Wow, at first I thought this was interesting in that David was taking a job with Microsoft. The post IS interesting but the comments contain the real meat, including drifting into a comparison of Microsoft to a certain supremacist group. Congrats on the new gig David and for once again generating some amazing dialogue.

PS: I have to admit I keep checking to see if it’s April first. David Crow….Microsoft…..it’d make a great April fools prank.

Good list and I agree with pretty much all of it. It’s the parts you don’t predict that are the most surprising, like the Dilbert comment and being hard to say no.

Anyone who knows me knows that when I was in an office I was fairly in tune with the ‘politics’ around me. I really never thought I’d get to a point where friends in an office would complain to me about common annoyances and I really wouldn’t get it or have much to say. Well I’m at that point now and have a lot of those “oh man, I forgot all about that crap” conversations. That’s a great thing.

I suppose when I return to a traditional workplace I’ll be like a home schooled kid showing up for the first day of high school.

It’s been a while since exceptions cropped up here. While this isn’t ‘hot off the presses’, I’m certainly just catching up. When the boys at Microsoft originally built the .NET framework, they added a base exception class named ApplicationException. They suggested, and illustrated themselves in any related example they wrote, that custom exceptions in your application should extend from this instead of the base Exception:

“User applications, not the common language runtime, throw custom exceptions derived from the ApplicationException class. The ApplicationException class differentiates between exceptions defined by applications versus exceptions defined by the system.”

If you read past that paragraph then you’ll discover that this class is essentially a dead class now:

“If you are designing an application that needs to create its own exceptions, you are advised to derive custom exceptions from the Exception class. It was originally thought that custom exceptions should derive from the ApplicationException class; however in practice this has not been found to add significant value.”

Of course they don’t go out of their way to explain why there isn’t “significant value”, however, Brad Abrams does here. Actually the explanation is in the post comments:

“When first reading Mr. Richters advice on not using ApplicationException I was stunned, but it actually make sense. If you create some application specific exceptions you may want to derive these exceptions from a common base class in order to be able to catch them all in a single catch clause. Deriving this common exception from ApplicationException doesn’t add anything useful to your exception hierarchy – it just deepens it.”

Basically MS deepened the exception hierarchy without adding ANY value which is rule #something of designing quality custom exceptions:

“Designing exception hierarchies is tricky. Well-designed exception hierarchies are wide, not very deep, and contain only those exceptions for which there is a programmatic scenario for catching. We added ApplicationException thinking it would add value by grouping exceptions declared outside of the .NET Framework, but there is no scenario for catching ApplicationException and it only adds unnecessary depth to the hierarchy. You should not define new exception classes derived from ApplicationException; use Exception instead. In addition, you should not write code that catches ApplicationException.”

In reading about strategy in Hard Facts, it’s clarified where I think Band of Coders should be heading “strategically”. That is to be a company that tries different things in order to learn through the process of experimentation. Evaluate what works and continually develop our competencies and skills as we evolve as a business.

Sure is easy to say.

There’s some video and a write up here if you’re asking that question.

In Jeffery Pfeffer‘s recent book Hard Facts, John Sall, a cofounder of SAS Institute, talking about MBA programs and strategy:

“The MBA program is a two year program correct? Why should it take two years to teach such smart people the secret to success: listen to your customers, listen to your employees, do what they tell you.”

His bottom line point, and the SAS strategy? It’s more important to “hear true things than to say smart things”.

I’m taking a shot at organizing DemoCampGuelph1. What’s a DemoCamp?

• DemoCamp page.
• David’s community post.

“A DemoCamp is a lighter-weight style of un-conference. A DemoCamp last only a few hours on a weekday evening, as opposed to a traditional BarCamp which would usually be a multi-day event and take place on a weekend. As such, they are easier to organize and tend to happen more frequently.”

It’s pretty simple. It’s about going to the albion, having some good grease and pints and mingling with other people who work in technology who live in Guelph and surrounding areas. That’s it. It really isn’t difficult.

If this is going to happen then we need to drum up attendees and presenters. Presentations are short (5 minutes) and don’t have to be earth shattering. You don’t have to demo something you’ve built or had anything to do with. It could just be some piece of technology you feel is worth sharing. That’s it. See demo tips on the DemoCamp page.

Go to the DemoCampGuelph1 page and sign up. Go to the GuelphCamp page and sign up for the groups.

Is any one else confused about this whole idea of work/life separation deal that’s in the press these days? I realize it isn’t new but it seems to be in the press a lot more these days. It was the topic on the CBC this morning.

The gist? We’re losing control of the work/life separation as the companies are taking over our home lives. I understand this but I also maintain that this is partially a new concept isn’t it? New as in since the industrial revolution.

These days I’m committed to the exact opposite, that is thinning and eliminating the work/life separation. It makes my life simpler if it’s just all one and I don’t have to think about if I’m working now or I’m living now.

Jaimie sent me this today. I really like the concept but I’ve been using the firefox search of late and couldn’t see myself going back to using a website to kick off search. I took a second look tonight and sure enough a search plugin does exist so I’m on board with the yubnub.

My question is, why isn’t this part of the search tool in Firefox so that I can configure and customize it? Or maybe allow me to set a keyword for each search engine I install so that I can select the search engine using the first word I type instead of having to use the mouse and dropdown.

I used to use %s and keywords in bookmarks to hack something similar in the address bar. I should take a peek, maybe an extension already exists for this.

I just upgraded to the new version of ubuntu. Not only did I not purchase a DVD, I didn’t even use one. I simply opened the package manager and selected ‘upgrade’. The new release then downloaded itself over the wireless network I’m on, installed itself and rebooted. No glitches, no extra drivers to install, and so far nothing’s stopped working.

To date, that’s the most painless major release OS upgrade I’ve experienced. By a landslide.

PS…The OS seems noticeably more responsive.