30 March 2006

LINQ

Here's a video about a (new?) project at Microsoft that will make SQL statements first class constructs in any .NET language. This is amazing news. This is one of those ideas that was completely off the radar screen but then once you hear it, it's like a no brainer. Here's the link: Anders Hejlsberg - LINQ.

Anders is one of my favorite developers of all time so it was cool to see him talking about it. Anders, BTW, is the guy that developed Delphi for Borland and C# for Microsoft. This guy is no joke, as they say, and this idea he is talking about will be amazing.

Incidentally, this same functionaliy has been in FoxPro for about 10 years. It's amazing to me that no one else has done it. If it works, and if IronPython shows up as an official product at MS, I'm going to be a happy hacker.



16 March 2006

New Scientist Quantum computer works best switched off - News

Without getting too detailed, scientists have invented a way to run a quantum computer that produces answers without actually running a program. New Scientist Quantum computer works best switched off I consider myself a pretty knowledgable guy about how things work (computers especially) so it's pretty humbling when I read an article like this and realize that there are people working on quantum computers that understand that technology to such an extent that someone like me is a complete noob in their domain. Not only do I not understand it, it makes no sense to me at all. Yikes! None the less, it is a pretty interesting read.

09 March 2006

Waterfall is Back!

The waterfall development process is enjoying a revival now that all that agile programming nonsense has proven to be a lousy way to get rich on unsuspecting clients. Here's a link to an International Conference on the waterfall process that is coming up on April 1, 2006.