Now, on with the series:

Programs rarely go from the drawing board straight to the market. We usually get to avail of them at the -nth incarnation.

Why? This is because Programs ‘evolve,’ over the course of their development and rarely does a program go from code to product without carrying bugs in them. These computer bugs are errors, flaws, mistakes, etc within a computer program, either in the code or how the program works in general, preventing it from behaving as intended. The usual cause of bugs is human error. Imagine trying to simulate thousands if not millions of lines of code and you get the general idea but I’ll go on into that later.

In perspective, development of a program typically goes as follows:

• Development
• Maintenance
• Upgrade

Now, developers don’t exactly stick to this process tree but it gives you a general idea of what goes on into making a program.

The Development Stage

I posted a similar post on the process of software development but it’s far too advanced, jump to it if you don’t consider yourself a programming novice.

All program begins as a blank screen on somebody’s computer. During the development stage, try and mold ideas to an actual working program.

1. Brainstorming an idea – fairly self-explanatory. For example, if you wanted to create a audio player you ask the basic questions of what features will it have and what formats will it play. Try to generalize the basic features of the program before adding anything else. This way, you’ll know that the program will work with or without these add-ons and not depend on them
2. What are the basic specifics of your program? – Who’s going to use your program? What computer (OS) will run your program? What program language will you use? You can check up on the earlier entry of this series for a complete rundown of questions.
3. Design the program – You can use pseudocode, flowcharts or if you’re advanced enough UML to outline the general structure of your program. It’s better to plan things out than get stuck on it later on
4. Write the program. – After you’re certain you have everything you need, you can start coding. With your needed resources at hand, you’ll spend less time thinking what should be coded next
5. Test the program – You can do this in parts during coding or on the whole program after you complete the whole code. To save time and effort though, I suggest you do it in parts. Also, you don’t have to actually eliminate ALL bugs at this point, just enough to make sure that you won’t run into problems that will potentially stop your program from working (I.E. major bugs). This step is known as alpha testing.
6. Prep the program for release – Congratulations on Version 1.xx.
   

The Maintainance Stage

This is can also be called the Beta Stage of development. Many MMO games go through this by letting players get a taste of the actual game then allow them to file reports on their experiences.

Bugs can either come from the program’s source code or how it is designed, a rare few however are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. Since most programmers prefer to create new programs than maintain and modify existing ones, companies usually assign QA (Quality Assurance) departments for this purpose.  QA’s don’t have to actually know the code that the program works on. Their job is to toy around with your program and try to break it then publish reports or if a bug is found, file a bug report so that the program can move on the production line. Here’s how the beta stage goes:

1. Verify fixes for all reported bugs – This is to ensure that no bug from the Alpha stage gets through.
2. Test the program with all possible scenarios using Manual or Automated testing – This is the main job of the QAs. They basically look for holes in the program, a mishandled exception or a wrong output by manually handling the program or by using scripts like WATIR (applicable only for Web apps)
3. File a SPR (Software Problem Report) if a bug is found – This is so that the development team won’t need to replicate the error to know what’s wrong. This is especially helpful if the bug found can compromise the whole system when executed.

Given the size of current programs (especially corporate scale ones), Beta testing may take weeks to months if not years. If the program has been deployed for public use, a software patch is released to incorporate corrections in the problem.

Note that to enter a job as a QA, you usually just need to learn the tools used for testing and the basic workings of the program that you will test. If you’re looking for a stepping stone in the IT industry and are unsure of your skills as a programmer then applying for QA is probably the best way you can enter the industry.

• Myself Yourself – Series Review
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Programming Tools
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 1

Also, I noted that Week 2‘s series was too long. It probably bored everyone so I’ll snip things off to size so that it’ll be manageable for everyone.

Now, on with the 3rd entry of my Guide to Programming Series, Writing a program.

Whenever, on impulse, you decide to sit down and start writing a program, you’re likely to mess things up. In terms of cooking, it’s like doing it without a proper set of instructions and praying that the dish will turn out right.

For simple programs like those taking user input and displaying it on-screen, you can mostly get away without much planning but to be able to create something complex, you want to take time to design your program before you type a single code. If you know how your program will flow, how it looks and what it can and can’t do, then writing code will be a straightforward task.

Before You Write Your Program

An unplanned project is likely to end up with a program that doesn’t work, behaves strangely or solves the wrong problem. The decision to stop development at this point is highly likely, because although you’ve invested a lot of time and effort what you’ve ended up with is simply unworkable or isn’t worth salvaging.

Planning ahead helps you avoid this development deadlock and gives you some margin for experimentation. Keep these in mind when designing a program:

• Who’s going to use your program?
• What computer (OS) will run your program?
• Will you work on it alone or with a team? If you’re on a team, what parts are yours and what aren’t?

At the design stage, it’s best that you don’t base your development framework on what programming language you will be using. This is to prevent you from being sloppy and assign things that you can design yourself to be handled by the language (exceptions, typecasts). Once you know exactly what you want your program to do, decide on which programming language might be easiest to use or will suit your system and/or needs.

• Guide to Programming Series: Week 4
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Programming Tools
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 1
• General Programming Tips

If anyone can show me how to do it right, it’d be greatly appreciated.

Again apologies.

For Week One, we’ve established that programming is nothing more than issuing step-by-step instructions that tells a computer waht to do. Computers are stupid, they need exact instructions to function making programming so time consuming.

How do you tell a computer what to do? Computers don’t understand words, which is why people must write instructions for a computer by using a special or programming language.

A collection of instructions that tell the computer what to do is known as a program. The instructions, written in a specific programming language, is known as the source code.

What Language is the best?

Unlike other standards where it’s easy to pick one as the Cream of the Crop, it’s quite hard to pick and stick to a single language altogether. Many of them serves a specific purpose, like micro-controller assembly, while others serve multiple purposes. It’s basically a preference thing when it comes to picking out your native language.

Because a computer’s processor is made of millions of transistors, they are limited to a language that consists of 1′s and 0′s, which is known as machine language. Here’s an example:

0011 1100 1010 1111

0101 0110 1101 0101

Did you understand what it meant? I know I didn’t. Programming in machine language is prone to mistakes and creating programs takes a much longer time. For example, if you wanted to display a “Hello sylv3rblade” message in ruby, you only need to type:

puts("sylv3rblade!")

And press enter. If you wanted to do the same for machine language, you could end up with one hundred lines of codes and still be far from displaying the letter “W.”

• Guide to Programming Series: Week 4
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
• Programming Tools
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 1
• General Programming Tips

PDF Reader:

Not all students have books.  Sometimes, a free ebook helps to guide you when coding is a bore.

Foxit PDF Reader – This is an ultra light alternative to Adobe Reader. It opens instantly and has a very small footprint. I dropped it after installing the latest version though since it now uses an installer while the old one uses compressed, stand alone executable much like utorrent.
Sumatra – is a similar program to Foxit. It also has a portable version which makes it perfect for people like me who are always on the go but can’t leave their fave apps behind.

Coding:

kompoZer – is a lightweight alternative to the bigger, pricey web development suites like Microsoft Expression Web (the replacement for Frontpage) and Macromedia Dreamweaver (Now Adobe) which stemmed from the now defunct project NVU. It’s perfect for HTML and CSS beginners since the WYSIWYG editor does away with much of the coding. If you need a more advanced editor for PHP, XHTML, XML and other web documents, go for HTML-Kit. A mobile version for KompoZer is also available.

Notepad++ - Ever since I discovered Notepad++, it’s been my primary programming companion. Notepad++ supports ASP, Assembly, C++, CSS, FORTRAN, HTML, Java, JavaScript, Pascal, Perl, PHP, PostScript, Python, Ruby, and so much more.

Some, and I stress SOME, of its features include:

• Auto-completion (language and file)
• Bookmarks
• Syntax highlighting (and brace and indent highlighting)
• Regular expression find and replace
• Split screen editing
• Zooming
• Spell checker (built in but requires Aspell)
• Hex editor (plug in available)
• Tabbed document interface

If that’s not enough, Notepad++ also features a mobile version.

IDEs:

.Net: MS Visual Basic .NET 2008 Express Edition

Java: Netbeans or Eclipse

Database Management

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express – It’s a handful yes but it SMSE can cut down on development time because you don’t need to relearn your SQL commands, well most of them anyway. the interface is easy to use but it really needs a good documentation to go with the installation. I spent about 3 hours poking around before I got things working on my first time working with SMSE. As obvious in its name, it’s for MS SQL only.

MySQL Administrator and Query Browser – provides the same GUI interface for SMSE but to is packaged into two separate applications. It’s much simpler to use than SMSE but working around the Query browser can be a bit confusing (remember to click the edit button!) for a lot of reasons. They’re a lot useful compared to the usual command prompt controls for SQL though. Both programs are meant for MySQL only.

UML Tools

If you’re using Netbeans and Eclipse, then you don’t have to worry about installing a 3rd party program because Netbeans has it’s own modeling tool (on 5.5) while Eclipse supports this function via EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework).

For Linux, there’s Umbrello for KDE and Gaphor for GNOME. On windows, you can use Star UML if you don’t want to shell out cash for MS Visio.

Remote Desktop

VNC : VNC is multi-platform an desktop application that allows you to control a graphical user session on a machine remotely through the network. If you’re running on a Mac then use OSX VNC.

• Blizzard Product Roadmap Leaked!
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 4
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 1

Keep in mind that most of the information I’ll be posting will have been derived mainly from books and/or popular knowledge that I’ve encountered.  I’m not an expert but I know what works and I feel I’m competent enough to share my knowledge.  Comments, suggestions and even violent reactions are welcome.

I’ll focus on the pure basics of programming for now so if you feel you’re competent on the field, subscribe to my feeds and come back a bit later in time for the more advanced lessons or check out some of my past posts on software development. I’m still deciding on the schedule of the series but it’ll likely be just weekly so I can cope up with my OJT, school matters and social life (wait! I have a social life?!? O.o)

What is computer programming?

Like many of your books on computing and, although it’s a long shot, electronics, Computer Programming, or programming, coding, or scripting depending on your discipline, is defined as the process of writing instructions that tell the computer what to do, how to do it and what not to do. Without programs, our computers and gadgets would be just sleek pieces of paper weight.

Programming isn’t difficult

It can be time consuming as well as frustrating.
Programming requires as much patience as if you are instructing a child. You can tell a computer what to do unless you specify what it’s supposed to do, not do and how to do it. In a very literal sense, computers are completely stupid because you need to tell them how to do everything as well as provide contingencies if something go wrong.
For example, you’re a giving a friend instructions to get to your house.

1. Go to the terminal.
2. Ride a bus going to Cavite
3. Get off at Island Cove.
4. Cross the street and look for road between 2 stores.
5. Take the road until you see a green house.

As an example, let’s make your friend THAT stupid and he asks for additional information like:

1. Where is the bus terminal?
2. Is the bus headed to Cavite Town Proper or an adjacent town?
3. What if I can’t get off at Island Cove, where’s the next stop? Can I get off before Island Cove?
4. What is there’s more than one road that fits that description? How can I tell?
5. What if all houses in the area are green?

Frustrating isn’t it? Unless you specify everything that you want the computer to do and exactly how to do it, the computer just plain doesn’t do what you want it to do.

How does a computer program work?

Technically speaking, a computer is just a collection of huge number of transistors with a storage device and a power supply. To make the computer do something useful rather than just suck power, you must give it instructions:

• Write a program, which tells a computer what to do, step-by-step, much as you write out a recipe.
• Buy or download a program that someone else has already written that tells the computer what to do.

Programs are basically what turns your computer into it’s useful form. Without them, surfing the web, typing your reports and even watching movies would be virtually impossible. A program tells your computer EXACTLY what to do and nothing more. Like a boss ordering his employees around, you may get the occasional crash and malfunctions like a deviant member of the staff not following as ordered.

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• Guide to Programming Series: Week 4
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Programming Tools

Thank you for signing up for the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Professional Edition Evaluation Experience.

Visual Studio 2008 enables developers and development teams to create great connected applications on the latest platforms, including the Web, Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008.

This e-mail message includes key resources that can help you get the most out of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Beta 2. We will continue to provide you with relevant and comprehensive content via the MSDN Flash, customized for you to enrich your evaluation experience.

Here’s a pointwise (per topic) compilation of what’s new in VS 2008. I’ll just post the link to each topic since having them defined in one post will too long for comfort. I’ll keep playing around with the new version of VS and see if it’s worth migrating to since a lot of things have to be considered especially compatibility with SQL Server 2005 and the new SQL Server 2008.

What’s New:

• Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
  • Settings Migration
  • Community Components
  • Community and Help Menus
  • Window Management
  • Class Designer
• Projects and Solutions
  • Web Application Projects
  • AJAX Development
  • Project Designer
  • Deployment
• Editing
  • New Design View and CSS Design Tools
  • IntelliSense for Jscript and ASP.NET AJAX
  • Object Browser and Find Symbol Support for Multi-targeting
  • WPF Designer
• Data
• Language-Integrated Query (LINQ)
• Client Application Services
• Reporting
  • New Report Projects
  • Report Wizard
  • Expression Editor Enhancement
  • ReportViewer Printing
  • PDF Compression
• MSBuild
  • Target a Specific .NET Framework
  • Multiple Processor Capabilities
  • Enhanced Logging
  • Item Definitions
  • Assembly Location and Name Changes

Since .NET 3.5 Framework is required to make Visual Studio 2008 run, here’s a rundown of features for it as well:

ASP.NET

• Support for enabling existing ASP.NET 2.0 pages for AJAX
• Creation of ASMX & WCF based web services and consuming them from AJAX Library
• ASP.NET server side application services like authentication, roles management exposed as web services
• ASP.NET Merge Tool – a new tool for merging pre-compiled assemblies
• New ListView control which supports edit, insert, delete, sorting & paging
• ASP.NET integrated with core IIS 7.0 which makes ASP.NET services like authentication & caching available for other content types also.
• Microsoft AJAX Library to support AJAX based web development

Base Classes & CLR

• Support for CSharp 3.0 including LINQ.
• HashSet : A high performance collection of type set.
• Time Zone Improvements : to develop applications which operate in multiple time zones
• Minor Improvements in Threading, Reflection and controlling the GC behavior

Others

• Client Application Services : All windows based application to use ASP.NET login, roles and profile services hosted on central server.
• Occasionally Connected Services (OCS) : keeps windows application’s local and remote data in sync.
• ‘Silver’ : code name for a new technology which unifies WF and WCF
• WCF Syndication : WCF services exposing syndication feeds. Supports Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0

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• I want to ___ with Meebo

Before you can get access to the API, Meebo requires developers to register their upcoming applications (in student terms this is like a proposal of a project) providing information like the title of application, descriptions and author’s names. Special instructions and a key will then be sent out to get connected to the database. Unlike major services that provide such opportunities, development can be in Flash (Actionscript) or Javascript and revenue that Meebo makes from such applications (advertisements primarily) will be splitted 50/50. Not bad really.

Applications will be tested in a Sandbox before release to ensure optimal performance and bug-free service.

At the moment, Meebo’s service includes connectivity with Yahoo!, AIM, MSN and GTalk messenger services aside from the Meebo network.  Soon we may see additional platforms like IRC and hopefully VoIP added to their suite.

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Why this development is important? At the moment, there are currently hundreds of clones of popular ideas on the net (like Wikipedia then Uncyclopedia, Digg then Reddit, Propeller, etc). Instead of having the clones working solo, why not allow them to band into a network where everyone can choose a topic, say technology and be able to enjoy content from all the joined networks. At the moment, if you wanted to view stuff from social networks, you need to go to them manually or check each of your interests’ feed.

While Google‘s idea may sound megalomaniac-ish, trying to form one large Social Network by providing the tools to do it, think about the time and the cost everyone will save in development as well as the amount of new opportunities once new and existing social networks gives access to their data. Everyone has more access to more information as well as more people within their network.

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General guidelines

• Avoid white spaces in the source code while possible.
• During initial development, make methods/functions public. Allot proper permissions once you’ve singled out which methods needs to be private for data encapsulation.
• Follow a naming convention. It’s tempting to use X, Y and Z as variables and method1, method2 and method3 as method names but doing so would be counterproductive. You’ll be spending half your time trying to cipher what each of them does.

Delete unused blocks

Instead of commenting stuff out, it’s much easier to save another version of your code and delete it. Versioning/version control helps out if you need to test parts of your code without reducing readability.

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

Avoid trying to make your code impressive by making it more complex than it needs to be.

A lot of long-time developers (which will probably be part of a Quality Assurance Team) will appreciate code that is simple and easy to understand. Instead of relying on your documentation to explain things piece by piece, why not let the code do it?

The time you will spend on simplification will reduce the time you spend relearning the code if you have to make changes later on.

Comments AND documentation

Even with simple coding, there’s some need for comments to explain things like do’s and don’ts on using blocks of code, etc. Don’t elaborate on the explanation on the comments. You can do that on the documentation with a short reference to the block of code in question.

Avoid repetition

Use refactoring or similar techniques if possible to remove lines of codes that do the same thing. Duplication is bad. This is specially critical when developing web applications. You need to lessen the stress on the server as much as possible which is why there is a need to reduce the number of queries that your application is going to require.

If you absolutely need to reiterate, put things into a loop instead of using multiple instances of almost-the-same code.

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• Guide to Programming Series: Week 4
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
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“We’re trying to converge everything to the Java SE specification. Cell phones and TV set-top boxes are growing up,” Sun Vice President James Gosling said. “That convergence is going to take years.”Sun will slowly phase out Java Micro Edition (ME) and allow it’s functions to be absorbed into Java Standard Edition (SE) to cope with more powerful hardware on mobile devices. After all it’s not at all reasonable to run a lightweight version of Java when your device can run everything.

Spearheading the trend is Sun’s new JavaFX Mobile, which is from the SavaJe acquisition, and is something that the company hopes mobile phone makers will embrace. Almost everything you see in JSE is packed into JavaFX Mobile with some major truncations.

While migration to Java SE won’t happen overnight, Rich Green, Sun’s executive vide president of software, said he expects smart phones using various pared-down versions of Java to stay in the market for at least a decade. For Gosling though, “All the work in Java ME had been pushing it closer and closer to Java SE.”

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Why not just pick a language at random? That would definitely cut your time by eliminating your reviews of other available options but then again you’ll be limiting yourself by not knowing what you can and can’t do with your chosen language. Knowing is half the battle after all and with software development, knowing less about your choice of language means less useful features for your software.

Compiled vs. Interpreted

You might find this comparison rather confusing because all this time, after learning your programming aptitude from books and your peers (or school if it’s given as a subject) programming is classified into structured and object-oriented programming. While this holds true with the development stage, this comparison is based from the concept of implementation and deployment. Read more on OO on the next part.

A compiled language uses a compiler program that translates the source code into a language that your machine can understand (like an exe or jar file) or machine code in short. After being compiled, the program will run via the executable without a need for it to be re-compiled.

The advantages of compiled languages:

• Execution speed: because it lacks the need for recompilation, compiled programs run faster.
• Code Hiding: like as with most propriety software, you can close-source your program and prevent you competitors from putting you out of business.

An interpreted language is translated from source code to bytecode at runtime, with an interpreter program.

The advantages of interpreted languages:

• Flexibility: changes to your program can be made on the fly without the need for a recompile and you are not confined to a single operating system environment
• Dynamic typing: the data types are not (wholly) declared on variables
• Ease of Debugging: self explanatory

To OO or not to OO

Implementation of Object Orientation should depend mainly on what you are working on. Although some people do not consider it a good practice to switch on and off between it, I think it’s sensible. When you’re creating a program for just say Hello World, why in the world will you waste your time trying to implement it in OO? Sure it will look pretty code-wise but objectively it’s just a waste of time. Finding when and where to use object orientation is the key which is why a mixed-paradigm language should be your first choice because it gives you the option of using OO or not.

Linux, Windows, Mac, Solaris

If you wish to go into web development then a portable system will always be more sellable than a native one. Note that there will be some changes on your software’s behavior in different environments so if you plan on going multi-platform, be sure to test things out on any available operating system and try to work the kinks out.

Going native is also a good option because although it limits you to one operating environment, your software has full access to any and all services that”s included in your system. Visual Basic 2005 and the .NET architecture is a prime example of this integration.

Am I secure

it’s a question that large developments always face. Some languages are more secure than others regardless of implementation (although that’s not a good practice, you MUST ensure your software is secure at all times) which is why developers flock to them when creating specific softwares. Try to get around what’s hot and what’s not. Here’s a few things you should add to that checklist .

• Strong typing
• A test framework
• Garbage Collection – a must!

Integration

There will be times (although not often) that you will need to work with 2 or more languages at once which is where the question of integration pops up. One reason for this could be that a part of your software can be integrated much more efficiently if you use the language B while language A makes up the rest. Although I have yet to encounter a project that requires me to do this, there have been some instances that my job would have been a lot easier if I had chosen to integrate a 2nd language instead of sticking to one. Visual Basic.Net and C# is a prime example.

Where to get help

You should always know your sources. Whether you stick with e-books or go to online sites and forums for help, you should know where to look for answer to your questions. How to’s, troubleshooting, and learn by example stuff can be easily found in the language’s respective communities so be sure to ask around.

My current sources of information include:

• Books and ebooks
• Forums and blogsites dedicated to my preferred languages (java and now PHP at the moment)
• Daily and/or weekly emails from developer sites like Code Project
• My peers who specialize in their fields of expertise

Pardon the excessive reuse of the word language and the repetitive references to VB.

• Guide to Programming Series: Week 4
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Programming Tools
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 1

Freelancing

Freelancing is not for everyone especially for those just starting out because all of the work goes to you. Talking to clients, information gathering, coding, the works. It’s not the easiest job in the world but it’s definitely one of the most rewarding.

Why freelancing?

• Flexible Schedule – freelancing full time or part time is your choice. There’s nothing stopping you from choosing a schedule that will work for you. Like the idea working at night when everything is peaceful and quiet? Your will not cut into your other commitments so long as you choose not to.
• Choosing your Projects – Once you have established yourself in the market, you can choose to work only on projects that interests you. Each new project that you picked personally will not only save you headaches but also allow you to appreciate your work more.
• Everyday Learning – One of the better parts of Freelancing is researching. You get to learn more something new as you do research on what you need to finish your task. Although you can choose projects that you already know a lot about, taking assignments where you are still a novice, or at least a wide variety of projects, can sometimes be very rewarding. If not the experience then the knowledge you’ll earn will be worth the effort.
• Independence - You are your own boss. You work as you wish and set up your own goals. For some people, nothing else can be better than that.
• More earning potential – The more projects you take in, the more money you will make. If you’re well established, you can set prices on projects and command premium rates.
• Meeting new people -- Once you get a steady stream of clients, you get to meet all types of people and interact with them. No more living in the dark for you.

What does it take to go into freelancing?

• Determination – Or motivation, depending on how you look at things. You need to be able to finish everything that you started no matter how challenging the work is. Leaving things half-done or buggy is a sign that freelancing is not for you.
• Flexible knowledge - If you’re starting up as a freelancer, you should get to know some if not all of the possible languages your possible-clients will want to implement. I’m not saying that you have to know every nook and cranny of these languages however, familiarity with their use will be enough because you will spend most of your time planning and developing more than coding your work.
• The right aptitude – While becoming familiar with what language you’ll be using maybe enough, you should at least have some know-how on making things work. You should at least know where to ask for questions or find answers when your in a pinch. Knowing what System.out.println(*data*) means isn’t useful if you don’t even know how to make the UI for the input right.
• Generosity - Although your projects are your bread and butter, there are times when you need to donate to the community. Providing free, easy to use softwares for everyone to use and providing support for them when possible is the best and easiest way to gain the attention you sorely need.
• Awareness with updates - Because software development can be rapid, there will be times that you have just considered yourself competent in one field when a new one enters the market. You must be able to decide if you can use the new technology or use the time to improve yourself with what you already know.

Corporate Programming

If you’re the type of person who prefers working with a group then try applying for a job on a company. You will need to do less work and you are assured that there’s a paycheck waiting for you at every payday. Not everyone’s cup of tea but you certainly can’t the fact it’s hell of a lot easier than freelancing.

Why go corporate?

• Financial security - One thing that you’ll definitely be assured of is when and where the next pay cheque.
• No more self-marketing – if you’re part of a company, you have no need worry if your clients, present and past still have you on their mind if they need a project to be worked on.
• Fixed need of expertise - Companies usually stick with one language and simply make it work. There’s little need for your to keep up with what’s the current trend. The only updates that you need to look into are those of what development platform your company is using.
• No more fee negotiations - Payments for your work will fall on your salary. You don’t need to come to a mutual agreement with your client?your employer will do that for you.
• Being part of a team – Because there’s more of you working on a single project, you will spend less time with development, coding and implementation. Better teamwork can also lead to better friendship with your teammates.
• The possibility of promotion - If the company loves your work well enough, you can find yourself in the envious position of project manager. You won’t have to deal with skepticism because your credentials will more than speak for you.

What does it take to go corporate?

• Credentials – If you’re fresh graduate, this can be a bit of a problem (myself included). Some companies use school credentials, namely the transcript as a basis for hiring people While I don’t frown upon the idea, it strikes me as unfair if you did bad on your lesser skills in school and don’t get hired for it. It’s old fashioned yes but company policies are adamant. Fortunately, there are others who would offer you a job if you simply passed their test, using your credentials as formalities only.
• Knowledge on what the company needs - Looking at the classified Ads, you’ll find that companies are searching for a specific programmer at anyone time. This is because it’s the company’s policy to stick with one technology at anyone time due to financial reasons. Changing technology within the company is a hefty and dangerous gamble which is why it’s so rare. if you want to enter into a company of your choosing, you only need to study what they require and little else. A bit of research on the company’s history will do you wonders in the job interview as well.
• Willingness to work with a team – Having the right chemistry with your team is a long and winding process. Freelancers who wish to go corporate usual find it hard to work with other people because they are used to working alone. While it’s really efficient and beneficial for all if you work with the team, it can take some time and effort.
• Willingness to work with under someone- You should be aware that your boss holds your paycheck. Try not to cross him or her every so often or you might find yourself looking for another job.

• Guide to Programming Series: Week 4
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Programming Tools
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 1

Linus has a minor point there however, considering the fact that I have access to several other high level languages, programming in C++ simply doesn’t count for serious development for me. However, for smaller, less versatile application like the Bairstow (a numerical method problem) subroutine, C++ seems the perfect choice because it’s much simpler to use than going with Java or .Net. It’s a surprise that after all these years there’s still room in the world for such discussions. Shouldn’t developers be more flexible in terms of their choice of programming language? Whatever happened to “Use the best tool for the job”?

• Blizzard Product Roadmap Leaked!
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 3
• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Programming Tools
• Choosing a programming language

This announcement heats up the battle between Adobe and Microsoft by providing a viable alternative to Flash Player for organizations that may already have their video files encoded in Windows Media format. In the face of a market where the competition holds 90% of everything, MS is in for a tough battle.

FLASH vs Silverlight

Developing in Flash requires a person with very specific skills in its own language, Actionscript and because it limits you to flash development alone, Actionscript programmers are few and far between. Silverlight can be written with more common languages like C#, the .NET environment or even something like Ruby or Python.

Silverlight is built on the .Net architecture, which means it can take full advantage of the features available to the framework. Silverlight would be more searchable and indexableFlash as it is not compiled, but represented as text. Silverlight makes it possible to dynamically load XML content that can be manipulated through a DOM interface, a technique that is consistent with conventional Ajax techniques.

Microsoft announced its intention to support Linux through the Moonlight initiative. Microsoft will build the video codecs for the Moonlight project and supply Novell with software to test and ensure Silverlight runs well on Suse Linux, Red Hat and Ubuntu.

For Flash’s credit, Microsoft still needs a few quirks and edits before Silverlight can challenge the giant:

• JavaScript- CLR did not seem to have made it to version 1.0. JavaScript is inconsistent across browsers in both API’s and in performance.
• XAML streaming- Silverlight uses XML, which must be parsed and rendered and then bound into the JavaScript runtime. Performance takes an overall hit because of this and I don’t see a viable workaround.
• Cross-Platform – We all know how terrible Microsoft is at cross-platforming. Hopefully Moonlight changes that record.

Adobe won’t be caught sitting on it’s laurels, and are working on innovations within the Flash Player and Apollo runtimes. No word on when Apollo 1.0 will be out though.

You can download Silverlight 1.0 runtime here

• Blizzard Product Roadmap Leaked!
• Microsoft sells a million Kinects in 10 days
• Xbox 360 Slim gets hacked
• Microsoft announces Kinect pricing and bundles
• Five Technology Disappointments in 2007

Having done Java development for about 2 years, I?m constantly looking for ways to improve development time. From Notepad, I moved to Netbeans. I dabbled with J# in Visual Studio 2005 but I felt like a fish out of water so I switched back. And just recently, I’ve discovered Eclipse.

Here’s a list of what I liked on all 3 IDE’s:

Netbeans:

• Better mobile development tools
• Better support for html, jsp, xml, xslt
• Uses Matisse (the new GUI builder) which is way ahead of anything Eclipse has to offer
• JFluid profiler
• Free/Open Source Software so it?s easily modifiable to fit your needs and it can be used for developing commercial tools
• Multiplatform: it works on Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, etc.
• Plug-ins!
• Free
• Not confined to the Windows environment and to developing Windows/ASP.NET/PocketPC based applications

Visual Studio:

• Excellent debugging tools
• Excellent Windows.Forms GUI designer
• Access to all CLR features
• .Net Integration

Eclipse:

• Better refactoring tools
• Less resource hog
• Has an excellent Quickfix (Ctrl + 1) with more options than VS?s one
• Integrated CVS
• Uses RCP framework
• Integrated unit testing tools
• Free functional tests, code coverture, etc. via free plug-ins
• Free/Open Source Software so it?s easily modifiable to fit your needs and it can be used for developing commercial tools
• Multiplatform: it works on Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, etc.
• Tools for every other possible language
• Free
• Not confined to the Windows environment and to developing Windows/ASP.NET/PocketPC based applications

• Guide to Programming Series: Week 2
• Programming Tools
• Visual Studio 2008
• 6 Reasons to Switch to Linux
• I want to ___ with Meebo