Scott Hanselman

Games.

I'm making my Christmas list of XBox games for my wife. Here is what I have so far -

• Knights of the Old Republic
• Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
• BloodRayne (come on, a vampire in a World War II era?? What's not to like?)

Any other suggestions?
[News from the Forest]

Oh, you clearly need to get:

• Hunter: The Reckoning
• Splinter Cell
• Unreal

And I'd also suggest you take a pass on BloodRayne...yuck :P

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Great article with the biggest UNDERSTATEMENT of the year as it's title at Java Developer's Journal - "Is Complexity Hurting Java."  The article was pointed to me by my friend Edgar Sánchez...here's a small taste:

"EJB. JSP. JMS. JMX. JCA. JTA. JAAS. JAXP. JDBC. JNDI. This is a partial list of the acronyms you'll find in the 228-page J2EE v1.4 public draft. Of course, I was able to assemble this list of acronyms before I reached the bottom of page six."

And then it gets better:

"Each one of the aforementioned acronyms is a specification unto itself, so all you have to do is read each one, and you'll be set! Let's see here...the EJB 2.1 PFD specification is only 640 pages, so we can cover that on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday we can review the Servlet 2.4 PFD specification, which is a more palatable 307 pages. Then Thursday we can download and review the JSP 2.0 PFD specification ­ a mere 374 pages. Hmmm, maybe reading each of these in sequence isn't a solution either..."

And better:

"What is an acceptable time frame for a learning curve? Again, let's look at history. Both PB and VB offered a one week fast-track training course. A developer certainly wasn't ready to pass any certification tests after that one week. However, most students were fluent enough in the technology that after completing the course, assuming they used the technology on a daily basis at work, within three months they could be implementing business solutions. If we applied these same metrics to Java and J2EE, how would the technology rate? Right now, I believe the answer is very poorly."

And better:

"Specifications don't solve business problems ­ they solve technology problems. Companies expect their programming teams to solve business problems. Take any average Fortune 500 programming team with little or no Java experience ­ a team with a deadline to meet. Show them the number of specifications being released with J2EE 1.4. When you multiply that number by the complexity, size, and learning curve of each specification, I bet they become scared and want to reconsider the use of Java."

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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C# and Java: The Smart Distinctions. Article by Dominik Gruntz from Journal of Object Technology (Nov-Dec 2002 Issue), this article shows some of the subtle difference between C# and Java. [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]

This was a really interesting read...it really underscores the amount of thought IMHO that was put in to making C# better than Java.  They've really tried to offer the programmer a lot of power, even the power to shoot one in one's head.  Since a programming language syntax's primary goal is to allow me to clearly express my intentions, these are important changes.  If you look at Number 3, the changes to the try-finally behavior...you see than you can still shoot yourself, but they've removed the ambiguity.  Nothing sucks worse than to not really be sure if you intended to shoot yourself in the head...

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Charles Petzold is a very cool guy.   Of course we've all read his 1998 Programming Windows, the bible of Win32...I was weaned in the original 1990 Programming Windows.  I've just finished another offering from Charles.  It's called Code.  It's absolutely worth it if you can find a copy.  If you want to explain to your spouse what you do for a living, get it.  If you want to show someone not-to-technical why alternate number bases (hex, binary, etc) are interesting, get it.

I actually wrote 7 chapters of a similar book where I started from the Light Bulb and went up to the modern microprocessor.   I shopped it around to various publishers and then scrapped the idea when I discovered Charle's book.  He writes with startling clarlity.  He starts with morse code and braille and works up through history building and building...past light bulbs, the construction of memory, flip flops, older processors, assembly language...it's just fantastic.

This book should really be required reading in any CS101 class.  Hell, I'd make it required reading for High School Seniors.  It can "fill in the gap" for some many technology questions.  So many people take technology for granted...it just works.  I'm surprised at how few people ask "Why."  My kids will read this book...I have no kids, so as soon as they are born...and learn to read. 

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Greeting card virus licensed to spread. If a computer user carelessly clicks an "I agree" button and downloads an infectious program, is that program a virus? That's the question raised by a sneaky new e-mail. [CNET News.com]

This particular virus is evil...it nearly nailed me, and I'm supposed to be an expert!  It sends you to friendgreeting.com (DON'T GO HERE) or some similar domain.  It prompts you to download some innoucous thing like a flash runtime, and if you agree, it sends an unsolicited email to a bunch of your Outlook Contacts.  It installs itself as a Outlook AddIn and an Internet Explorer Listener.  Adds a LOT of stuff to the registry.  I was an idiot to even click "I agree" when it prompted me, and the only reason I didn't get nailed was that ZoneAlarm noticed something called "WinSrvc.exe" trying to get out...I may be slow, but I know EXACTLY what all 56 processes that are running on my Windows XP box are, and cleverly named it may be, this was a foreign process... 

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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