Today I saw a post on Facebook by a friend of mine, Anthony Green, about writing his first blog post as a Microsoft employee (he has a personal blog as well, unfortunately he’s not written anything since 2008) – when I saw the title, I couldn’t believe it was 20 years already – seems just yesterday that I wrote about its 15th birthday:
Happy 20th Birthday Visual Basic!
My, what a journey it’s been. Almost fifteen years ago I randomly bought a copy of “Visual Basic 5: Deluxe Learning Edition” – I was just 15 at the time and wanted a new hobby, and writing software seemed like it would be fun. In those early days, I had no idea what career I would choose, and really didn’t intend for software development to become the dominant force in my life – I just wanted a better, more productive way to spend my time during the summer.
In the years that have went by, I became passionate about the field, and all it encompasses (possible obsessed, if you believe my wife) – it’s been the driving force in my life. Today, I manage a team of 6 developers, and have a fun start-up with some friends (that someday won’t cost me money every month) – and all because I bought that book. Overall, I have a lot to thank VB for, it really did get me started in this field.
Today though, my language of choice has moved on to newer options – I prefer bleeding technologies when I can use them – but VB will always have a place in my heart, and I’ll always follow its progress as it continues to transform and adapt to an ever-changing world. As the most popular .NET language (contrary to what many of the C# developers think), it plays a vital role in the development of the framework and the ecosystem.
In the conversations I’ve had with Anthony about the future of the language, I greatly look forward to writing about its 25th birthday; I expect those will be exciting times for the language and the entire .NET ecosystem.
While building a new website for a small ISV, I was asked to integrate a forum – should be simple I thought, I’ll just use WordPress as a CMS and bbPress. Simple? Not quite.
To make things easier, I used Platform Pro by Pagelines (a great platform IMHO) and so used their “deep integration” instructions (while they are intended for Platform Pro users, the steps are virtually identical for all other setups). While the setup went quite smoothly, it wasn’t until it came time to test user registrations that the issue came up: when a new user tried to register they would receive an error stating that “email is required,” even if they had entered a valid email address. This effectively made it impossible for users to register, and thus made the forum useless.
After a bit of research, it looks like there is a conflict between newer versions of WordPress (3.0+) and bbPress 1.0.2 (I’m not sure if older versions have the same issue, but I would assume so). The fix for this is actually quite simple: install a plugin. The plugin itself is quite simple – containing only around a half-dozen executable lines of code, and works around the issue with a simple hack.
Unfortunately, the plugin description is rather vague and required a fair bit of research to identify as the fix, and the official documentation makes no reference to the issue or that this plugin can be used as a workaround.
Overall, a simple workaround but a major issue if you don’t notice that it’s broke (as is quite easy to do).
Setting up the Android SDK on Windows 7 64bit, with a 64bit JDK / JRE is a bit less straightforward than one would expect, thankfully though the solution is quite simple. There are two settings that need to be adjusted to make this work – otherwise you’ll get an error indicating that Java can’t be found.
Step 1: Modify your PATH to include the bin folder of the JRE. Mine looks like this:
C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin
Step 2: Set the ANDROID_SWT variable (you’ll probably need to add it) to the \tools\lib\x86_64 folder of the Android SDK. Mine looks like this:
C:\Android\SDK\tools\lib\x86_64
With these two changes, everything seems to work as expected. Why this is required on 64bit but not 32bit I’m not sure, but this does seem to solve the problem.
I’ve been a fan of bbPress for quite some time; I’ve even contributed code to the project. For those that aren’t familiar with it, bbPress is an open-source forum system written in PHP. It’s fast, lightweight, easy to install and even easier to use. It also scales, quite well.
bbPress was originally written to power the support forums WordPress.org, which get quite a bit of traffic. Later, it was released as a separate project. While it doesn’t have nearly the feature set found in more popular systems such as vBulletin or phpBB; it makes up for it in simplicity. It’s designed to be conversation-centered, where the clear focus is on what people are saying, not the bells and whistles provided by the software.
I’ve used it for a couple sites and couldn’t be more pleased; though now I fear the end may be near.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com (and ListPress.com) has committed to supporting the project; though primarily in context to its role in the WordPress world. bbPress as a separate product has so much potential, though it seems Automattic has little interest in this; instead the interest seems to be in making bbPress just another add-on for WordPress.
At one point there was a lot of excitement and interest surrounding bbPress, though for a project like this to succeed you need input from the community, you need an open and fast paced development process. Unfortunately for bbPress, it had no such process. There were people who had the skill, time, and interest to lead the project and make it a success; but they were pushed away and the project was allowed to stagnate.
Today, there is some activity going on, and I’m glad to see that it won’t fade away completely; though I see little chance that it will live up to what it could have been. I have a lot of respect for Matt and Automattic; they’re very successful and build great products; but they could have done so much more.
bbPress will go on I’m sure; though I believe only as a shadow of what it could have been. Though maybe Matt will prove me wrong, I certainly hope so.
When it comes to small business project management, Basecamp by 37signals has been the king of the hill for some time. Now though, there is an exciting new player in the field: Open Atrium. It’s a Drupal based open source project management system somewhat like Basecamp, though with many more features.
Open Atrium is new on the scene, with beta 1 being released just 4 days ago – though it’s already rather polished and seems to work well. While there are some hiccups with the installer and a disappointing lack of documentation, it’s still very easy to install and takes only a few minutes to get running.
It has all the major features that you would expect, plus a few extras such as a twitter-like shoutbox system. Here are the highlights:
- Blogging
- Calendar
- Dashboard
- Document Storage
- Task Management
Being open source and self-hosted adds some nice benefits; unlimited customization, full control of your data, and my favorite: can be installed on a non-public web server. Having you project management system sit behind a VPN is a great way to avoid data leaks and embarrassments.
I’m still debating which is best, Basecamp or Open Atrium – but if you want to save some money, Open Atrium is worth looking into.
Over the next few weeks (and months) I’ll be posting a series of articles on the tools and services that start-ups can use to make their business both more efficient and more profitable. This is aimed at ISVs (both micro and close to micro) though most of this should apply to any technology startup.
When you are starting a business, there are many important considerations with anything you use, here are the keys points I’ll be looking at:
- Expense – This is probably the top requirement. Budgets tend to be quite limited, and there are always too many demands on what budget is available.
- Effectiveness – It has to work; when running an ISV you simply don’t have time to waste. There is software to build and a business to run – there’s no time to waste on things that don’t work.
- Power – Just because you’re running a small business, doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the power and features available to significantly larger business.
- Flexibility – ISVs have a great benefit over larger businesses; agility. The very nature of smaller businesses give them a great ability to adapt to change – and the tools and services they use should be just as flexible.
There are many great resources out there – the challenge is digging through the clutter.
Posts so far:
