New Developer Tool Roadmap for Microsoft ;)

November 30, 2007

Microsoft just announced new .NET Web Product roadmap. These are great news to us .NET/Windows developers! However, Scott didn’t tell about the products I tell you about in this post. This is exclusive information and remember: you heard about them here first!

Overview

Hard core programmers don’t like fancy GUI-tools for development. Especially people with *nix and Perl and COBOL background scoff at products like "Visual Studio" or "Expression Web" or "Expression Blend". If it is too easy, it must produce inefficient code.

With these new products Microsoft wants to gain more market share from those who normally avoid Microsoft development tools.

Microsoft Regular Expression Web

"This command-line version of the Expression Web makes creating appealing web sites to Lynx-users more complicated than ever. There is no graphical user interface - just a command-line application with hundreds of case-sensitive parameters and options. Resulting scripts should make even experienced regex-guys jealous!

The product outputs HTML 1.0 and is guaranteed to make unappealing web sites with gray backgrounds and no images for those with bloated eye-candy browsers."

Microsoft Internet Explorer 1.0 running a site made with the Microsoft Regular Expression Web. Notice how links to bloated images are automatically broken - just to make a point.

Microsoft ASCIILight

"Sometimes great movies like ASCII StarWars or Matrix make you want to create something cool of your own. ASCIILight is guaranteed to run on any device capable of displaying ASCII and there are no need for any plug-ins. Text-format makes compression over HTTP effective, so there isn’t buffering. Be sure to use our Microsoft Regular Expression Blend for creating the ASCIILight animations!"

Microsoft Regular Expression Blend

"Microsoft Regular Expression Blend allows you to create ASCIILight -animations from the command-line using our new syntax also used by the Microsoft Regular Expression Web.

Of course, all the parameters do different things, just to make development with both products bit more challenging. The more cryptic command or script, the better looking results you’ll probably get. After all, fitting all the code on one line is art form of it’s own."

Note: Please don’t take this post too seriously - whichever operating system, platform or development tool you support. There is room for all the platforms, languages and competition bla bla ;)

No Comments » | Funny | Permalink
Posted by jemm

I HAS A VAR

August 19, 2007

HAI

LOLCODE is proceeding fast and this post sums up a bit, what is it and what’s happening.

Background

He steals!First there were the lolcats that took over the world.

Then there was the coding language

Now there are implementations, like LOL Code PHP Parser and especially the .NET language implementation. The CLR-version can be debugged and it was recently presented at the TechEd 2007 Australia.

You can find the official specs from the lolcode.com. Also, be sure to check out the 99 Bottles of Beer implementation with the LOL Code.

Examples

Types in LOLCODE:

“The variable types that LOLCODE currently recognizes are: strings (YARN), integers (NUMBR), floats (NUMBAR), and booleans (TROOF) (Arrays (BUKKIT) are reserved for future expansion.) Typing is handled dynamically. Until a variable is given an initial value, it is untyped (NOOB).”

http://lolcode.com/specs/1.2#types

You can initialize a variable like this:

I HAS A VAR ITZ 42

If-then constructs are simple enough:

<expression>
O RLY?
  YA RLY
    <code block>
  NO WAI
    <code block>
OIC
BOTH SAEM ANIMAL AN "CAT", O RLY?
  YA RLY, VISIBLE "J00 HAV A CAT"
  NO WAI, VISIBLE "J00 SUX"
OIC
http://lolcode.com/specs/1.2#flow-control
Hai world
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE
More examples

I wonder who’ll be the first brave project manager that chooses lolcats code for the official language of the project. :D Maybe when it comes with the .NET Framework. Only a matter of time, I believe…

Finally there is a language that I could teach to our cats.

KTHXBYE

No Comments » | .NET, CLR, Cats, Funny | Permalink
Posted by jemm

How to make 5 star rated software with the Notepad

August 17, 2007

image

When reading feeds, I stumbled upon a funny article called The software awards scam.

Basically, Andy Brice made a “program” called “awardmestars” by typing “this program does nothing at all” a few times in a text file and renaming it to .EXE. He then submitted the program to various software sites and received 16 awards! Not bad for a program that won’t even start. The whole story is worth reading.

Download sites give away highest awards so that the programmers are more likely to put them on their product pages. The generated traffic through the clicked awards is the ultimate goal of their givers. Sadly, scams like these eat the credibility of the good sites that give awards to those that really earn them.

This test was a real eye-opener and now on I’ll be much more sceptical to all the awards…

I found this article through another great (microISV) blog, 47hats.

No Comments » | Funny, Software | Permalink
Posted by jemm