Category Archives: Link/News

Programmer’s Paradise

Joel of Joel on Software recently posted a good article on managing programmers in software companies. I liked this paragraph:

A programmer is most productive with a quiet private office, a great computer, unlimited beverages, an ambient temperature between 68 and 72 degrees (F), no glare on the screen, a chair that’s so comfortable you don’t feel it, an administrator that brings them their mail and orders manuals and books, a system administrator who makes the Internet as available as oxygen, a tester to find the bugs they just can’t see, a graphic designer to make their screens beautiful, a team of marketing people to make the masses want their products, a team of sales people to make sure the masses can get these products, some patient tech support saints who help customers get the product working and help the programmers understand what problems are generating the tech support calls, and about a dozen other support and administrative functions which, in a typical company, add up to about 80% of the payroll. It is not a coincidence that the Roman army had a ratio of four servants for every soldier. This was not decadence. Modern armies probably run 7:1.

 I have found that I am far more productive at home than in a cube. At home I have a private office, free drinks, a good computer (not great), two large screens, a perfect temperature, a good chair, and can listen to music out loud.

Programming is an exercise of the mind. The less you have to worry about your body the better your mind functions.

The web in a box

I was reading an interview of Gary Flake who works with MSN search. The following quote stood out to me:

 However, there is an even richer class of algorithms that can only be efficiently built on a 64 bit system because you essentially have to have a significant part of the web stored close to a single CPU. So, 64 bit systems pave the way for entirely new forms of relevance that look at how pages relate to one another.

That is just cool.

Microsoft announced recently that in a few months they would reveal a new search engine that is better than Google. This looks like part of it.

Dilbert and Unfit by the same artist

I haven’t seen this anywhere else on the web yet, but my suspicion is starting to grow. Even if it’s a nutty theory, I’m still going to put it forward. Has anyone else wondered if Mike Belkin and Scott Adams are the same person?

There is a relatively new comic out there called Unfit by author Mike Belkin. Recently, Dilbert’s Scott Adams hosted a contest for a new artist for Unfit on his blog.

Has it occured to anyone else that the type of humor portrayed in both comics is similar? I think there is even a strong similarity in the artwork (hence the reason for an artist contest?) and the lettering. Unfit is just slanted differently.

Does anyone else think this?

List<> vs. ArrayList

I read Rico Mariani’s latest quiz, and decided to check out the results for myself in BRayTracer.

I already have some simple performance benchmark tests in my NUnit tests, so I ran some before and after. I changed only the ArrayList’s used in the scene object to hold shapes, materials, and lights.

Before:

25.197 opaque spheres/sec (time: 3.969 )

After:

31.841 opaque spheres/sec (time: 3.141 )

Pretty impressive savings with minimal work! Almost a full second! In an enormous scene, that will add up to a LOT of time saved. I still have to change the implementation for polygons and polygonal meshes–this will greatly speed up those operations, which are currently fairly slow. In fact, the way I have polygonal meshes written at the moment, they’re nearly impossible to render in a decent amount of time.

More exciting things coming to BRayTracer soon…

Getting NUnit to work on .Net 2.0 and VS Studio 2005 Beta 2 (Whidbey)

I’ve been playing around VS.Net 2005 Beta 2 for a while now and like it so much that I’ve converted the BRayTracer to use it exclusively. Yes, this means you need .Net 2.0 to run all future versions, but it’s worth it.

I ran into the slight problem of not being able to use NUnit 2.2 with the latest .Net, but I found some help via google.

What worked for me specifically, was:

[code lang=”xml”]

[/code]

Of course, look in your C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework folder to see what versions you have.

BRayTracer Version 0.8 Released!

I’ve been having some very bad back pain today, and so today took some time off from work and class (it was the first day today!) to lay in bed and work on finishing up version 0.8 of BRayTracer.

I’m very proud of the improvements I’ve made to the latest version. Usability has been increased significantly and there are probably over a hundred bug fixes.

As always, feedback is appreciated. Check out the BRayTracer page to learn more and download a copy.

Yankee Group vs. Linux Zealots

There is a wonderful little article about the Yankee Group’s reaction to criticism of their surveys.

I’m not as forgiving as Laura DiDio. My entire undergraduate education was heavily Linux-based, and as I saw it, there were very few reasonable opinions. It was either love linux above all else and bash Microsoft with idiotic assertions, or be quiet.

Linux might be cool and fun to geek around with, but I mostly want to get work done. Linux doesn’t do it as well as Microsoft.