Shameless plugs

I meant to write about .NET 3.0, which has dropped by the wayside for the moment (for me personally) due to the fact that there is no really capable IDE to do development in and I’m too lazy to download the 4GB or so of files necessary to run the CTP of Orcas (the next version of Visual Studio) as a virtual machine 🙂 I also meant to write about Ruby and Rails, which I’m actually beginning to like as a development environment for doing web-based work because of how fast you can get off the ground.

I would also have liked to have written about Eclipse, which I’d taken a look at many times over the years as a possible Java IDE but had always given up because it didn’t appear to be ready – it seems to be ready now, or much closer 🙂 I particularly wanted to write about RadRails which integrates nicely into Eclipse and provides you with an amazing IDE to do Rails development in :p I might also have liked to have mentioned the fact that Eclipse also appears to have plugins for PHP and some of the other languages out there and is now on my list to be looked at as the development IDE of choice. But I haven’t actually tested out PHP or the other plugins :p

So, I think I will content myself with a simple blatant plug for something else totally not development related 🙂 There’s this link on the sidebar for another site of mine named, "Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog". It’s the first iteration of this novel I’m working on and I’m putting up a few new pages every week. Some people seem to like it. So go on, take a look and let me know what you think 🙂

Railing at .NET

At around the same time I began developing an interest in the .NET 3.0 framework, my friend Nigel contacted me regarding a Ruby project that he was involved in named Hobo 🙂 I had looked at Ruby several times before (just as I had looked at Python and a few other languages of that ilk :p) but the fact of the matter is, I’m a desktop developer mainly. While I do enjoy coding for the sake of coding, what gets me going most of the time is to be able to develop a completely new UI that just rocks and to be able to tie in functionality to that UI that makes it not just a pretty face 🙂 I just can’t do that kind of thing with web apps. They are just too stable, too boring – at least for me 🙂 So I save the web apps for when I get paid to do work and I do most of my development work in my spare time for the desktop.

Now that’s not to say that I don’t do web apps development. On several occasions, I’ve developed web apps to fill a need that I had. But most of the time, my personal needs are more for desktop apps than for web apps. However, in the course of our discussions, Nige said something interesting – or at least, something that got me thinking and something which prompted this post 🙂 He said that "desktop apps were going the way of the Dodo". Of course, it’s possible that he was just being facetious but the remark struck me the same way Larry Ellison‘s championing of the thin client a long time ago (in computing terms that is) did 🙂

Just like desktops are not going away any time soon to be replaced by thin clients (or network computers), desktop apps are not going to be suddenly supplanted by web apps. There is a place under the sun for both. There are times when a server-based solution would work for you better than a desktop one and then there are other instances, that it would just be plain foolish to go for a web-based solution just because you thought web-apps were the greatest thing since sliced bread :p For instance, I know that a lot of people think highly of services like Writely (now renamed to Google Docs & Spreadsheets) because you can have your document online, share it with anybody and be able to access it from anywhere. Call me paranoid but I don’t like online services for document editing – at least not as my primary access point for said document. I’d rather have it on my own hard disk where I can take the damn computer to a technician if the thing breaks down, or I can simply login and copy the data even if my Internet access is down.

Of course, the flip side of the coin is that Google probably has better backups and better disaster recovery in place than I do 🙂 But on the other hand, Google might not be the best case to argue the scenario of web-apps vs. desktop apps. What about the roll-your-own type of web app? You deploy it on your webserver (hosted elsewhere) and put your data on it. Are you going to be completely sanguine in the belief that your data will be safe and accessible from anywhere, any time you want? I know I won’t be – but then again, as I said before, I’m probably more paranoid than others :p

In the end, I guess whether you go desktop or web-based, the decision will depend to an extent on personal choices and other factors. But I don’t believe either web-apps or desktop ones will die away anytime soon 🙂

To .NET or not .NET

I come from a coding background where we always tried to keep application sizes down and memory utilization low. So, if I can create an application which results in a 1-2MB download, I’m really happy. Even my biggest application is probably under 5MB. Sure, I realize that in today’s world of multi-gigabyte game and application downloads, that is an anachronism but I still like keeping my application sizes small 🙂

Because of this obsessive-compulsive desire (or rather, need) to keep application sizes small, I have not looked at .NET as a possible development platform for my personal projects. Sure, I’ve done .NET development when I worked for different companies. Since internal deployment was via the network, the 20MB or so download for the core framework wasn’t that big a deal. However, when you distribute software (and freeware at that) over the Internet, I really feel bad when I have to ask somebody to download a hefty runtime before they can run my app.

So what has changed? In a sense, nothing? .NET 3.0 is out and the framework now stand at around 50MB and the basic situation is the same. If you don’t have the .NET 3.0 framework installed, you still have to go through a 50MB download. But what’s new is what the framework offers. The possibilities are (while not endless) quite interesting 🙂 I love what the framework promises with the 3.0 iteration and the ease with which much of it can be done. Being a software junkie, I’m allured by the new UI elements and what they can do for my own application. In fact, I’m definitely considering shifting to .NET 3.0 at least for some of my applications.

Of course, there are issues. The aforementioned hefty download being but one issue. The other is deployment of web apps. Sure, .NET 3.0 offers beguiling promises for web applications – the possibility to have a really nice web interface for your applications. But as far as I understand, in order to develop and run web applications using .NET 3.0, you still need a Windows server running IIS. And how stable are Windows servers? Personally, I haven’t had much luck with Windows as a web server and I really wouldn’t want all of my critical sites on a Windows server. So that makes .NET 3.0 web apps, (at least for me) something nice to play with but not something I’d want to use on a production basis. But that is just based on my own personal requirements and situation. Your mileage will certainly vary 🙂

Just desserts or just desert?

They say that a fool and his money are soon parted. But there sure do seem to be a heck of a lot of people who seem to be interested in expediting the process :p I’ve written before about literary scams and financial scams but the latest one I’ve come across is a recruitment scam 🙂

I’ve been looking into jobs in Dubai because we would possibly like to move there – my sister lives there, the place seems to have the latest techno-gadgets, better access to books and movies, so what’s not to like, eh? 🙂 Anyway, in the process of looking at recruitment agencies and possible places to submit my resume, I ran across JobsInDubai.com. I came across the site via web search (or because some other site listed them) and at first glance, it looked legit enough. So I used their online form to apply.

The next day I get an e-mail from them – my CV was a perfect match for a job they had listed! All I had to do was fork out $74 (it’s *only* $34 if you are in the US or Canada and free if you are in the Gulf BTW) as a refundable deposit and I would be on my way to my dream job. Now when somebody starts asking me for money (especially for something for which they should be getting payment already), alarms go off all over the place. You should be in my head – it’s kind of like a scene from "Mission Impossible" :p

So I did some digging and guess what? JobsInDubai.com are famous – and not in a good way. There are many posts about them online – like this one, or this one. Neither of those articles come out and say that JobsInDubai.com are scammers – they hint that perhaps they might have reformed. However, my experience plus what these articles say (and what I found online) leads me to believe that they have not reformed and are in fact, actively working on scamming people.

For one thing, there is an interesting tactic they employ at any blog or site which comments about JobsInDubai.com – you soon get somebody named Beanster (or some such name) and Nofel Izz (the owner/founder whatever of JobsInDubai) turning up to defend the company. Beans says he’s just a bystander – but seems to know a lot about JobsInDubai and their current location etc. Nofel will respond to the accusations but will never address any of the central issues such as why they charge money and how come they claim to operate in the UAE and Canada (and as far as I know, it’s against the law in both places for a recruitment agency to charge a prospective employee money) but are not abiding by the laws of the country.

Both these individuals claim that the negative comments about JobsInDubai.com are made by employees of other (non-fee charging) recruitment agencies in the Gulf. That this is just plain underhanded business tactics. Now I’m not affiliated with any of these other employment agencies. Heck, if I was affiliated with them, I wouldn’t have found out about JobsInDubai.com because I wouldn’t have been searching for Gulf jobs :p

The other thing I find interesting is that Nofel in his interview with "Windows" magazine states that under their new mode of operations, they don’t actively submit resumes to prospective employers. Instead, they simply enter your information into their database and prospective employers can pay them Canadain $195 for 500 resume views. But in their e-mail to me, they claim that my resume is a perfect match for a job they have available – implying (though not actually stating) that my resume would be submitted to this prospective employer. Smells a bit like the fish market? Yeah, I got that pong too :p

Entertainment in the hole

I have not been able to find a good movie lately even to save my own life :p Everything seems to be either bad remakes or sequels which never go anywhere. I thought "Mission: Impossible 3" would prove to be good but it was nothing special. The story was average and there certainly weren’t any memorable stunts as in the previous movies. I hear that "Miami Vice" is a bust as well, though I haven’t seen it myself yet.

About the only two English movies that were even passable recently were "Nanny McPhee" and "Wedding Daze". However, the former didn’t really grab your sympathy. It was a nice morality tale which was supposed to warm your hearts but the children (who were the key) came out as brats who needed a good spanking rather than adorable miscreants who needed a firm hand :p Of the children, the only one I really liked was Baby Agatha. On the other hand, "Wedding Daze" was better but a bit predictable and the comparison to "Father of the Bride" didn’t help much. The other interesting fact is that neither of those movies was released in 2006 – I was watching old fare, there :p

It’s been a rather dry season on the Bollywood side of the fence too. I hadn’t seen one movie that really tugged at your heartstrings or made you want to jump up and dance like in the days of yore. The much awaited "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" was a damp squib as far as I’m concerned. Sure, it had enough star power for a galaxy or two but the story really went nowhere. The closest thing (ironically) that KANK came to was "Closer", which I didn’t particularly like either :p Incidentally, Shah Rukh appeared to be borrowing from his older roles in this movie and was actually making me feel a bit nauseous – it wasn’t a good performance and it wasn’t a good movie.

The bright spot of the year? It has to be "Lage Raho Munna Bhai" 🙂 I had liked the original, "Munna Bhai M.B.B.S." but not overly so. It was fun but not brilliant. The sequel was different. It was a touching story which kept your emotions going almost throughout the entire movie. I was either laughing or sniffing (not glue :p) through every scene. Sure, at least some of the characters were already established, but the director managed to give them new dimension and new meaning. I was a bit confused by the fact that the sequel appeared to not acknowledge the original – it was almost as if the original story took place in an alternate universe and the new story is a complete retake of Munna Bhai’s life. Other than that, this was a beautiful movie and a pleasure to watch. In fact, I just might watch it again 🙂