriented in the sense it only uses Java’s inner classes not any static classes/structures.

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions - aimed at graphics artists and such.

From a brief glance at the IDE it seems to be similar to Microsoft’s GDI+ library provided for C# of the .NET suite but slightly more mathematically based like VRML, with transformations, matrix-es etc. provided for you as black-boxes. This means you can code semi-complex moving graphics that look very sweet, very easily.

I am impressed at first glance, when I get time I shall dig further and report back!

home page for the language: http://www.processing.org/

wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processing_%28programming_language%29

running example:

Example of the ide (click for larger image):