Which is why they're offering breaks to startups. Get 'em hooked now, and then when they grow and get locked in, ka-ching. Smart business.

lol am I the only person in this forum who quite likes MS stuff? Yeah I get they are hooking us early but we were going to buy that stuff anyway so +ev!

I'm confused, what do you mean?

Can anyone explain this breaking the patent stuff or link to an explanation, cause I don't understand what you mean..

Mvh
Inga

I used the newest visual studio not too long ago for a couple of months and I quite liked it. Unfortunately I was using VB.Net which is a horrible language.

Honestly though, I can't understand why anybody (let alone a startup with more limited funds) would use an MS stack over a free open source stack.

The software we are developing is an executable application (not a web service) which targets Windows platforms to reach the biggest audience.

VS2010 is excellent for writing software in. Also for the web side, I've always worked jobs professionally with ASP and SQL server so it's just what I'm most proficient in.

Right, I forget that people still make desktop apps.

VS is excellent for writing software. At one point I claimed that I could just mash the keyboard and get the correct code on the screen. Pretty magical in places.

Yeah intellisense is amazing, really nice piece of software overall. I know MS has it's faults but VS & SQLServer + a couple of others are really nice imo.

Woohoo, security through obscurity could theoretically end peoples' lives:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18744...to_kill_people

It's like if you allowed Sony to design pacemakers and insulin pumps. Jesus Christ people are ******ed.

I'm not an expert on any of this, but the controversy is that you can patent algorithms, which is basically saying, "if you use merge sort, you are breaking this or that patent." I'm not sure if merge sort is specifically a patent, but offering downloadable software off the internet is a patent violation.

MS and Apple joined forces to buy 6billion dollars in patents from a defunct company, beating out Google's initial bid of 3.7billion. That shows you how high-risk it is. I mean, you have three companies that are basically in the forefront of creativity and technological achievements fighting to buy patents to protect themselves from lawyers.

I did link to the radio show. it is incredibly well-researched, plus they have links to further reading.

Here was Forbes Magazine's take on the broadcast:

http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2...tware-patents/

hey, me too! :highfive:

if you want to reach the biggest audience, wouldn't it make sense to pick something more cross-platform than the microsoft stack?

fwiw i have the joy of supporting windows, several flavors of linux, macos, solaris, aix, and two versions of hpux. whee!

It's only my brother developing the main software at the moment, I eventually want to jump in but I'm not skilled enough atm (he's a genius). It's extendible with JS though so I will be able to help at some point So supporting Linux etc etc just not feasible for one guy, I think he's done 100k lines of code already, probably going to approach near the 1/2 mill mark by full release (already too much for one person). Basically just sticking to what we know best. He's forever telling me how rubbish Intel Gfx cards are!

Are you solo on it as well? Or do you have a team?

1. trying to support linux etc etc after the fact is going to be, um, hard. if you don't bake that assumption in at the beginning you're probably doomed.

2. the combination of "genius", "one guy", and "100k lines of code" makes me want to run the other way. there are probably some developers in the world who are capable of making such a project maintainable and scalable; i guess time will tell if your brother is one of those developers.

3. intel graphics cards? or intel video chipsets baked onto motherboards (does intel even make standalone graphics cards)? if the latter, yes, they are pretty awful.

4. i lead a team of three who work on a variety of build/test/automation issues. we're part of a dev department of about 20 (including QA and a technical writer) in a company of about 40.

5. anyone in seattle looking for a rockstar build engineer/sysadmin/technical lead with a wide variety of talents?

Why does number of coders make a difference to this? Surely it just takes longer. He's already done it on an open source project he run that has basically the same function as this new software so he's not going in cold so to speak.

developers working alone have a strong tendency (IME) to do whatever works for them, which rarely works for anyone else who needs to read/write/maintain/improve the code. further, one guy working alone and producing 100K SLOC in a short time is unlikely to be following best practices like well-thought-out architecture, TDD, getting code reviews from colleagues, etc.

again, maybe your brother is one of those superstars that can pull this off. most developers emphatically cannot. if he has experience running a sizable open source project in a similar domain, i agree his chances go up somewhat.

Would be nice to get another developer in to help him code release some of the workload but that's just way too expensive at this stage, and I'm too busy on other things to start helping.

We have a fairly good testing method imo though, we basically give each build away to users who submit bug reports, works remarkably well. It's functional enough for people to want to use it for pleasure, and a lot of them seem motivated to report bugs which is great. Testing out in the wild, it's not a formal way to test but with a big enough motivate user pool it's effective enough.

My sole thought when I heard about this is "Why are we putting equipment like this on networks that others can access?"

For a TV show that nerds should love:

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/prototyp...type-this.html

It was discontinued years ago, but the full first season is nothing short of amazing.

http://www.amazon.com/Prototype-This.../dp/B002FUIJ1K

It features Joe Grand (Kingpin) of L0pht Heavy Industries, for those who are old enough to remember.

He's on the technical advisory board for MAKE Magazine, where I actually hope to get an article published in a few months.

Maybe in Boulder, it's been tough even finding support techs in Melbourne.

I actually work with one of the L0pht guys.

I'm working on the coolest project I've ever had at work.

It's a live-streaming social media board for a conference. I'm working with the Twitter Streaming API (very cool) & 4 square's API, which is a bit of a PITA. The data is being displayed in a Flash app (that I don't have to write, yay) and because we want real time, I'm writing a socket server to provide constant updates. It's all new technology (for me), and it's a super high visibility project. The only downside is that I have exactly one week to write it all.

gullanian,

not sure why i was such a negative nancy yesterday morning. i guess it's because i'm coming at things from the perspective of industrial software engineering. there is still plenty of space in the world for projects where time to market, features, and personal enjoyment are more important than maintainability or code coverage metrics.

kero,

wait, you didn't move to oz did you?

kyle,

i remember l0pthcrack. i think one of my coworkers back in the day actually used it to help a user who had forgotten her Windows password.

zurvan,

that sounds like fun, but what are you doing sitting here talking to us? get back to work!

It's Saturday. I don't work Saturday's.

Not yet, just here for a couple of months. I don't know if I could afford to move here, the idea of business casual hasn't caught on here. I'd need to spend at least a Mac Book Air or two on new clothes to not feel like the Hic American.

It's Sunday and I'm going into work

Haha, Saturday here and I'm heading to work shortly. Prob doing it again tomorrow.