Somewhere along the line, I decided if the client did not ask about bugs I did not tell him that I found any. Why on earth did I think this was a good policy for the company or my client?
Bugs are things that produce an incorrect or unexpected result. Is that why my client has me working in that code? Of course, it is.
My job in the first place was to write "perfect" code. Well, I know that is not going to happen. As a matter of fact, a few months ago one of my clients was amazed that the code worked the first time and that had not happened in twenty plus years.
That got me thinking about why do have buggy code? First reason was easy, I'm the tester. We all know the programmers make the worst testers. The second reason is that I have nothing like Visual Studio for the Windows programmers, or do I?
Since my company, U2logic, produces an editor called XLr8Editor for Unidata and Universe that allows you to see you variables in an outline instead of using the -X or -XREF compile option. XLr8Editor allow you to type control-k to go to each instance that variable is used. There is a built in search engine where I can find the exact lines where a piece of code or a variable is used.
All of things and many more features have made be a better coder. Keep reading in the next few weeks and months, XLr8 family will be enhanced to make all of us better coders.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Not Invented Here
I was speaking with a would be client the other day trying to sell our XLr8Editor for a mere $49.00 per workstation. He is questioning me on how and the whys which make this a step up for him and his shop in my opinion.
But it struck me that this sale ways not going any where because he or they had not invented this technology. What is it with these Universe and Unidata shops that build there own editor or their own form editor or the next big thing for them?
I think there are two parts to the answer to the question I have posed.
The first part has to do with the age of many of our fellow programmers. Many of us are over 40 (I'm being kind) and have been using U2 or Pick for 10, 20 or 30 years. We are stuck in our ways. We have always done it this way or we just do not want to change. Think about it. Are using a Accuterm, or EditPlus, or wIntegrate, or Notepad, or something you cobbled together? Really, this is equivalent to a Java programmer using VI to write Java which would never happen.
The second part is we have never had a tools to do what we needed. We have ED or AE and that was it. Sure, there where some others, but only System Builder has survived. So, if we need to do it we invented it, period. Otherwise we had to buy a tool was generally out of the question due to budgetary constraints or we were unable to figure the dang tool out.
What we should be doing is what we do with Windows or Linux. We get trials for the software and really try them out diligently. So why are we not doing that? That is the question you all need to answer. My answer is of course, try our tools at U2logic.com. We do allow trials.
But it struck me that this sale ways not going any where because he or they had not invented this technology. What is it with these Universe and Unidata shops that build there own editor or their own form editor or the next big thing for them?
I think there are two parts to the answer to the question I have posed.
The first part has to do with the age of many of our fellow programmers. Many of us are over 40 (I'm being kind) and have been using U2 or Pick for 10, 20 or 30 years. We are stuck in our ways. We have always done it this way or we just do not want to change. Think about it. Are using a Accuterm, or EditPlus, or wIntegrate, or Notepad, or something you cobbled together? Really, this is equivalent to a Java programmer using VI to write Java which would never happen.
The second part is we have never had a tools to do what we needed. We have ED or AE and that was it. Sure, there where some others, but only System Builder has survived. So, if we need to do it we invented it, period. Otherwise we had to buy a tool was generally out of the question due to budgetary constraints or we were unable to figure the dang tool out.
What we should be doing is what we do with Windows or Linux. We get trials for the software and really try them out diligently. So why are we not doing that? That is the question you all need to answer. My answer is of course, try our tools at U2logic.com. We do allow trials.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)