Google in 10 years...

[Got from a mail by Buddhima]

Good design is not an accident...

Well… we have finished hard part of shifting the company and may start to work tomorrow or day after tomorrow. New place new beginning right: )

Anyway this post is not abt that but a problem I'm facing these days.

I know it is how important to share your ideas, designs etc... between your colleagues right. If you are an associate architect you have to have senior architect to associate with no.... But what happens if there is no one? And all others are struggling like you. That would make you feel really really bad. Especially if you have just thrown in to architecture or maturing in to it and have got 3+ years of experience in software development and have a huge enterprise application to design. If you wanna be a good architect I believe you have to work with senior architects. They will guide you, correct you, rescue you, teach you and specially will share their experience with you. I believe that’s makes a real architect.

Anyway I have my senior colleagues in to the rescue although they haven’t got huge experience with architecture. But believe me they are best and also thriving like me so we together as a team could do sth definitely good.

This is a nice post from Nick Malic although it's not talking abt peoples who are maturing in to architect.
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2006/03/10/549189.aspx

I couldnt help just posting the url only. So here is the artcle itself. :)

One potential often missed in a large IT organization is the potential for us to lift up another person's design skills. Perhaps we are competitive, or perhaps sometimes, we figure that "it's all the same anyway," but a lot of IT project designers don't want to show their designs to other folks.

But if I never look at your designs, how will I improve? And if you never allow me to offer feedback to your design, how will you improve?

Artists get this right. So do craftsmen. Emphasis is placed on being recognized. For that to happen, your design has to be in an understandable media, and has to be on display. Not on a shelf where someone COULD go look at it if they want to, but on DISPLAY, where other folks have no choice but to see it.

And then, not just to see it, but to compare, critique, appreciate, and exemplify. There need to be design competitions, and the winning of a design competition should mean something tangible, like a greater chance of moving up or a bigger bonus or even public praise and acclaim.
Smaller companies that don't have so many IT workers may not be able to participate, but they should be able to partake of the results. Acclaim should extend beyond the walls.
We do have "showcase" apps in Microsoft IT, but only where it will sell a product or illustrate how to solve a problem with MS tools. Not so much as a mandatory mechanism to bring out the best in IT design.

Otherwise, good design happens when a good designer accidentally has a good day or is accidentally assigned to a project that they would be good at. I mean "accidentally" because something is either an expression of the system that produces it, or it is an accident of the combination of skilled people and a project that suits them.

Making good design a part of the system, reinforcing it, rewarding it, and heaping public praise and acclaim on those who practice it will go a long way towards making excellence in design a normal part of life.

We are moving...

This weekend was kinda busy one. Didn’t go home as usual but came to office. We Kandysoft New Zealand (Pvt) ltd are moving into a new place at Kirulupana from Nawala office. We wont use anything belongs to the old office except people. :)

So we have new machines, servers, desks, chairs…etc... Everything is new. So have to install software’s into 30 mc’s. Not an easy task since most of the mc’s has to have VS 2003, 2005, SQL 2000, 2005 and lot more…

New place at Kirulupana seems cool but not that roomy like the old place. And parking problem we always had at Nawala is also there. Will see what happens…

A comparison of Microsoft C# 2 to Sun’s Java 2

This article is compiled by Dare Obasanjo. Interesting thing is this is looking at C# from a java developer's prospective. :)

http://www.25hoursaday.com/CsharpVsJava.html

How to recruit the right person for the job?

Aj had sent me this email. Enjoy... :)

Put about 100 bricks in some
particular order in a closed
room with an
open window.

Then send 2 or 3 candidates in
the room and close the door.
Leave them alone and come back
after 6 hours and then analyze
the situation.

If they are counting the
bricks.
Put them in the accounts
department.

If they are recounting them..
Put them in auditing.

If they have messed up the
whole place with the bricks.
Put them in engineering.

If they are arranging the
bricks in some strange order.
Put them in planning.

If they are throwing the
bricks at each other.
Put them in operations.

If they are sleeping.
Put them in security.

If they have broken the bricks
into pieces.
Put them in information
technology.

If they are sitting idle.
Put them in human resources.

If they say they have tried
different combinations, yet
not a brick has
been moved. Put them in sales.

If they have already left for
the day.
Put them in marketing.

If they are staring out of the
window.
Put them on strategic
planning.

And then last but not least.
If they are talking to each
other and not a single brick
has been
moved.
Congratulate them and put them
in top management.

Set NTFS file system folder permissions programmatically

Check this out...

How to programmatically set NTFS file system folder permissions by using Active Directory Service Interfaces in Microsoft Visual C#

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899553/EN-US/

World's Fastest, Most Expensive Car

When your car costs more than $1.2 million, travels over 230 mph, and hits 62 mph in 2.5 seconds, you do not sit in a passenger cabin — you sit in a "survival cell."

Wanna buy this... :)
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Moms/story?id=1406161

Using pointers in C#?

Have you ever thought that we could use pointers in C#? Yes we could. I did it for fun 2 years ago when I was at iDial Networks among some strong C, C++ programmers. : )

Anyway today one of my friends asked me how to do that and I refreshed my knowledge on that so thought to share it here.

When you are using pointers in C# you have to tell the compiler about that clearly using unsafe keyword.

You can use unsafe modifier in the declaration of a type or a member. So the entire extent of the type or member will be considered as unsafe.

The scope of the unsafe context extends from the parameter list to the end of the method, so pointers can be used in the parameter list also.

unsafe static void FastCopy (byte* ps, byte* pd, int count)
{
// unsafe context: can use pointers here
}

You can use unsafe code blocks also like this.

unsafe
{
// unsafe context: can use pointers here
}

If you have unsafe code in your program, you have to specify the /unsafe compiler option. Otherwise you will get a compiler error. Unsafe code won’t verifiable by the CLR.

Unsafe code is in fact a "safe" feature from the perspective of both developers and users. Unsafe code must be clearly marked with the modifier unsafe, so developers can't possibly use unsafe features accidentally, and the execution engine works to ensure that unsafe code cannot be executed in an untrusted environment.

For more info in unsafe code refer to this.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/csref/html/vcwlkunsafecodetutorial.asp

Why visual studio 2005 doesn’t support importing class diagrams into vsio ?

Well… guys… I think you have used class diagrams in Visual Studio 2005. That’s cool right. Not like crappy interface we have seen in vsio it has very nice interface.
But some times we want to have our class diagrams in visio ‘cos Visual Studio does not supporting diagrams other than class diagrams. So if you are designing your application you may have to have couple of other type of diagrams too right. Domain, Use case, Robustness etc etc…

Problem is we can’t export our class diagrams into visio in VS 2005 but to an image only. I wonder any plug-in is available for importing VS class diagrams into visio. Any idea….?

Have fun with ASCII Art Generator

Today when I’m searching the net for an article found this in Code Project. Actually it’s not related to what I was looking for. But… it’s cool and fun. I'm a big fan of ASCII arts. Check this out.

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/AsciiArt.asp#xx1179779xx