Restless C#ding

I had talked in the past on how fantastic Windows Home Server is (dreams about subpoenas and warrants notwithstanding.

Here's an annoyance I just had... well, perhaps that's a bit harsh. It would be an annoyance for the true "home" user that is the target audience. I'm restoring my media pc, by replacing a hard drive that's probably a month or two from death. So I made sure there was a good backup, and swapped out the hard drive (which was in a very annoying place on my media center pc).

I pop in the home computer restore disk (the one that allows it to boot from CD, find the home server -- must have a basic network stack -- , and restore from backup), tell it that it's fine to boot from the CD, when I get a message I almost don't think twice about. Two options (paraphrased from memory):

Restore a PC that has 512mb RAM or Less

Restore a PC that has more than 512mb RAM

Is it just me, or is the separation between RAM and HD space lost to the mainstream computer user? It should just default to >512mb -- how long has a gig or more been the standard?

I’m starting another OSS project. One of my goals is to cover an existing project – this is something I’ve been meaning to get back to for a while. Essentially it’s an update to a port of Java code I wrote about 9 years ago. About 5 and a half years ago I decided to port it over to C#, .NET. 4 years ago, I ported the UI over to compact framework 1.0, to prove to myself the code was so ‘good’, I could just replace the UI layer of the game and everything would be happy.

And… at that point I added a service layer to keep track of scoring. The funny thing about old code is that it’s always terrible. (At least my personal projects are) I open it up and hoo boy it’s instantly clear that I went about things the wrong way. Many types are in the service reference? Really?

The service code is so tightly coupled it’s making me sweat.

So, I’m about to go all Fowler on this & start refactoring. In fact, it’s so bad, I’ll be a craftsman & start wiping out the dumb classes.

The game’s just a simple modified version of “Same”, that I’d always hoped to modify with a collection of something like IRemovalLogic that could be stacked in wild and crazy ways to provide a unique game experience. But it looks like it’s going to be fun just getting to the starting point.

Tasks to do:

1. Rip out the service garbage. Put back the fluff later.
2. Wipe out the UI? Replace w/ WPF? Or am I wasting my time going on a tangent here….
3. Cover the code!!! NCover is my friend, really.
4. ILogic – create a second methodology for how the game works.
5. IScoringMethodology – allow for changing the scoring
6. Logic via plugin architecture – allow for easy dynamic addition of rules. This will have to include on an itemized basis publishing interfaces to the BO’s.
7. Open the source (I’ll be moving this way up, once the code’s stable again).
8. Create an AI. I’m going somewhere w/ this! This is relatively simple for the simple cases… I have yet to determine whether I want to make the AI test the logic, or the logic test the AI…. or both.

Wow... it's been a while since I've updated this blog.

Today's topic is one that took me a while to get to... not to writing, but to actually implementing. More to the point, it took me an eternity to

be convinced that a) vms for doing work (even for yourself) at home is a Good Thing (tm), b) is not just good, but essential, and c) vmware is a

better product and easier to use than MS Virtual Server and Virtual PC.

Some things it takes me a while to get drilled into my head on -- these are the lessons that are hard learned. I say this as I just exit my own webform post editor in favor of writing my posts in notepad... this is something I constantly harp on my wife for as something you just should not do. Who wants to rewrite a 3 page textbox entry after they've already typed it!

That was actually a poor segue, but it at least serves to illustrate my point... avoid getting burned.

I'm a developer. I like cutting edge stuff.

Those two statements together? Beta Testing for the win.

Over the years (well, since I tricked my way into the win '98 beta back in high school), I've tried countless software that was close-to-but-not-quite ready for prime-time. I've lived without a functional dvd player, lived without sound. Lived without being able to display anything on screen (well... except for BIOS), and headed into it face-first. (Till Windows Home Server!)

With my development environment, I've learned that VMWare is the best way to allow me to try out whatever betas I want on my host OS (currently running Win7 with nary an issue, now that I've told it to ignore the fact that the 64bit drivers are unsigned, and got my hands on some beta drivers for other cards). All I have to do is use some snapshots in VMWare Workstation, and I can revert back in the dev environment to stable points! Now I can have my nightly builds of resharper 4.5, and roll back if I hosed my working environment! Add to this the fact that I can share my USB devices, and now I can synch my iPod when I'm out of the state. (I can also have the VMs net connection go through my cell phone... really cool if I'm on the road)

The other cool things are being able to use Unity to have virtual applications running side-by-side with host windows, and being able to have my native 2560x1600 resolution OS on a virtual machine. For $189 this is invaluable, even though it's a steep price to begin with.