With February I officially founded my own company! It is called Enaweg and creates software on demand among other things. This has been a busy time, planning for almost two years, reading lots of business stuff, calculating costs, getting enough financing going to start, talking to banks aso.
Also long time no post here! :( A lot has changed since 2013. I married a wonderful woman, become a father twice, first a girl then a boy! Furthermore, I travelled some parts of the world (Cuba, USA, Mexico, Island, Italy, North Germany, England, Ireland, Portugal). And there is even more, like I bought a house with a nice garden and am self-renovating it, almost finished with that! Also got a Surface Pro and bought a new powerful desktop system for work, newest stuff, watercooled. Maybe I find time to post more about some of that stuff. And I'm now converted from using Ubuntu to Arch which is awesome!
Anyways, nice to post again after way to many years, and check out ENAWEG!
Showing posts with label Job. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Job. Show all posts
Jul 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2012
6 home truths about rock star developers
6 home truths about rock star developers | Application Development - InfoWorld
hehe, yes, that's the reality ... better be prepared ..
hehe, yes, that's the reality ... better be prepared ..
Apr 23, 2012
Dell XT3 - Linux
After installing windows for my job I also installed the soon to be released Ubuntu 12.04. I didn't expect it to go too well as Windows took me a long time to install and nothing worked out of the box there. Windows was quite a pain to get up and running with all the hardware this nice laptop comes with.
I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised as with Ubuntu everything worked out of the box. At least everything I tried and used. So far I didn't use the Fingerprint reader as well as the SD card slot. I wonder why Dell doesn't offer the Latitude XT3 preinstalled with Ubuntu.
The only minor problem so far is that not all special key functions work correctly. But all the important ones and most of the not so important ones work just fine. The multitouch trackpad does even work better with Ubuntu as two finger scrolling in windows is something you need to get used to. It does work as expected in Ubuntu and has somehow a small input lag with Windows. It's rather annoying as its hard to scroll anywhere with that.
It starts up to the login screen in 10 seconds, which is half of what Windows 7 uses. On my desktop at home I have autologin active as I'm the only one using it. As the laptop is mobile and can be stolen more easily I login every time. Also I encrypted my home folder which requires you to login as this would defy the purpose if you autologin. After login it takes about two seconds to a fully working and usable desktop. It's pretty damn fast with Ubuntu 12.04. And looks beautifully at that. A co-worker of mine was quite astonished at the speed and look of Ubuntu. I think he would like to have his Windows/Mac box be a Windows/Ubuntu/Mac box now.
I did draw a bit with the screen being capable of pen input. It's really nice to see what you draw directly under your pen. The overall experience is better (mostly faster, more responsive) on my Bamboo Fun Tablet. Besides that the tablet has more features. But for rough sketches, quick diagrams or annotating something its nice to have.
Overall I'm pretty satisfied with how Ubuntu performs on this nice Dell Latitude XT3 laptop. Besides a few minor things there isn't any real deal breaker here.
I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised as with Ubuntu everything worked out of the box. At least everything I tried and used. So far I didn't use the Fingerprint reader as well as the SD card slot. I wonder why Dell doesn't offer the Latitude XT3 preinstalled with Ubuntu.
The only minor problem so far is that not all special key functions work correctly. But all the important ones and most of the not so important ones work just fine. The multitouch trackpad does even work better with Ubuntu as two finger scrolling in windows is something you need to get used to. It does work as expected in Ubuntu and has somehow a small input lag with Windows. It's rather annoying as its hard to scroll anywhere with that.
It starts up to the login screen in 10 seconds, which is half of what Windows 7 uses. On my desktop at home I have autologin active as I'm the only one using it. As the laptop is mobile and can be stolen more easily I login every time. Also I encrypted my home folder which requires you to login as this would defy the purpose if you autologin. After login it takes about two seconds to a fully working and usable desktop. It's pretty damn fast with Ubuntu 12.04. And looks beautifully at that. A co-worker of mine was quite astonished at the speed and look of Ubuntu. I think he would like to have his Windows/Mac box be a Windows/Ubuntu/Mac box now.
I did draw a bit with the screen being capable of pen input. It's really nice to see what you draw directly under your pen. The overall experience is better (mostly faster, more responsive) on my Bamboo Fun Tablet. Besides that the tablet has more features. But for rough sketches, quick diagrams or annotating something its nice to have.
Overall I'm pretty satisfied with how Ubuntu performs on this nice Dell Latitude XT3 laptop. Besides a few minor things there isn't any real deal breaker here.
Apr 15, 2012
Dell XT3 - Windows
As I use the XT3 mostly at work (and for work) I'm in Windows a lot. I have high hopes for Windows 8 on the XT3 as it has a nice Touch-Screen. But for now Windows 7 is what I have to use.
Right after I got it I did a clean install of the Windows 7 (+SP1) version that came with it. After the installation almost nothing works out of the box on this Laptop. Luckily it also comes with a separate drivers disc with dozens of drivers on it. Did I mention that the XT3 doesn't have a DVD drive but comes with discs for all the software? Funny ...
Installation of Windows (+all updates) and Drivers took me about 3-4 hours (constant restarting :/ ). After that, I installed all the software I usually need for work like MS Office, Visual Studio and Expression Studio. All went pretty well and after about 8+ hours I was done with a basic installation. Right now it boots in about 20 seconds to the login screen. This feels pretty fast compared to my old work PC which used like 5 minutes.
As mentioned in my last post about the hardware I did get it to a point where the graphics did start to lag a bit while dragging things around. Sandy Bridge processors aren't known for great graphics. So this laptop isn't good for playing games. But that's not what I use it for anyway. All in all I'm pretty satisfied with it so far, it's a good, fast machine to code on ...
Right after I got it I did a clean install of the Windows 7 (+SP1) version that came with it. After the installation almost nothing works out of the box on this Laptop. Luckily it also comes with a separate drivers disc with dozens of drivers on it. Did I mention that the XT3 doesn't have a DVD drive but comes with discs for all the software? Funny ...
Installation of Windows (+all updates) and Drivers took me about 3-4 hours (constant restarting :/ ). After that, I installed all the software I usually need for work like MS Office, Visual Studio and Expression Studio. All went pretty well and after about 8+ hours I was done with a basic installation. Right now it boots in about 20 seconds to the login screen. This feels pretty fast compared to my old work PC which used like 5 minutes.
As mentioned in my last post about the hardware I did get it to a point where the graphics did start to lag a bit while dragging things around. Sandy Bridge processors aren't known for great graphics. So this laptop isn't good for playing games. But that's not what I use it for anyway. All in all I'm pretty satisfied with it so far, it's a good, fast machine to code on ...
Apr 14, 2012
Hardware: Dell Latitude XT3
Recently I got a Dell Latitude XT3 for work. So far it seems well build and I kind of like the simple design. It's light enough to carry around and has a big enough display to code with. Also the Multi-Touch Screen is handy for me as I do a lot of touch development (MS Surface, WinTouch, Mobile as well as hopefully soon Win8/WinRT).
Positive Parts:
Positive Parts:
- Tablet convertible and Pen/Touch usage.
- Fast SSD is great and likely from all choosable options the most important one.
- Layout of all Ports. As with my old Dell-Netbook the layout is very usage oriented. Ports are where you expect/need them to be.
- Build in Bluetooth and SD card port are always handy to have.
- I like the Keyboard. It feels good and has all the keys on the right places.
- The hardware feels very robust and it's still light enough to carry around with you.
- Even under stress (got the i5 version) the fans are very silent.
- Hardware seems to work fine in both Windows and Linux.
Negative Parts:
- The lock to hold the display while its closed/in tablet mode seems a bit hit and miss. It doesn't lock well and often I have to try is multiple times to event get it to lock.
- The Intel GPU is a bit on the "light" side. For a Sandy Bridge CPU this is normal. And for future Intel GPUs this will likely not be a problem anymore. It's still well usable but I get it to the point where I feel that it's not keeping up. Especially of course if you plug-in an external monitor. Ivy Bridge will improve a lot in this area.
I think the Notebook fits well for my work. And it lets me work from home/university/everywhere I got internet access. More on the software side later ...
Feb 14, 2012
Jan 26, 2012
On Code Architecture (.Net, CSharp, WCF and WPF)
Been working on an "educational" project for on of our clients at work. They are migrating to the .Net Framework and CSharp. As an example project that also is useful I (among other co-workers) implemented a nice and simple server-client architecture for an application they need. I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out so far. The project is almost finished and I've had a easy time tracing and fixing bugs as well as implementing some last minute changes. The architectural concept seems to work well.
Nice thing about such a project is that you get time to have a closer look at the architecture. To have lots of (sometimes heated) discussions with different people about it and to really widen your understanding of different concepts. Also its a good time to experiment with things and try different approaches to find out what works well for you. Furthermore, I learned a lot about some .Net technologies I didn't use extensively before. In my opinion the time I spent digging deeper into these was well worth it. I'm convinced that other projects will greatly benefit from my new/improved knowledge.
The architecture is pretty straight forward and I hope for most nothing new. I've known it for some time but never really implemented it as its intended. Mostly due to lack of time/control or the simplicity of projects I've been working on in the past. This project was the chance to once do things the right way. The architecture is layered and consists of a data layer, business layer and a presentation layer.
Data Layer
This layer is pretty dump. Minimal Logic which handles connecting to a "datasource". On our Server side this is the SQL Database using Entity Framework. On the Client side this is the WCF Webservice. The idea here is to simply exchange this layer with an other one to connect to a different source.
Business Layer
Almost all application logic is located within this layer. It uses the data layer to access the needed information. On the server side it handles transformation of the database objects into POCOs which later can be easily sent over the WCF Webservice to the client. Also, it does data validation and security checks. As our client doesn't do much logic it mostly does data caching and management on that side.
Presentation Layer
This is where others interact with the Server/Client. On the server this means the WCF Webservice. This consists of an Interface as well as the implementation that mostly routes everything into the business layer. On the client side this is a bit more heavy. We use WPF (XAML, Behaviors, Converters, Commands, Data binding aso.) for the actual UI and make heavy use of the MVVM (Model - View - View Model) pattern.
This whole architecture created quite an initial time overhead (which I underestimated). But I think that over time this will pay off. Finding bugs, fixing and extending code is so much easier with this consisted architecture. This will save some time in the future.
Sidenote: We use integration builds and unit test the server business layer. I think with ~70+ tests and a 81,9% statement coverage we do pretty well there. More unit tests would be nice but this covers the most important logic of the application.
There is room for improvement but overall I'm pretty satisfied with our results ...
Nice thing about such a project is that you get time to have a closer look at the architecture. To have lots of (sometimes heated) discussions with different people about it and to really widen your understanding of different concepts. Also its a good time to experiment with things and try different approaches to find out what works well for you. Furthermore, I learned a lot about some .Net technologies I didn't use extensively before. In my opinion the time I spent digging deeper into these was well worth it. I'm convinced that other projects will greatly benefit from my new/improved knowledge.
The architecture is pretty straight forward and I hope for most nothing new. I've known it for some time but never really implemented it as its intended. Mostly due to lack of time/control or the simplicity of projects I've been working on in the past. This project was the chance to once do things the right way. The architecture is layered and consists of a data layer, business layer and a presentation layer.
Data Layer
This layer is pretty dump. Minimal Logic which handles connecting to a "datasource". On our Server side this is the SQL Database using Entity Framework. On the Client side this is the WCF Webservice. The idea here is to simply exchange this layer with an other one to connect to a different source.
Business Layer
Almost all application logic is located within this layer. It uses the data layer to access the needed information. On the server side it handles transformation of the database objects into POCOs which later can be easily sent over the WCF Webservice to the client. Also, it does data validation and security checks. As our client doesn't do much logic it mostly does data caching and management on that side.
Presentation Layer
This is where others interact with the Server/Client. On the server this means the WCF Webservice. This consists of an Interface as well as the implementation that mostly routes everything into the business layer. On the client side this is a bit more heavy. We use WPF (XAML, Behaviors, Converters, Commands, Data binding aso.) for the actual UI and make heavy use of the MVVM (Model - View - View Model) pattern.
This whole architecture created quite an initial time overhead (which I underestimated). But I think that over time this will pay off. Finding bugs, fixing and extending code is so much easier with this consisted architecture. This will save some time in the future.
Sidenote: We use integration builds and unit test the server business layer. I think with ~70+ tests and a 81,9% statement coverage we do pretty well there. More unit tests would be nice but this covers the most important logic of the application.
There is room for improvement but overall I'm pretty satisfied with our results ...
Jun 28, 2011
Boost Team's Intelligence? Recruit Women
Want to Boost Your Team's Intelligence? Recruit More Women (and More Diversely)
I've been saying this for years now. I always like to have some women on a team. The end result just is much better. They just have such a different view on things. Sadly they are so rare in my work field.
I've been saying this for years now. I always like to have some women on a team. The end result just is much better. They just have such a different view on things. Sadly they are so rare in my work field.
Tags:
Good,
Job,
Link,
Management
May 8, 2011
Why The New Guy Can’t Code
Why The New Guy Can’t Code
Great, almost exactly what I think and what my experience tells me.
and a very good advice that is completely true:
For a coder that is the most important thing. I had completed dozens of private code projects as I graduated. And I still consider this very important on any other coder. If you don't write at least some code in your spare time you just never gonna be a good coder. Experience for a coder is the most important thing. People which just graduated and never wrote more than a few small sample applicationsare worthless need a lot of additional mentoring. And a lot of those inexperienced never really get to a point where you can call them good coders.
The startups I've worked with so far did a fairly good job there. I did apply to a bigger company once and got a email back with something in the direction of 30 questions. That was awful and had a lot of stupid useless stuff in it. I did fill it out and send it back, but my view of the company was way down from before. My motivation to work there was limited after that ..
Great, almost exactly what I think and what my experience tells me.
The fundamental problem is that the skills required to pass today’s industry-standard software interview are not the skills required to be a good software developer.
and a very good advice that is completely true:
don’t interview anyone who hasn’t accomplished anything. Ever.
For a coder that is the most important thing. I had completed dozens of private code projects as I graduated. And I still consider this very important on any other coder. If you don't write at least some code in your spare time you just never gonna be a good coder. Experience for a coder is the most important thing. People which just graduated and never wrote more than a few small sample applications
The startups I've worked with so far did a fairly good job there. I did apply to a bigger company once and got a email back with something in the direction of 30 questions. That was awful and had a lot of stupid useless stuff in it. I did fill it out and send it back, but my view of the company was way down from before. My motivation to work there was limited after that ..
Tags:
Coding,
Job,
Link,
Management
Feb 23, 2011
Power Of Research released
"Power Of Research": Onlinespiel führt in die Welt der Wissenschaft - derStandard.at (German link)
The Silverlight game I've been working on at TPM Games GmbH for the last two years. Good to see this finally released. Other German newssites wrote about it as well.
Other:
- "Power Of Research": Onlinespiel für Hobbyforscher - DiePresse.com (German)
- Gratis-Onlinespiel führt in die Welt der Wissenschaft - "Power Of Research" - krone.at (German)
- The new strategy game to encourage young people to careers (Slovenian)
- Power of Research: a new online game to inspire the scientists of the future (English)
- Power of Research: a new online game to inspire the scientists of the future (English)
The Silverlight game I've been working on at TPM Games GmbH for the last two years. Good to see this finally released. Other German newssites wrote about it as well.
Other:
- "Power Of Research": Onlinespiel für Hobbyforscher - DiePresse.com (German)
- Gratis-Onlinespiel führt in die Welt der Wissenschaft - "Power Of Research" - krone.at (German)
- The new strategy game to encourage young people to careers (Slovenian)
- Power of Research: a new online game to inspire the scientists of the future (English)
- Power of Research: a new online game to inspire the scientists of the future (English)
Tags:
Game,
Indie,
Job,
Link,
Silverlight
Jul 29, 2010
May 25, 2010
Nasty problem with Blend 4
So the last two work days my boss and I where looking for a rather nasty little problem in our internal controls library for SL4. For some reasons Blend 4 (RC) told us on some simple properties of out controls (in global.xaml) that they didn't exist. So designing with blend didn't work anymore in all our project using our lib. This only applied to simple properties, more complex ones worked just fine. In our case this are mostly Boolean and Double propeties.
The error we get in Blend is: The member 'XXX' is not recognized or is not accessible.
We tried a lot of different things to get some more detailed information to the problem Blend has with our lib. No chance. So I started to create a new project and copy one control after the other to the new one. In the end all controls worked fine in the new project. So where was the problem you ask? Well, it turns out that we had one missing reference which doesn't raise any problem in VS or the final application. Just Blend can't find it and with that doesn't know about these basic properties.
The problem is a reference added by default if you create a new project. For some reason it was missing in ours (don't ask me why). Its the 'mscorlib.dll' located within 'Program Files\Reference Asssemblies\Microsoft\Framework\Silverlight\v4.0'. After adding that one everything was fine with Blend again. Btw. if it should be missing in your project you need to add it by editing the project file. For some reason you can't add it in VS's project properties.
Hope this saves some hours of time for somebody :)
The error we get in Blend is: The member 'XXX' is not recognized or is not accessible.
We tried a lot of different things to get some more detailed information to the problem Blend has with our lib. No chance. So I started to create a new project and copy one control after the other to the new one. In the end all controls worked fine in the new project. So where was the problem you ask? Well, it turns out that we had one missing reference which doesn't raise any problem in VS or the final application. Just Blend can't find it and with that doesn't know about these basic properties.
The problem is a reference added by default if you create a new project. For some reason it was missing in ours (don't ask me why). Its the 'mscorlib.dll' located within 'Program Files\Reference Asssemblies\Microsoft\Framework\Silverlight\v4.0'. After adding that one everything was fine with Blend again. Btw. if it should be missing in your project you need to add it by editing the project file. For some reason you can't add it in VS's project properties.
Hope this saves some hours of time for somebody :)
Tags:
Coding,
Job,
Silverlight
May 12, 2010
Power of Research Teaser
Power of Research Teaser Game
Our game teaser is online now. Play with it, have fun. Feedback welcome ..
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 9, 2010
Unity3D 3.0 Development Platform
Unity Technologies Unveils Third Generation of Its Powerful Development Platform
uhh ... I like that! ... just add some linux support to it and I'm totally for that platform :). Hope I am able to try something with that soon ...
uhh ... I like that! ... just add some linux support to it and I'm totally for that platform :). Hope I am able to try something with that soon ...
Jan 25, 2010
Dec 25, 2009
Programmers salary problems ..
Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity — The Endeavour
I like that view :) ... mostly what I think and experienced so far.
So be aware if a programmer leaves your company after a "short" (would say 1 year) time it's likely because his skill is greater than the skill of your other coders. I've worked with bad coders and it's very frustrating if you have to explain obvious simple concepts again and again.
It's hard to notice these things as they usually will never state that they are frustrated because of the skill of other coders at the company. Especially team managers should always have an eye on that one ... I think regular personal talks can help there.
I like that view :) ... mostly what I think and experienced so far.
So be aware if a programmer leaves your company after a "short" (would say 1 year) time it's likely because his skill is greater than the skill of your other coders. I've worked with bad coders and it's very frustrating if you have to explain obvious simple concepts again and again.
It's hard to notice these things as they usually will never state that they are frustrated because of the skill of other coders at the company. Especially team managers should always have an eye on that one ... I think regular personal talks can help there.
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