“The fundamental problem with software maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.”
Frederick P. Brooks, “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering,
Aaron Hillegass has probably done the most to promote Cocoa, the Mac OS
X framework. I've taken his class at the Big Nerd Ranch which was an
awesome week. The third edition of "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" is
coming out soon. If you are interested in becoming a Mac developer or
an iPhone developer, this is the book for you. I'm thinking of upgrading to this, but it will be strange to have 4 of
the same books at home.http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=47
As you may know, I work for a IniTech doing software development. One
of those things you do in the field is version control, tracking changes
to your source code. That's all cool, except within your source code
tree, lots of detritus and extra files or folder gets accumulated. It makes grep-ping for strings difficult. You end up gaining knowledge
on how to "find" your source files, "grep" for the strings, and piping
them into xargs for doing things.Enter ack, the find|grep|xargs replacement. I installed the standalone
perl script version, and find life somewhat easier. Takes the annoyance
out of searching source code.Plus, it's all about Bill the cat. Thpppt.http://petdance.com/ack/
“Plan to throw one away, you will anyhow.”
Fred Brooks
This is really weird. When I test out my homework from home (Mac OS X 10.5.2: Safari AND
Firefox), it works. At work (WinXP: IE 6.0), I supposedly get some kind
of HTTP response 500: Internal Server Error. Give it a shot because I want to know if it's just me or if it's
IniTech's firewall rules.
http://db.cs.loyola.edu:4414/hw5/commandResponse.jsp?command=blowupWhat's supposed to happen:
You click on that link, which submits a query to the page
"commandResponse.jsp." The query is that string, "command=blowup."
Submitting this command should cause a "divide by zero" error and the
server should throw an exception. Yet, there's a page to catch this
exception which serves up an HTML page that "blowup" the server. If it
works. The failure that Internet Explorer sees (or IniTech's firewall)
relates to the "divide by zero" exception as it seems to have received
the HTTP 500 response. Currently, I don't know WTF.Submit your results in comments. Specifically mention what OS (Win or
Mac) and what browser (IE, Firefox, etc.) Thanks for the help.If you want to see the rest of Assignment 5, go here:
http://db.cs.loyola.edu:4414/hw5/
This will be crazy. The iPhone track alone will be f’ing packed like sardines, because aren’t they supposed to release iPhone 2.0 around this time?
Remind me again why I work at IniTech.
I should’ve kept up my Cocoa skills. Damn two years is a long time. Plus the damn dev environment went from 2.0 to 3.1 during that time.
One of things I’ve been doing is watching all the iPhone getting started videos. They’re slight in their information, but they give a very nice gloss on the state of iPhone development. It’s something every one should do. Also, it’s funny because some of the presenters were also in the Big Nerd Ranch class, too.
Anyway, this shit is cool!
Tell me why again do I work at Initech? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080306-live-coverage-of-the-iphon
e-software-roadmap-announcement.html
This slate article, I believe, is wrong. No matter how much you believe in the US form of government, don’t believe them.
To account for this difference, the three SM-3’s needed new software, hardware, and sensors, and the launching systems had to be given new sensors and software updates. The bulk of this task would have been assigned to high-priced contractors—like Raytheon, the maker of the missile, or Lockheed Martin, maker of the Aegis system. And it would have taken a large crew of engineers to rewrite the code, debug it, and test it over and over again—all within three weeks.
I don’t believe this one bit. I don’t believe that each of these programs, the SM-3 missile or Aegis, would put anything on their ship in 3 weeks. Maybe, to discuss the need to make the changes, but not to create, debug, integrate and install that stuff. It’s as if you had to write your PhD thesis in the last week of your program, and then present it to the board immediately after.
Three weeks is not enough time.
Here’s a better explanation.
Last year, China shoots down a satellite. From here on out with the ballistic missile defense is now geared to shooting down a satellite ourselves. So its one year from the changes to now. A much better timeline for how the navy and its defense contractors work.
Those changes were available last year. It took them three weeks to figure out what to shoot down.
Trust no one.
The truth is out there.
One of the funny things about taking the Web Application development class is that they gave us a virtual server off the loyola domain to use as a test bed. We still develop locally but we have to deploy it on the web.
If you want to see some trivial examples of Java Servlets in action check this out: Assignment 3
I’m asking you, my dear readers, to do my testing for me. Check if things work correctly. If you get a crash, please screen capture it and post in comments problems. You are my beta testers. Its due Thursday. Get this done by then. TIA.
UPDATE: Here’s what’s up with assignment 3.
