To code, or not to code ...

I've been trying to finish up a number of programming books that I've started reading. One of which is "Extreme Programming Adventures in C#" by Ron Jeffries. It's a different kind of programming book. It's essentially a journal of Ron's experience learning the C# programming language while applying Extreme Programming principles. He discusses the assumptions he's making, you see the first (sometimes ugly) attempts he makes writing code. What's good about it, is that he goes back and fixes the code that's bad, so you see the code evolve instead of just seeing the final product.

At the end of one of the chapters, he discusses a philosophy of XP which basically says, "don't put any code in until it's needed". I keep reminding myself because I tend to want to program the world into an app instead of moving in small pieces. Ron says it best:

I know we always like to say it'll be easier to do it now than it will be to do later. Not likely: I plan to be smarter later than I am now, I plan to have the same tests, and I plan to have an actual need that will direct what I do, not my current fantasy about what's needed.

I think I'll print that out and paste it on my monitor. Things definitely go more smoothly if you just keep it simple and bite off little pieces at a time. Now, to be more religious about it in practice.

New Machine - All Beefy and Everything!

I got a new motherboard and cpu last week and put everything together this past weekend. I didn't feel like getting a ton of new ram, so I went with a socket 939 board. After some research, I ended up getting the Asus A8N5X with an AMD Athlon 64 3800. I have to say it was one of the smoothest installs I've done. I feel comfortable recommending this motherboard who is in the market for something similar. It was nice to have everything "just work".

So far, I've been happy with the AMD 64 - my third AMD. I know the Core2 Duo is the hot kid on the block these days, but I've been finding myself more and more turned off to Intel and Windows lately, especially with DRM (don't get me started on PDF DRM!), so I feel better choosing AMD for my platform. The rest of my system consists of 2GB of PC3200, a GeForce 7800GT and a 250GB WD SATA drive. I have dual 20" LCD's - one is a Dell FP2001 and the other is a ViewSonic VP201b. While I like the picture a little better on ViewSonic, I have this annoying problem where once in a while it won't turn on! I'll boot Windows and have all the icons that were on my extended desktop thrust onto my primary display! Sucks. I may send it in for warranty repair - unless this is the way it's supposed to work! :-p

So, let's see how Call Of Duty 2 performs with this system! (I have to say, CoD2 is one of my favorite games - graphics are amazing, great gameplay, and I love the controls).

Lookee what I got!

The box is still unopened - just got back from buying it. I'm excited! The demo was great - it's been a while since I've been this excited about a first person shooter.

I was really tempted to buy the special edition DVD because, well, it's on DVD, and because you get two figurines with it. But, I didn't want them badly enough to justify the extra $10. Although, it would have been nice having it on DVD. I hate swapping through ... [opens box to see how many CDs are there] ... three CDs to install a game. Hmm. Actually, that's not as bad as I thought it would be. F.E.A.R. came on five or six CDs! Still, the DVD would be nice.

Programmers and the Software Product Cycle

Yes, I admit it. I'm a bit of a John Carmack fanboy. So, when there's an article about a presentation he gave, I usually read it. What I admire about him is his ability to quickly analyze a problem, reduce it down to a critical set of parameters, and then come up a set of compromises that allow for a near perfect solution. He's done it so many times. It's inspiring.

Anyway, I was reading this article titled Things I Think John Carmack Said At QuakeCon and was really struck by the truth of this paragraph.

"It used to be a joke at id when someone would say, 'How long would something take?' 'Two weeks.' Because a programmer can get anything done in two weeks," Carmack joked. "Fourteen days, if you stayed up, you could just get anything done in that time. Of course, it doesn't actually work out like that. In any of the projects I've worked on, I've never failed in any of them, but I've never been on time."

It's true! When you're assigned to a programming task you've never done before, you have some idea what needs to be done, but 99.9 percent of the time, there's something that comes up that you didn't anticipate that is a real bitch to work around. The 0.1 percent is for the few times that I write a bunch of code, compile it, and miraculously it just "works". It's a great feeling, but it makes me really nervous at the same time because there's no such thing as "bug free code".

For me, one of the worst things to experience on the job is having a manager come in to your office and say, "I want you to work on [this]. It's extremely critical that it be done on time. How long will it take you to do it?". Ugh! I want to reply, "I don't know. How long will it take for you to train to be able to clean and jerk 500lbs over your head?".

Probaly the best manager I ever had would ask me how long I think it would take and then would triple it for the product planning sheet. It was usually dead on.

Good managers are so hard to find.

Half-Life - Episode One

That didn't take long! I just finished playing Half-Life 2 : Episode One. While I hate the Steam platform, I'm happy that Valve continues to put out quality game content. Half-Life 2 was one of the best first person shooters I've ever played, so I was looking forward to Episode One. If you haven't played through it and are planning to, don't worry, I don't have any spoilers below.

The quality of the content was excellent - great levels, creative situations - but, like Sin Episodes, was still too short for the $20 they're asking. If it were closer to $10, I'd buy it without even thinking, but if they keep the current asking price of $20 for the next episode, I think I'll end up waiting until the price comes down.

As I was playing, I happened to notice Alyx's necklace. It's a cube that looks like it could be some kind of artifact. Perhaps given to her by her father? But for what? Protection?















It's funny, as short as Episode One is, it almost had more story elements and plot twists than the entire game of Half-Life 2. As a result, I've found myself thinking about the game more after I finished. I'm sure I'll go through and play it again, paying more attention to the story details.

Now to get support for Half-Life 2 into Game-Tracker... :-)

I'll end with a cool shot of the Citadel as it's preparing to self destruct.

Finally! .NET 2.0 Directory Search Improvements

This may seem insignificant to most, but I was thrilled to see that Microsoft added a static method overload to the Directory.GetFiles() method to include a recursive "SearchOption", which specifies whether the search should return files in only the current directory or search through all subdirectories as well.

public static string[] GetFiles (
 string path,
 string searchPattern,
 SearchOption searchOption
)

But, before I got too excited, I found they still don't allow multiple search patterns. You must make a call for each pattern you are searching for. :-(

Still, this improvement saves having to write or reuse that recursive directory search function you've been using forever. It also allows for quick and easy accumulation of files into a collection. For example:

           
    ArrayList files = new ArrayList();
    try
    {
        files.AddRange(Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\", "*.jpg",
                       SearchOption.AllDirectories));
        files.AddRange(Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\", "*.bmp",
                       SearchOption.AllDirectories));
        files.AddRange(Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\", "*.tif?", 
                       SearchOption.AllDirectories));
     }
     catch (UnauthorizedAccessException expectedException)
     {
     }

As small as this change seems, it's a welcome change!

Terry

Sin Episodes

Well, I took the plunge and bought Sin Episodes : Emergence off of Steam. Mostly because I loved the first Sin game and was curious to see if this team could do it again. Other than the length and the cost, it wasn't too bad, but it had lost the character and attitude of the first Sin game. :-( If the "episode" were only $10, I would say it's a good buy for the money, but at $20, it's just lacking enough content to make it feel like you got your money's worth. I did enjoy the last series of levels - the way you climb the building and slowly make your way to the top was a lot of fun. I don't know if Levelord made that level or not, but I wouldn't be surprised. In Sin, Levelord continually made top-notch, creative levels doing stuff that nobody else had done before. I played deathmatch for hours on "Behind Zee Bookcase". Great stuff!

Elexis is a little *too* sexy, though. The first game, she was meant to be sexy, but still look like a mean bitch. In this version, she just doesn't look mean. Hard to take her seriously as a villian when she looks like a bimbo sex kitten. (No, she doesn't have some strange skin disease. In the scene this was captured from, she was appearing to Blade as a hologram, so there's some funky video effect)

w00t

w00t! I have a blog! ;-)