I’m in the market for a new computer… which one should I get?

Like a lot of people in the computer industry I get asked this question *a lot*. Friends, family, third cousins once removed all seem to hunt me down when they are in the market for a new computer. I don’t mind, but I’ve gotten used to giving the same answer. I’m posting my answer here as a reference to myself, them, and anyone else this might help…

Whichever one you pick, it will be out dated in a month

Before you buy a computer you should accept that this is part of the technology world we live in. In three months you will see a better laptop for less money with more features. Accept that fact and move on.

Any laptop will work… seriously… it doesn’t matter.

Unless you are a serious gamer, doing auto-cad or some sort of 3D rendering: any modern computer on the market right now will do what you want.

Start at Best Buy

My advice is to go to Best Buy – not the website, go in to the store. Figure out how much you want to spend, what features are important to you and then pick one out. I honestly and consistently find the sales people at Best Buy to be pretty helpful and informative. If you have time, you can watch the papers, shop and compare, but at least you’ll have a better idea of what you are looking for and what’s available. I pretty much use Best Buy as the base line or starting point for that. Some good places to check next: Fry’s, New Egg, Staples, Dell, Refurbished Dells

Don’t pay for the extras.

I would go to Best Buy – see what they have to offer, just don’t sucked in to all of their add-ons and up sales. They will offer to sell you a bag, Anti-Virus, Software Removal/Installation. Anything that they offer you can do on your own or is probably available for free (ex: Anti-Virus/Firewall – don’t let them sale you those)

They offer so many “services” that the price of your computer could easily double. For some people this could be a great service, but for most – these are things that you can do on your own, and would probably benefit from learning how to do them anyway. I understand why they offer these services, and why people buy them… I pay to get my oil changed on my car (because I’m not a car guy) some people would never think to pay someone else to change their oil… I guess that’s how I feel about the “extras” they offer.

Warrantee? Maybe.

Probably the single biggest up sale that they offer is the warrantees. I have mixed feeling about these. One one hand, I expect products to last more than a year, and hate paying extra for that assurance. On the other hand… I did purchase an extended warranty on a laptop once (from Staples). Normally , I wouldn’t pay the money for that , but that was specifically because that laptop was for work, I was traveling a lot at the time and if anything happened to it, I’d be dead in the water – also – my work was paying for half of the laptop. I don’t buy warrantees for computers that are going to stay at home.

Buy RAM not CPU

If you have the money, invest in more RAM than processor speed. If you are going to go with a 64 bit processor, then I would try to go to 6 GB of RAM or 3 GB of RAM for a 32 bit OS. Also, check around – often you can find RAM at substantially discounted prices after market. Apple is notorious for charging outrageous prices on extra RAM.

Buy New

I would not buy a used or 3rd party laptop. New ones are plenty cheap right now, and a much better value. Sorry eBay – I don’t want a used computer, and I want to know that the support and warrantee are going to be there.

What about a NetBook?

For about $300.00 you can get a Netbook. For around $400.00 you can get a laptop that does much much more and is much more powerful. I have a friend that bought a Netbook because he was writing a book. He loved it, and it worked great for him. But he specifically bought it for a single purpose, to use Word and write his book. It was a second computer for him, and he wanted the portability and flexibility that it provided. I would not consider a Netbook for a primary laptop. For a little more money you can get something that will be much more powerful and versatile.

Anything will work

Again, almost anything on the market will work. Just figure out what you want it to do. For most people that involves using Word and surfing the Internet.. and anything will work. If you are going to do a lot of gaming, development or something where you need more power… then this blog post is not for you. 

OK, that’s it for me. What are your suggestions? Add them to the comments below.

Happy Shopping!

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/calebjenkins/2405088004/

I received a message on Facebook last week from a friend of mine that asked this question:

I have recently decided that I would love to go to school to learn programming. I just wanted to know if you had any advice or suggestions that could help me out (I know it’s a very open ended question)? Also I wanted to know if you had any suggestions on books to read regarding Design Patterns (particularly related to web development).

Great question. Let’s tackle those starting with the second part…

any suggestions on books to read regarding Design Patterns
(particularly related to web development).

Seriously, you can’t go wrong with the Head First Series.

I know that the covers are a little hard to take seriously, but I what I really like about these books is that they are designed for learnability. They are not designed to be reference books or course curriculum. This is the same reason that I liked learning from WebMonkey (back in the day… when they had current and relevant articles)

OK, now for the first part of the question.

I would love to go to school to learn programming. I just wanted to know if you had any advice or suggestions that could help me out

Here’s the thing. I don’t think that I learned any of the really good practices that I use today in school. I find that most CS programs are geared for people that want their PhD in CS… or want to work for Intel developing the next CPU chip or want to right super fast machine code for networking drivers and pace makers. These are all good, but most of them miss the point and the sort of Software Engineering that is required for solid, maintainable, reliable business applications (98+ % of the consulting that I do)

I don’t know of a single school that teaches, TDD/BDD, CI, DI/IoC, SOLID… I DO think that you can learn the fundamentals of programming (syntax) and even some of the good OO principals (but even that usually goes overboard with too much theory and not enough tangible reality).

So it really depends on your goals.

If you want to work towards your PhD – go to a university and get your B.S.

If you want to develop web (UI) – I would look at the the offerings at most community colleges. I find that community colleges are often more agile to the market place with certification programs and other offerings than many Universities.

If you want to learn the really good practices for maintainable, testable software…

go listen to this HanselMinutes episode, find as many sources of quality content that you can latch on to and absorb them…   plus. I’d go subscribe to the blog series that I’m writing on development practices. 

What advice am I missing?

Take a second to answer this quick poll on where you learned to write software.  I’ll post the answers when the poll closes on Feb 20th – last day of the upcoming Microsoft MVP Summit

Happy Coding!

I’m starting off this series talking about Object Oriented Programming. It’s amazing how many people write C# or VB (.NET) with long, procedural methods with really no understanding of the true fundamentals of OO design.

I know, I know – it’s not you, and know what? I’m not talking about you.. but check out the code from the person next to you. See what I mean?

Just because you’re writing in an OO language, doesn’t mean that you’re writing OO code, or taking advantage of the Object Oriented benefits. An Object Oriented language is more than classes with methods, properties and events (even VB 6 had that!).

Learn the Fundamentals.

Get to know Interfaces, abstract classes, structs. I’m not picking on the thousands and thousands of extremely talented .NET developers that came from VB6 (I’m one of them), but I am acknowledging the fact the there are OO tools and strategies at your disposal now that never were before.  Dig in to the delegates and the various eventing models, chained constructors, virtual and overridden methods. Go beyond if statements, while loops and language syntax similarities and embrace your new polymorphic self.

Perhaps, you’ve been a very successful developer for a very long time, I’m not saying that you have to change how you write all of your code. I am however, suggesting that you should realize that you have more tools in your toolbox than you might be aware of, and that if you learn how to use those tools, you will be more successful using the right tool for the right job.

Go beyond the fundamentals. A friend of mine teaches Object Oriented Analysis and Design for SMU, he once told me that if you have to use an if statement in your code then you’re not doing OO – it’s now procedural. I think he meant his statement in jest, (Although, he actually doesn’t allow his students to use if statements past the third section in his course) but the point was well taken. Beyond language semantics lie’s a whole world of patterns, approaches, and ways of doing OO that can make your life much, much simpler.

Pragmatic – Make new friends, but keep the old ones..

I’m not that much of an OO purist. I actually do feel that sometimes a well laid our “procedural” method can be easier to read, and communicate the intent of the code, but it’s a balancing act. Every time you write an if/switch statement you fork the flow of your code and increase it’s complexity, reducing your ability to maintain and test it. An OO purest might create a polymorphic object at this point and hop over to it instead of writing that if statement. I’m not saying that one way is better than the other. Like I said, writing readable/maintainable/testable code is a balancing act.

Beware of being “too” OO. It’s easy to get too pure on your OO. I’ve worked on systems where I had to fight through 7 to 8 levels of inheritance debugging and fighting all the way to figure out what in the world the system was doing. I’ve seen developers take 30 lines of procedural code and convert them in to 60 or 70 unique classes spread out over 6 projects. You can have too much of a good thing!

Is it OK to be “procedural” sometimes… can you be too OO?

The truth is, you want to use the right tool for the right job. The code on top is probably pretty readable and is fine… *right now* it won’t be too long and you’re going to want to start moving it closer to something like on the bottom. Why? With every scenario, and rule that gets applied to shipping orders, this code becomes less readable and harder to test. It won’t be long until you’re going to want to start validating (unit testing) your various order processes independent of each other. You’re going to want to break apart the coordination of an order, determination (the factory) of an order, from how it is actually handled… as you do that, your code will start to become more SOLID… but we’ll save that for the next post.

Interview Question Alert

Some of the related questions that I often ask:

Q:What’s the difference between an Interface and an Abstract class? When would you use one over the other? What implications does that have?

A: Interfaces define the contract with zero implementation, Abstract classes can have some implementation, but for the most part don’t. You can inherit from one base class, but implement as many Interfaces as you’d like to. Abstract classes can be versioned (if you’re going to strongly name them) but Interfaces cannot be versioned. Bonus Answer: Whenever you create an abstract class, you should always have an Interface to go with it, then code your dependencies to the Interface, not the abstract class.

Q: “Polymorphic” is a big OO word that developers like to throw around. Give a practical example of when you’ve used polymorphic behaviors in your code.

A: Anytime you use an abstract factory you’re implementing polymorphic principals. So the “processor.Process()” method above would be an example of Polymorphism, so would most Interface based development.

Further Reading

I hope this post has inspired you at some level to keep honing your development skills. I know that it was heavier on the “why” and low on the “how” specifics… I think that’s part of the point. You’ve got to go tackle some of this yourself. So go on, get out there.

Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_oriented

Book: Object Thinking – MS Press

What are the resources that have helped you the most in your software development?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/sets/72157594328095699/

If you are going to read through my “10 practices that every developer should start right now” series, then you probably want to know where these 10 practices came from, why I chose these 10 – really, what so important about secure coding anyway?   – I think that it’s important to know that these aren’t just 10 random items to fill a couple of blog posts. These are all practices that have been thoroughly thought out. This list is something that I started to formulate over a year ago based on my experience as a consultant, working as a technical editor, and discussions with countless MVPs, other consultants and in my interviews with potential consultants…

Experience. First, these 10 practices have come from over 15 years of professional development work, working with countless customers when I was at Microsoft, as well as the numerous development shops and enterprise customers that I’ve been a consultant for over the last many years. These are, what I consider, to be the biggest bang for your buck, the low hanging fruit that you can quickly implement and the practices that will yield the greatest value in the shortest time.

Writing a Book. I once had the privilege of working as a Technical Editor on a C# 3.0 book. That experience was both rewarding and frustrating. It was rewarding to go through the process, engage with the executive editors, author and see the whose process of writing a technical book move forward. It was also frustrating to know that – while everything in the book was technically accurate – it often was not the content that I would have wanted to cover. These are the things that I want to talk about.

Hiring. Over the years, but especially during my time as a Principal consultant for Improving Enterprises and now as the Senior Software Architect for Six Flags, I’ve spent countless hours interviewing various – really smart people – that often fell short. (I’m a nice guy – but apparently a pretty heavy handed interviewer). I’ve discovered that the things that matter in software development – are often not taught, even in the best schools. These are the topics that I wish every CIS/ MIS department would start covering to some extent. I sometimes wished that I had a “quick read” book that I could hand to people on their way out and say “here, read this. This is what you should know before you try to work here.”

Scope – Obviously any one of these topics could be a whole book in and of itself. So none of these posts are going to be intended as a “complete” reference or anything like that. More like “Caleb’s thoughts on the matter.”… and hopefully some useful insights, and enough information to let you, Dear Reader, move forward and know where to go from here.

So that’s my introduction. I hope that you’ll join me as we dig in to all 10 practices.

Enjoy the ride!

photo credit: flickr

Personal post. This year our church set aside three days to fast, pray and dig deep in to God’s word. I’ve never done anything like this before. I loved it. I once heard a story about the taking time to sharpen your axe. In other words reflect on the future, and prepare emotionally, physically and spiritually for what lies ahead.

I think that most people go through life never thinking about how or what they might need to prepare for in the future. We had great speakers every night. I’m including the three talks below. What are you doing to prepare for this new year?

Enjoy!

Pastor Brady Boyd from Colorado Springs, CO kicked things off with a challenge to be More Than Conquers… Super Mega hooper neako! (you’ll have to watch for that to make sense)

Prepare 2010 – Pastor Brady Boyd from Milestone Church on Vimeo.

Michael Fletcher – This talk will change the way you pray. Awesome. Awesome.

Prepare 2010 – Pastor Michael Fletcher from Milestone Church on Vimeo.

Jacob Aranza from Lafayette, LA – Set aside the flesh and grow in Spiritual Maturity. Are you a spiritual infant? Know any?

Prepare 2010 – Pastor Jacob Aranza from Milestone Church on Vimeo.

Update: Since technically a DI Container could be considered part of SOLID, I’ve swapped it out for Secure Coding… more on this soon!

If I ever right a book on becoming a .NET Ninja, these are the things that I want to cover.

OO

SOLID

Use a Container (DI)

Secure Coding 101

Patterns

Automated Tests

Source Control

Continuous Integration

Agile | Lean | Scrum | XP

Team Dynamics

Never Stop Learning

Eventually, I’d like to write a book and dedicate at least a chapter to each of these (although any one of these topics could be a book in and of itself) In the mean time, I think that I’ll start with a blog post on each one, and maybe make it a goal to eventually do a User Group talk covering each topic? I’m looking forward to flushing these out as posts. I hope that you will enjoy them too!

What sort of things would you add to the list?

Last month (November 4th, 2009), I had the privilege of speaking at Microsoft’s “The New Efficiency” Launch for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in Dallas. While no one was there to record *my sessions* specifically, Microsoft has posted similar session from other parts of the country. I wish I could link (or embed) them directly since it takes some clicking to get to them. Instead, here’s a quick walkthrough. Enjoy!

1. Go to Microsoft’s “The New Efficiency” website http://thenewefficiency.com *

* Site requires Microsoft Silverlight

2. Click on the “Watch The US Event” link

3. Check out all of the “For Developers” videos…

4. Sit back, and enjoy.

This is a test post that I am writing from my Android myTouch phone for @briangorbett with the Android wpToGo app..

Although, I really have to wonder… what is sooo important that you have to blog it from your phone and couldn’t just update twitter?

Last Thursday I posted my thoughts about Microsoft’s OSS announcements (go digg it: 3 Reasons Microsoft Needs an Open Source Officer), namely the formation of the CodePlex Foundation (awesome) and the departure of Sam Ramji (bummer). My take is that this is a great opportunity for Microsoft to take open source projects at Microsoft up a notch and raise the stakes with a big bold move by bringing in someone like my friend whurley (William Hurley – currently the chief architect of open source strategy at BMC).

This morning I turned on my computer to see that Todd Weiss and the folks at Linux.com had featured this idea on their home page. Go check it out the full article!

While I was out at the MVP Summit this summer I had a chance to catch up with Brian Prince from Microsoft and we talked about using Dependency Injection for better code level architecture.  Check out the full video on Microsoft’s ARCCast.

When you’re done. Check out my Dependency Injection on Silverlight presentation.