The Industrialization of Software

Web-based IDE’s and Dynamic Languages on .NET

Mitch Barnett — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:35:28 GMT

I was reading an interesting post at Ted Leung’s blog called, “IDE’s and Dynamic Languages”. It is interesting to me for a number of reasons. One is how a Text Editor can be considered an IDE, even though Ted does say that automatic syntax verification and code completion is certainly beyond a Text Editor.

One thing that did surprise me was no discussion on debuggers as part of an IDE. How can people code using a text editor without a debugger? I guess I have been (totally) spoiled back in the VB6 days (yes, I will admit it) that I could step though code and when I bumped into an error, I could back up the debugger a few statesments, make my correction and keep on stepping through. I have never been as productive since! Know what I mean? Yes, I know this says nothing about design, but an IDE is a tool for using a programming language, yes? So how come we (as in developers) have so few tools or is that choice of tools?

According to a recent analyst report, 97% of developers on the .NET framework use Visual Studio and over 70% use Eclipse or Eclipse based IDE’s for Java. As much as I love Visual Studio, and being a .NET developer, I have no control as to what I want in an IDE. Worse yet, with the emerging new dynamic languages, IronRuby, IronPython and Managed Jscript, have almost no tool support at all in Visual Studio. While there have been some announcements, and articles and some tooling, its like bolt-ons to Visual Studio and still yet to come.

As a .NET developer, specifically a .NET web developer, I would like to use something other than Visual Studio to develop web applications using a dynamic language. My wish list is for something lightweight and web-based so that I can explore using, an interactive interpreter and a simple code editor just using a web browser. Maybe something like this:

And this:

This was my first version of a web-based “very” lightweight IDE that used a JavaScript based interactive console and a JavaScript based code editor. You can download the code from Codeplex

Several months have passed since I released this and I have been working on a new version. In that time, other folks have started to develop similar web-based interactive consoles and code editors. One example is Jim Hugunin’s DLR (interactive) Console which you can download from the Silverlight Dynamic Languages SDK. I should point out that this is a modified version. Also note that it uses Silverlight:

As an old ASP.NET/AJAX/JavaScript/HTML/CSS developer, I am quite excited about Silverlight for a number of reasons. I am hoping the adoption rate and the tooling for this technology also increases over time. Silverlight development also suffers from not being fully integrated in Visual Studio, but I should be fair as it is also Beta. But trying to run a Silverlight “web” application on a web server and interacting with other lanaguages is tough at best. But the rich UI experience is really quite nice compared to old school ASP.NET forms apps. So even after 6 months of releasing my lightweight dynamic languages development environment, I am still torn between “tried and trued” JavaScript and the new Silvelight.

I thought about how I would implement intellisense in a JavaScript console and cringed at the thought of actually how to implement this. I could see using a few of the controls from the AJAX Control Toolkit to implement this, but it would be quite the effort. Not only does the DLR console support intellisense, but so does this alternative interactive console called Silvershell:

Wow, I am impressed!

Here is another web based shell (that you cannot download) from Oleg Tkachenko:

Also Michael Foord has a Silverlight based Python in the Browser:

Jimmy Schementi has an IronRuby console:

Of course there are other implementations, but they are not web-based. Nonetheless, Joe Sox’s IronTextBox works very well:

And the DLR Pad:

And Ben Hall has just released his IronEditor:

So what’s my point? I think all of these projects are great and kudos to the people that built them. It takes a lot of time and effort above and beyond just regular work hours. I have been there myself, my hats off to you folks! But, there are 8 versions of the interactive console and a few versions of a basic code editor. I know it may be a dream, but it would be great to collaborate with these people and write out a simple set of requirements for what a great DLR console and code editor would be. And then as a virtual team, implement it.

After all, to a large degree, it will be how well supported the language is from a tools perspective that will really determine the rate of adoption. And right now, the tools (or IDE) experience for Dynamic Languages on .NET is severely lacking to the point of having several people independently developing their own tooling. In this post I only pointed out a handful of these tools and I know there are others, but I was really targeting web-based IDE’s. Maybe that is an opportunity? Or is it a pipe dream?

I am also wondering how, in a code editor, one could hook up a debugger to actually step through the code, regardless what Dynamic Language (or Static or JavaScript or Silverlight) is being used? Hopefully I won’t have to wait until PDC 2008 to see what the next step is from MSFT. Who knows maybe there is enough interest to develop a Web-based IDE for Dynamic Languages on .NET.

Office 2007 and The “Killer” Ribbon

Mitch Barnett — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:02:02 GMT

In my best Sam Kinison voice, “ah ahhh ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!” I can’t take it anymore. I am re-installing Office 2003 and forgetting about Office 2007. Why? It’s the ribbon man! For all of the usability design, I find it unusable. No offense to Jensen Harris or Microsoft, but for me, the consumer of the product, and after trying it for over a year, I just can't get used to it.

First, full disclosure, I am not a “usability designer” or a Microsoft “hater." In fact, I have been making a living as a software architect/programmer type on the Microsoft stack since 1991 and have been fairly happy with the platform (I love VS2008!) – except for the ribbon. But I digress.

The “ribbon.” Jensen says one of the reasons it was invented was because people could not find the new features when they were added to the product. Then he goes on to say that there are over 250 menu items and over 30 toolbars in Word 2003, which resulted in this satirical view:

Now, fair enough, but I would suggest that if a “word processing” application has +250 menu items and over 30 toolbars, then “Toto, we're not in Kansas Anymore." Meaning, this is no longer a word processing application.

Honestly, Word should have been “refactored” into perhaps multiple products or features split into a desktop publishing application or a whole other suite of applications. But instead, the UX team went through an honorable and noble design process of solving the wrong problem. Kudos to you Jensen, but I just can’t do it anymore. Every time I look at the ribbon, my brain freezes - I have to think, which means bad usability design.

Why? It boils down to simple math. When I see the Word 2003 menu, I see this:

Ok, I see 9 “objects.” Notice no toolbars. That’s right, simple is better… right? Ok when I get crazy, and add a toolbar, I see:

Even then, it is 19 objects on the toolbar and another 9 objects for the menus. But what do I really use?

Yah, that’s right 13 objects in total! That’s it. The bullets, numbering and indent/outdent are merely conveniences for me. Note one complaint already is that these are 2 separate toolbars and there is no way for me to put them on one row, even though there is lots of horizontal space, I am forced to use up two vertical rows. That ain't usability.

2^nd complaint:

Oh yeah, not full menus on the pull down – who designed that? Yes, I know what you thought, and I know the "fix", but honestly, it does not work. Give me the full menu every time so I do not have to click twice. In my mind, usability is all about minimizing the choices a user has to make and minimizing the number of mouse clicks to make those choices. If you have too many choices, maybe you are trying to solve the wrong problem?

Here is my default Word 2007 "Ribbon":

There are, count them, over 60 possible choices or selections to make. And that is the problem. Too many visible choices! My poor brain needs to parse and process each item to see if it matches what I want to do. Whereas before, I had a pretty good idea that in the one of the 9 menus in Word 2003, I would be able to locate and narrow down the “decision tree” to find what I am looking for. In fact, I got really good at in 2003 and did not have to "think" about it. And that's the point of good usability design - no think time. In Word 2007 I have 5 times as many visible choices per "ribbon" x 8 menus, which means exposing ~480 visible objects to the user, which is way too many! In my mind, this is a classic case of solving the wrong problem – i.e. if a “word processor” has 480 objects, commands, menu items, whatever the heck you want to call it, give it a name, then it is no longer, by far, a word processing application. Something is really wrong here.

Oh and some hidden UI gems. When I first fired up Word 2007, I was trying desperately to find the “options” menu item which has always been Tools/Options, for like 10 years its been there - if it ain't broke... After several minutes of hunting, I had to ask one of my co-workers, where the heck is the Options option? It is hidden at the bottom of the "magic" Microsoft Office Button. I say magic because a) who knew it was a button? and b) why the heck is it there? I might as well be playing a pinball game for all the pretty widgets!

Funny that there is a “Locations of Word 2003 commands in Word 2007” article... What does that say about the user experience? Ok, I will admit to being totally programmed by the “File” menu approach, but so is the rest of the world and the mass majority of applications in the world (meaning everything but Office 2007) also operates that way, so what up? As mentioned before, I believe the wrong problem is being solved.

As a related aside, it took me forever to find on the IE7 toolbar where the “find on this page” menu item was. Have a look at the screenshot below. Where would you look?

My first instinct (decision) was to look under the “Page” menu/toolbar for "find on this page" menu item:

Nope, not there. Other related page menu items are there, but not my find on this page menu item. So then of course I looked under each menu, in random desperation, and still no go. WTH? I had to search on the internet to find the “find on this page” menu item and lo and behold it is hidden away here:

Again, I feel the wrong problem is being solved here. We have a menu called Page and if you wanted to find something on the “Page” you would look under the “Page” menu, yes? I know I live and breathe software for a living, but I just don’t get how this is usable. Again, I am not trying to pick on MS, but as someone that uses MS tools daily, there are items that come up that defy any sort of logic. And that can be said for any software products and services company.

What’s my point? While there is a lot of hype around usability and the user experience, it does no good to be solving the wrong the problem. Rule #1 in software development, regardless if it is usability or not, make sure the right problem is being solved. And if the software industry moves towards adopting the "ribbon" as a standard user experience widget, I think I will take early retirement!

The Humble Software Engineer

Mitch Barnett — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:21:14 GMT

“The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don’t master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering Gurus.”

EWD1305. Answers to questions from students of Software Engineering, Edsger W. Dijkstra, 2000.

A very insightful, but somewhat harsh observation by Professor Doctor Dijkstra. Also consider:

“No, I’m afraid that Computing Science has suffered from the popularity of the Internet. It has attracted an increasing – not to say: overwhelming! – number of students with very little scientific inclination and in research has only strengthened the prevailing (and somewhat vulgar) obsession with speed and capacity.” Again from EWD1305.

As an aside, Dijkstra, and as some of you may have heard of Dijkstra’s algorithm, made a number of fundamental contributions to the area of programming languages and received the Turing Award in 1972. You can read his notes diary on line which makes for fascinating reading.

Why did I quote Dijkstra? Well, I tend to agree with his view and as described in my previous post, I don’t think we, as Software Engineers, know how to perform Software Engineering. In fact, I don’t even think Software Engineering really exists in our world today – and in some respects, we seem to be moving farther away from it instead of getting closer. That is to say our predilection for programming languages blinds us to what our real focus as Software Engineers should be.

Let me be more succinct. When I say Software Engineering, I am picking specifically on that huge black hole called software design – i.e. we don’t know how to “design” software. We sure know how to program the heck out of it, with our humungous list of programming languages, but what techniques and tools do we have for “designing” the software to be programmed? How do we model our design? How do we prove (i.e. verify) our design is correct? How do we simulate our design without coding it? Ponder.

Designing software is all about designing “abstractions.” Software is built on abstractions. Programming languages are all about implementing abstractions. But where do those abstractions come from and how do we describe or model (i.e. design) those abstractions?

Let’s look at some approaches to designing software “proper.” Formal methods is an approach to software design. From Wikipedia, “In computer science and software engineering, formal methods are mathematically-based techniques for the specification, development and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expectation that, as in other engineering disciplines, performing appropriate mathematical analyses can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a design. However, the high cost of using formal methods means that they are usually only used in the development of high-integrity systems, where safety or security is important.”

“Hoare logic (also known as Floyd–Hoare logic) is a formal system developed by the British computer scientist C. A. R. Hoare, and subsequently refined by Hoare and other researchers. It was published in Hoare's 1969 paper "An axiomatic basis for computer programming". The purpose of the system is to provide a set of logical rules in order to reason about the correctness of computer programs with the rigor of mathematical logic." >

Another approach is program derivation, “In computer science, program derivation is the derivation of a program from its specification, by mathematical means.”

“Model checking is the process of checking whether a given structure is a model of a given logical formula. The concept is general and applies to all kinds of logics and suitable structures. A simple model-checking problem is testing whether a given formula in the propositional logic is satisfied by a given structure.” As an aside, you will note that the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is not on the list of model checkers. Interestingly enough, any UML diagram cannot be checked (i.e. verified) for correctness, so what good is UML? OK, I am being a bit facetious, but for the most part, I have found this similar to Dilbertisms – they are satirical truths.

One approach that is familiar to me is, “Design by Contract, DbC or Programming by Contract is an approach to designing computer software. It prescribes that software designers should define precise verifiable interface specifications for software components based upon the theory of abstract data types and the conceptual metaphor of a business contract." The metaphor comes from business life, where a "client" and a "supplier" agree on a "contract”

However, while a lot of companies talk about Design by Contract, very few, at least in my experience, actually perform this and particularly at the level required for it to be beneficial. Further, while it is a “clear metaphor to guide the design process” that in of itself makes it hard to simulate the design of a software system or “prove” (i.e. verify) the correctness of a software system, before writing any code.

So how do we design software that meets the criteria of modeling the software and simulate the running of the software to verify its correctness? After much research, I came across one approach that seems to make the most sense to me, in which why I will explain shortly. First, an introduction to Alloy and Alloy Analyzer from the Software Design Group at MIT.

“Alloy is a structural modelling language based on first-order logic, for expressing complex structural constraints and behaviour. The Alloy Analyzer is a constraint solver that provides fully automatic simulation and checking. Our philosophy is to couple lightweight design and specification notations with powerful tools.”

There is a book called, “Software Abstractions” by Daniel Jackson on Alloy and Alloy Analyzer. You can also download a few chapters of the book. In the preface chapter, I was particularly impressed with these two paragraphs,

“The experience of exploring a software model with an automatic analyzer is at once thrilling and humiliating. Most modellers have had the benefit of review by colleagues; it’s a sure way to find flaws and catch omissions. Few modellers, however, have had the experience of subjecting their models to continual, automatic review. Building a model incrementally with an analyzer, simulating and checking as you go along, is a very different experience from using pencil and paper alone. The first reaction tends to be amazement: modeling is much more fun when you get instant, visual feedback. When you simulate a partial model, you see examples immediately that suggest new constraints to be added.

Then the sense of humiliation sets in, as you discover that there’s almost nothing you can do right. What you write down doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means. And when it does, it doesn’t have the consequences you expected. Automatic analysis tools are far more ruthless than human reviewers. I now cringe at the thought of all the models I wrote (and even published) that were never analyzed, as I know how error- ridden they must be. Slowly but surely the tool teaches you to make fewer and fewer errors. Your sense of confidence in your modeling ability (and in your models!) grows.”

Let me step back in time for a moment to illustrate to you why these two paragraphs are of particular interest to me. Back in the 80's, in the electronics field, I went through this type of “industrialization” first hand with electronics circuit design. At first we drafted our circuit designs on real blueprint paper, we then built some sketchy prototypes (anyone remember breadboards?), designed our tests and implemented test harnesses (i.e. scopes, analyzers, generators, etc.) and tested the design “after” it was implemented. Note that it may take a number of manual iterations or cycles to get the design right as well.

I would say this pretty much sums up the same approach we use to design software today. I.e. “sketch-up" some designs, start coding right away, spend an inordinate amount of time “refactoring” and developing test after test after test and then in the end, in some cases, figuring out that, guess what? all of the tests simply validate and verify that the software design is so flawed from the original specification (read: sketch-up) that we have to start over again. Whether the process is called TDD, Agile, iterative, waterfall, whatever, in the end it really does not matter as the process itself is flawed because it completely misunderstands the role of software design and therefore the result can only be the sorry state of software in our industry. But I digress.

Then the electronics design world was revolutionized when SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) came along. It ran on a computer that not only allowed you to design your electronic circuits, but also simulated the implemented design (i.e. an instance) where you hooked up your “virtual” test instruments, in software, and completely emulated the circuited deign without ever having to breadboard the circuit. I personally lived that era and is one of the main reasons, after spending 17 years designing and programming software since, have come to the humble realization, there must be a better way.

The industrialization part of SPICE meant that we were moving from a completely manual process, in which we could only verify the circuit design after the fact, to dramatically reducing the cycle time to design and verify the design of an electronic circuit without ever expending any tooling or material costs whatsoever. Further, you could do numerous design iterations basically for free, plus apply thousands (billions!) of test cases to the simulated design that we would never be able to achieve manually. This was modern day industrialization in real practice. We certainly can’t do design iterations in our software world for free today.

From Software Abstractions, I love the lines, “then the sense of humiliation sets in, as you discover that there’s almost nothing you can do right. What you write down doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means. And when it does, it doesn’t have the consequences you expected. Automatic analysis tools are far more ruthless than human reviewers.”

This is exactly what happened to us electronic circuit designers when we first started using SPICE. We thought we really could design analog circuits and as it turned out, even some of our basic design assumptions were completely flawed. We struggled at first to understand what the heck we were doing was so wrong. Then after careful analysis, tuning and testing of the design models, we started seeing the errors or our ways and our designs became more exact, precise and tolerant of numerous error conditions. It was truly a humbling experience.

And that’s the point of this post. In my opinion, we in the software design community could use some humbling. I am pretty sure that most of our designs, regardless of programming language used, are majorly flawed. We, meaning so called Software Engineers, find this out after being in the field for several years, hacking (or is that tooling?) away in our favourite programming languages without any real verifiable proof that our design is the right one or even correct or would even work before we started coding.

Maybe we are all in denial. Maybe I am over generalizing, but having been designing and programming software for many years, I feel I need to reset and look at software design from a much more formal perspective, hence this intro to Alloy and Alloy Analyzer. Both the technique and tools embody what I personally experienced in another industry that underwent nothing short of a revolution in the way how electronic circuits are designed (i.e. industrialization). One could say today that the electronics design industry has been fully industrialized.

Software industrialization will occur one day; history will repeat itself, in the same way that it happened in the electronics design world (and other engineering disciplines) will also happen to the software design world. In fact, it already is happening today. Software design techniques and tools like Alloy and Alloy Analyzer are making it possible to design software and verify the design of the software before the software is actually implemented (i.e. coded). And that is what I call the industrialization of software.

I ordered the Software Abstractions book, downloaded the tools and tutorials and will report back my findings sometime in the future. Needless to say, this is the first time, in a long time, I have become excited again about being in the software development industry.

The Truth about Software Engineering

Mitch Barnett — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:57:29 GMT

The truth is... and as much as it breaks my heart to say this professionally, there is no such thing as Software Engineering.

How can I make this claim? While I can tell you that I have been employed in the software development industry since 1991, that I have graduated from a two year post graduate program in Software Engineering Management, which is now incorporated as a Masters of Software Engineering at the University of Calgary, that I have worked on dozens of small and large commercial projects in North America, including my own open source project, that I have read dozen’s of wonderful textbooks on the very subject of software engineering, still might not convince you I am telling the truth.

So how about I make a claim that I defy anyone to dispute. I make the claim that there is no one on the face of this planet today that can predict the outcome (i.e. schedule, cost, resources, quality, etc.) of ANY software project of any significant size (like >10K SLOC) with any sort of accuracy (I will be generous and say + 25% as we all know it will never be a negative percentage).

If you happen to get lucky and actually hit the target once, I make the further claim that your odds are far better in Vegas then they are in the software world for repeatability – that is repeatability for success, not failure – which I would argue that we are very good at.

Big deal you say. Vast amounts of documentation have been written on the subject of Software Engineering and “how to” avoid mistakes and failures. In fact, for every ailment, we have a remedy we can trot out to counter the ailment. But we still make (the same) mistakes. In fact, just the other day, a very popular web site was down for two days that has kicked off this type of tirade on my blog again. In fact, "I am too old for this shit".

I love Steve McConnell’s books, as I do Robert Glass’s, “Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering.” It contains 55 facts and 10 fallacies. Anyone that has been “in the biz” for any length of time is likely to have made some or all of the mistakes listed in the book. I can admit I fall into the category of having made all of those mistakes and then some. And it is not just me.

What gives then? Why is developing successful software so impossible to predict and repeat? Of sure, all of those books (and experience) outline and recommend treatments, but I sometimes feel we are no closer than the founders of the term software engineering. Of course, there are the people that point out that software development is much as art as is it is engineering (remember I said it wasn’t engineering – even though that breaks my heart to say it, given what I have written on this blog in the past) and that Software Engineering is completely a non-deterministic activity, but hey, so is life.

Stepping back a bit, I would say that our world of software development is unindustrialized compared to other industrialised “engineering” disciplines such as civil, chemical, electrical, electronics, mechanical engineering, etc. This is simply based on a time line which we can do nothing about other than wait it out.

Well, I am not a patient guy and would like to do something about this. One thought that has occurred to me, which I believe is of direct relevance to Software Engineering, is how to do we “visualize” software? Specifically, how do we visualize the “design” of software and how do we visualize the “verification” of the built software?

The closest answer I have seen is this:

Ok, so a little tongue in cheek, but ain’t that the truth about Software Engineering? The title of this blog post did not lie :-)

Note that other engineering disciplines all have ways of “visualizing” the design of their domain. Even designing DNA strands and application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) deal with +100 million objects. What is truly ironic about this is that most of these disciplines use computer software (CAD) to model and verify their designs.

What’s my point? I believe that we are thinking about “visualizing” software the wrong way. CASE tools in the early 90’s are proof of this as I would say that UML is soon to follow the same fate. Why? Because, in my opinion, UML stickman and the other funny looking symbols do not visualize the design of software nor the verification of software – it is simply “Lost in Translation.”

How can we design software on any scale if we can’t model it or visualize it with 100% fidelity? The answer is that we can’t. The closest we can get to modelling or visualizing software is using the same text editor we have been using for over 50 years and using our favourite programming language to design software. Ergo - the source code is the design. Certainly a favourite topic of Jack Reeves. Btw, I happen to concur, which is also the fundamental problem. Visualizing 10,000 lines of source code in any programming language is (far and away) beyond any of us mere mortals that are good for about 7 + - 2 objects at any given moment in time.

It is on this basis that I feel we are way (WAY!) off the target path for Software Engineering and the root cause of why there is no such thing today as software engineering. We have very poor approximations of Software Engineering, still using, comparatively speaking, the equivalent of the Stone Age hammer and chisel. Yet it is the year 2008 – what’s wrong with our industry?

How should we visualize software, both the design and (mathematical) verification (i.e. proof) of the runtime executable? How will visualizing software improve Software Engineering? How can we make the industrialization of software happen? Subject of my next post.

Aeroplan – A Modern Web Site is Down for 2 days!

Mitch Barnett — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:43:52 GMT

OK, I promised I would be good. At the beginning of this year, I made myself a promise not to be a cynical “you know what” when it comes to the world of software development. Lord knows I have seen my fare share of Dilbertesque wackyisms over the last 17 years in this biz. Heck, I even contributed back to the industry with my own open source project. I felt it was giving back to the software world, that has been so kind to me, but then again maybe it is some form of redemption. I don’t know. Maybe that is why I have had only one post so far this year.

But… there are still some things that defy any sort of rationale, logical explanation whatsoever. For example, I am a frequent flyer (~25,000 miles per quarter) and so I keep pretty close track of those miles on my Aeroplan. Last week, I got back from a business trip to LA and Medford , Oregon . Oregon , truly a beautiful place, but not as beautiful as the Sunshine Coast , where I live, but I am biased.

So, as usual on Friday, I pop over to the Aeroplan site and am greeted with the following web page.

Now, I know from time to time, there are outages, and maybe it would last an hour or so, cause how serious could it be? Pop in a new drive, slide in a new web server in the farm, switch failed, power supply failed – but hey, even those would actually not cause an outage, cause as any data center system engineer knows, these are all “hot swappable” in the year 2008. Well it is Sunday at 9pm and the outage is still in effect. Now what in the heck would cause an outage of a fairly heavy traffic laden web site for over two days? I can’t imagine.

Note the site says, “Following a routine maintenance procedure, we experienced a system failure.” A system failure? Folks this is a catastrophe of biblical proportions in web terms for the year 2008. A rip in the time space continuum has occurred over there at Aeroplan. No halfway decent web site goes down for two days. Even my own rinky dinky web log here that I host on an ancient 1990 Pentium III 600 MHz piece of you know what has not even seen 2 days of outage – ever - even when my power supply blew up and I had to shoe horn the ol’ mother board into a brand new case only took 6 hours.

So what the heck could have happened? I can only guess that somehow the entire data center melted down and there is no back up of the source code and somewhere someone, or a group of people are madly waiting until Monday morning to get into a bank’s safety deposit box to get the latest tape back up. Like I just can’t image what it could be. Can you?

What will be really surprising to me come Monday morning and Aeroplan is still not up. If that is the case, I should call Aeroplan – I will host their site for a mere $10,000 per month (cheap!) and I guarantee that their site will never be down for longer than 24 hours, or they can have all of their money back. How about that Areoplan, do we have a deal? Oh by the way, I might upgrade my PIII to host it on :-)

But seriously, man, you are giving us professionals a bad name in our biz for not having your sh*t together. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever, in the year 2008, for your main business, i.e. your web site, to go down for 2 days! Either you do not know what the heck you are doing or you just don't care Mr.Aeroplan - either case, if you did not "own" my aero miles, I would switch to a new provider in a flash for such blatant shoddiness.

Updated Monday April 28 - Aeroplan manages to get their web site back up and running with little explanation.

However, I still see that my Aeroplan miles I collected from the previous week have not been updated on the site. We will see if my Aeroplan Miles were affected or not...

Global System Builder available for download

Mitch Barnett — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:48:57 GMT

Official website: http://globalsystembuilder.com Download source from CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/gsb

3D Map-based User Interfaces

Mitch Barnett — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:57:04 GMT

I am working on a new user interface for my web-based IDE, called Global System Builder. It will use a 3D map-based user interface. So how does a 3D map-based user interface work with an Integrated Development Environment? You will see in the following posts. First step is the evaluation.

I lived in Calgary , Alberta , Canada for quite a few years and know the downtown area quite well. One of its famous landmarks is the Calgary Tower . So I wanted to see how the two major (free) players compared to the real thing (above).

Check this out, Google Earth on the left and Virtual Earth 3D on the right. Hmmm… interesting. Google Earth’s picture is a SketchUp drawing. Now I have played with SketchUp and it is incredibly powerful to model 3D – including the interior of a building. However, not the case with the Calgary Tower here. You may want to look at the Google’s 3D Warehouse as they have a nice inventory of 3D objects.

Now Virtual Earth’s image on the right is interesting as the software used by MS to gather and make the 3D images got messed up a bit on the Calgary Tower . However, if you look past that and compare the background buildings in the images, Microsoft’s sure looks more realistic.

Microsoft has also acquired a 3D modeling tool like Google’s SketchUp called 3DVIA. It appears to have most of the same capabilities as SketchUp, but I need to spend more time with it. And similarly to Google’s warehouse, Microsoft has a way to place your models on Virtual Earth.

So how do the technologies compare? Well, Microsoft has opted for a web-based approach using a JavaScript control that you can play with live and see the source. Google Earth is a thick-client exe and its SDK is actually a COM interface with a C# .NET wrapper that you can get, which you will need a Subversion client like TortoiseSVN in order to get the source.

Having developed both, I must say that the Google thick client is much smoother and quicker than the Windows web-based client. Meaning that when you zoom in, rotate, pan, etc., and play around with the 3D features, Google Earth’s movements are much smoother and seem to download and render much quicker than Virtual Earth. Now this could be my internet connection speed to the data centers, the number of hops or … a whole bunch of things, but, it still leaves me with this impression.

Other than that, there a very specific feature in one product that is not in the other which will make the decision for me. Wonder what it is?

Finally, a company called 3Dconnexion has developed a 3D mouse called SpaceNavigator that can fly around and through these 3D worlds and models. I have one on order and can’t wait to try it out! If you want to see what it can do, have a look at this interesting “fly by:”

I did look at NASA’s World Wind and it is really impressive, but I have not had enough time to evaluate whether it meets my needs or not. One immediate short coming is the inability to draw and import a 3D model, or so it seems…

Still trying to figure out how a 3D map-based user interface will work with a programmers IDE? Stay tuned.