Jeff Makes Software

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, G4 has decided to rename The Screen Savers, formerly the best tech show anywhere on TV, to "Attack of The Show."

Do you ever wonder who is running that network? They obliterated a well-known brand, alienated and dismissed an audience that bought BMW's and Oracle software instead of monetizing it, and decided that running video game shows all day, every day, most of them repeats what a good idea.

Rarely do I say that I want a business to fail, but this one should. They deserve it. No media acquisition in recent memory has made less sense than this. Read the various blogs of the people that either got canned or left, and it gives you a good perspective about what goes on there. Paul Allen should be ashamed for ever having sold the network.

The irony in all of this is that the one last TechTV hold-over is X-Play, and it has gone relatively unchanged. It's ironic because TechTV did that one show better than G4 did the rest of the network.

Today I sat down with the project manager that I'm working with on this contract project to figure out how long it will take to build the product. Actually, all we really did is map out the time for requirements, which we're pretty sure will actually take more time than the actual development (as well it should be).

But based even on our preliminary SWAG on the client's needs, and a look at the horrible system we're going to replace, I have such a hard time guessing how much time it will take to build. With solid requirements, my feeling is that it shouldn't take more than six weeks. All of the hard work will be done in the requirements and design process.

As kind of aside, what do y'all use for requirements tracking, and does it have some kind of bug tracking capability as well?

I saw on Frans' blog that Billy "Wicked" Wilson died at age 33. He was the creator of Voodoo Extreme, a gaming site that, as he would say, "kicks more ass than Gary Coleman on a crack binge." It was essentially a blog site, back in the days when no one knew what the hell a blog even was. He linked you to the good stuff, every day, and gave you his opinion the way few people could. I think he coined the term "thimble dick," which to this day makes me giggle.

VE eventually got too big in that era where great sites got expensive to run and the advertising dollars just couldn't cover the expense. I don't know the specifics, but apparently he nearly lost everything, got divorced and the domain was eventually sold to IGN. Some of the stuff I've found indicates he was too proud to ask his audience for money. He fairly recently co-founded Gaming Groove, where you'll find several postings about his death.

Billy's version of VE really inspired me, and honestly it was the reason that I started CoasterBuzz. He demonstrated that you didn't have to be a corporate tool or follow traditional media conventions to attract, entertain and retain an audience. It was editorial-journalism about the journalism and the gaming industry.

Details on his death aren't clear, but he was apparently sick in the hospital for a few days. Regardless, it sucks. He is survived by his ex-wife and son.

Edit: Apparently he died of liver disease...
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/596/596034p1.html

After bugging Amazon a bit, and worrying about it, Amazon is finally shipping my book.

You can order the book here.

Thanks to those of you that offered encouraging words in the last post, and indeed in the 16 months that the project has been on my mind. If you're interested in evaluation copies, I suppose you'll have to contact Addison-Wesley directly. You can't have any of my copies. :)

In a post from Tom Arnold, PM and ninja for VSTS Test, he says in response to my post that the stuff I didn't like about the testing stuff will be fixed in beta 2. Rock on. That's good news. In particular I hope that they deal with the clickable trace output. That would be sweet.

See, Microsoft does listen. For all the crap MS catches about being arrogant or monopolistic or whatever, I tend to think they're humble and want to build products that customers actually want. I've read nonsense about how all this tool integration is designed to give the company a "stranglehold" on the market and lock people in or something like that, and I find that outright stupid. Put aside the fact that Microsoft is not a charity, but it behooves them to build stuff people want. How crazy is that?

I'm reading the Head First Design Patterns book (you know, the one with the cute barefoot blonde girl on the cover) right now. It's actually a Java book, but if you know C# you can mostly get it. While I bought the book to find something not dry and boring to formalize what I thought I already knew, as an aside I see more than ever how Java-like C# is. And I say, who cares? Java is C-like, so it's all evolutionary. I don't recall anyone at Microsoft ever saying, "We created this new thing that no one ever thought of."

I guess that tangent is just to comment that I still see people post stupid things like "M$" and hate on the company for no good reason other than it's fashionable. Microsoft does listen (unless you're a disgruntled non-evolving VB6 coder), and in a world where open source gets all kinds of press, you can be damn sure that Microsoft will continue to develop products people want. What alternative do they have? If they don't, they'll eventually die.

Someone pointed out to me that Bookpool already sold out of my book, which means either they didn't get very many copies or they sold a bunch. Meanwhile, Amazon is sitting on a mess of pre-orders (via my affiliate link) and telling people it won't ship until the first week of May! What's up with that? The book is clearly out because a few people already have their copy. I've got a bunch too!

I'm nervous as hell about the success of the book, not because of any financial reasons, but because I really want it to help people. I'm still confident there's a strong audience for it and the marketing message I think is mostly right. I guess like anyone that produces some kind of work, I need to let it go and let the world take care of it at this point.

Trent asked, "What is your plan for evaluating Beta 2 when it comes out? Do you have a general set of criteria before you decide on using it for production code?"

In terms of the tools, honestly they were mostly working better than the RTM of VS 2003. I'm already sold there. As a Web jockey, having an HTML editor that won't f-up my code is a nice change after years of the super-nasty 2003 version.

In terms of the framework itself, I don't have anything that I think I'm ready to put "out there," but when I do, I'm basically looking for the ability to perofrm under load for days, not break, and pass tests. I'm not that demanding. Or am I? :)

I gave the unit testing facilities in VSTS the old college try, but it's not good enough (see previous post). I can't possibly work with it if I can't debug running tests.

I realize we're still in the early stages for the product, but I just can't imagine having to go on using NUnit, NAnt, Cruise Control, etc. in the typical development process. Hopefully Microsoft can address some of my concerns, because I doubt I'm the only one.