Toshiba Portege 35xx Experiences Requested

The Eiffelists are Coming!

Hmm, and they aren't even waiting for Bastille Day this year. Eiffel Software is releasing the new version of Eiffel ENViSioN! on Monday (June 2^nd). ENViSioN! is the Eiffel language add-in for Visual Studio that enables you to write software for .NET using Eiffel. What does that get you? Let's see:

• Generics
• Design by Contract
• Agents
• Multiple Inheritance!
• Other stuff that I'm forgetting in my currently over-excited state.

Yee-ha! The download page is at www.eiffel.com/downloads.

I also received a note that they've released an adapter for ASP.NET development, but I can't find it on the download page.

Posted 5:37 PM

I find a lot of mistakes while teaching. Mistakes in MSDN, mistakes in books, mistakes on websites, mistakes everywhere. It's not that I'm more in tune with nature, and it's not just that I'm a tad more grumpy, it's just that I have a class full of victims that come to me with their pain. Hmm, that doesn't really work that way, does it.... Nope it doesn't.

My current peeve is towards you Visual Basic authors/presenters/pundits/experts that attempt to convert your VB material to C#. I know the hype says that languages are interchangable. However, just because the CLI doesn't care which language was used to generate IL, that doesn't give you license to transliterate your hacky VB code into C#, completely ignoring proper language idioms. Case in point - the following is not acceptable C# code:

SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(connectionString);
// use connection
con.Dispose();

Hey! If you can't figure out how to use using, stay on the Visual Basic beach.

For those of you with inferior texts, here is the proper way to aquire (and release) strong ownership over a disposable resource:

using(SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
{
    // use connection
}

And don't get me started on books that actually leave VB code in the text, instead of translating to C#. Hmm, maybe I am a bit grumpier than usual...

That algorithm you like is coming back in style...

A Hand Grenade Walks Into a Bar...

Carl Schneider is filming a documentary on Mad Marc Rude, who was something of a legend in Southern California punk-rock circles. Carl is trying to hunt down people that knew Marc - and he's looking for the bad as well as the good. Since Marc and I promoted concerts together in the early 80's, I thought I'd share one of my Marc Rude stories:

One of the things I learned when promoting was how to negotiate under pressure - a skill I don't really use too much any more, but just try to convince a hall owner that this punk rock show would be different than the 20 previous shows - no damage to the hall, no problems with the police, no angry neighbors. Or try to find a win-win position with a bunch of cops that want to shut down your gig and throw you in jail and maybe smack you around a bit for good measure. I'm the only concert promoter I know that never got arrested, but sometimes it got pretty intense - I had a few shows closed by the cops (Black Flag a couple of times, The Hated once, and a Dead Kennedys show where the cops quarantined an entire city block (4th and B in San Diego), and I missed most of a show Tim Mays and I promoted). At the Hated show, a cop basically threatened (in front of witnesses) to beat me up and throw me in jail for the weekend. The night went downhill from there.

Anyhow, one night after a show a band wasn't happy about their payout. We were promoting this hardcore show as a favor for another promoter, who had apparently told the band they would be paid (X), and told us that the band would be paid (X/2). Bad feelings all around - and Marc and I were just as angry as the band. To cut a long story short (apparently the story is told from several angles in Carl's documentary), the singer for the band pulled a hand grenade on Marc and me. Marc was a rock and stepped up to the plate, "Oh, a hand grenade. Okay, let's talk". I was Jello. Hell, parts of me are still Jello. I did have the presence of mind to clear the sidewalk in front of the club (which was solid glass, with about 50 people standing around, presumably not waiting to be blown up). It was like Marc and I had an unspoken rule: Mickey handles negotiating with the cops, Marc handles negotiating with the illegal explosives. Marc immediately started looking for middle ground, pointing out that he (Marc) would be most irritated if the hand grenade were to be dropped, and it would result in a lose-lose situation all around (I'm paraphrasing - the actual discussion had rather graphic (and disturbing) references to guts, knives, anal sex, tattoos, and respect for others). Eventually, all parties agreed to be pissed-off at the true guilty party, and we worked things out without any explosions.

To this day, when someone tells me they had a hard negotiating session, I just think back to that day. I just don't get to have fun like that anymore.

Adding Const to the CLI