By Brian Swanson on 3/22/2005 1:58 AM

I’ve been downloading a LOT of sample, example, and open-source code lately. I’ve got this idea, and I’m doing research on it. For the first time ever, I’m actually trying to design the idea before I start writing code. Novel concept isn’t it? One of the more interesting articles I’ve read lately while doing some research for my project was on MSDN. In an article titled "Plug-Ins: Let users add functionality to your .NET Applications with Macros and Plug-Ins", Jason Clark does an excellent job first explaining why making an application extensible is so important, and then moves into describing the functionality in the .NET framework that allows for making extensible applications. He covers all aspects of extensible applications, from FINDING assemblies that could be loaded as plug-ins for your application, actually loading them at run-time, how to implement secured and unsecured plug-ins. It’s a full-featured article that is a must read for anyone who’s working on an application that will have any extensibility functionality in it. For me the only downfall of the article was that all the code samples were in C#. I consider myself a fairly competent programmer, and can read C# quite fluently. But, I’ve never taken the leap to actually become C# programmer in full force. So, to make things easier for myself, I converted all of the code samples provided by Jason to VB.NET....

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By Brian Swanson on 3/21/2005 5:58 AM

Old Chinese proverb - “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."

By Brian Swanson on 3/2/2005 10:30 AM

So much going on, so much to talk about and still I say nothing…

 

I’ve been working fairly hard lately, and have been working on my own projects at night even harder so my blog has suffered.

 

Enough excuses, enough whining, on to some real content…

 

For those of you who don’t know I work for a publicly traded company where I’m a VB.NET programmer (hold the jokes, hold the rotten tomatoes).  I work on anything from simple ASP.NET reports to a complex WinForms application for allowing our customers to run their entire businesses.

 

First my history with programming…

 

I started out in “programming” writing in ROM-BASIC for an Atari 800 that somehow my oldest brother convinced my parents to buy us.  Man we were cool, we’d spend an entire day typing in some program (usually a game) from the latest magazine, then we’d spend most of the night debugging it to find which line we’d mistyped and finally we were ready to play it for about 15 minutes...

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By Brian Swanson on 1/26/2005 6:55 AM

I'm beginning to think I need to go re-live the 60s and 70s...Another great quote from a musician who was highly popular in those times...

"You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do." - Jerry Garcia

This is a great quote for people in business, but I believe it's an especially great quote for those who are building software. I believe achieving the "goal" in this quote will be difficult, but it at a minimum will keep me focused on what I should be doing.

By Brian Swanson on 1/19/2005 3:00 AM

I often get accused of liking every movie I see, or loving every book I read. It’s not true…I’m just very vocal about the movie/books that I do enjoy (which happens to be quite a few of both ). I just finished reading Joel On Software: and on diverse and occasionally related matters that will prove of interest to software developers, designers, and managers, and to those who, whether by good fortune or ill luck, work with them in some capacity Whew! That’s a mouthful… This is by far the BEST book I’ve read in regards to the "business" of software development. Joel Spolsky, the author, has a world-renowned blog JoelOnSoftware. He started the blog in early 2000 and it has quickly become a popular destination for programmers everywhere. The book is a compilation of some...

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By Brian Swanson on 1/14/2005 1:33 AM

I think someone at www.changethis.com has been working overtime lately.On January 11th ChangeThis.com posted 6 new “manifests” about a broad range of subjects. Two of the manifests caught my attention and are both great reads:“Fixing Venture Capital” - By Joel Spolsky (JoelOnSoftware.com author)Written in Joel’s usual easy to read, but informative and often funny style, this manifest is a good read especially if you have ever considered getting funding from a VC for your software company. Joel delves into the world of Venture Capitalists and why their motives and goals are different than those of the founders of software companies. These differences of opinion are the main reason why he thinks that software companies should not look for investments from a venture capital firm.”Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging”...

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By Brian Swanson on 1/11/2005 1:35 PM

Terry Gold has written a great article about how some words and catch phrases are used WAY TO OFTEN in corporate america. It seems that the larger the company the quicker some of these phrases catch on, and the longer they linger in meetings.

If you work in corporate america, or ever have you'll find some part of this article that rings a bell to you.

By Brian Swanson on 1/11/2005 9:32 AM

I find myself talking about the products I use regularly to anyone who will listen to me, so I thought I would share links to them.

I use each of these products daily and love each of them for the way they enhance some part of my life.

FeedDemon– RSS Feed Reader
Trillian v3.0 – Instant Messenger client (3.0 rocks if you haven’t tried it, there is a free version of 3.0 as well)
Audible.com – Audio book aggregator (makes my drive to an from work so much better)
GMail – internet email system (with POP3 support now, so all my mail is received in Outlook)
Google Suggest – same ole search engine, but better (still in Beta)

Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions about any of them….

By Brian Swanson on 1/10/2005 3:04 PM

Here we are already almost half way through the first month of 2005…2004 seems like a blur to me, last time I turned around I has just started at the company I work for, and now in February I’ll be celebrating my second anniversary there. While I don’t regret anything from the past year, I’m a little disappointed in my progress towards my goals of being self-employed and somewhat financially independent. I made some major headway towards the end of the year, and I’m going to continue to build on the momentum I finished the year with.2005 has the potential to be the single greatest year of my life. I say that for multiple reasons.My wife and I will be celebrating only our third anniversary together, but our fifth year of being in each others lives. In my adult life no person has affected my outlook and attitude about life more than she has. She is the light that guides me; she is the wind in my sails. I wouldn’t be half as motivated to do the things I plan to do if she weren’t in my life.I’m turning 30 this year…For...

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By Brian Swanson on 12/17/2004 3:51 AM

The guys who developed SharpDevelop wrote a book in the last year or so that describes the process they went through to develop their SharpDevelop Open Source product.  It explains why they made some of the design and architecture decisions they made.

I doubt this free e-book is a complete copy of that book, but it's a good read for those who are interested in “Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop”

 http://www.apress.com/free/index.html

I know they are working on a new version of the book, so this e-book might be a complete copy of the original book.

Just thought I'd pass it along...