The result is XRDL, which retains XML-RPCs simplicity, while alleviating its single greatest shortcoming.

XRDL is being developed as a project under Google Code.

XRDL is basically a simple XML language which allows for automatic generation of type safe (as well as untyped) XML-RPC clients.

The project so far consists of:

• an XML Schema definition of XRDL
• a tool for generating XRDL definitions for services written in php
• a tool for generating php clients provided an XRDL service definition
• a tool for generating C++/Qt clients provided an XRDL service definition

So, XRDL is very much useful right now, assuming that your choice of server and client languages is like mine.

What’s obviously missing is tools for handling additional platforms and languages. The XRDL language itself is really quite trivial, so writing tools is really not all that hard. Why don’t you give it try for your pet language?

Enough of the Jobsian control over the iPhone. Enough of the arbitrary app store rejections. Enough of the objective-C only crap. Enough of the tightass control over which carrier I need to choose. Just plain enough already.

I am dropping the iPhone like a bad habit and replacing it with a brand spanking new Nokia N900. Mmm more Qt goodness for me.

Thus, I recently started reading “Agile software development with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle.

For those unaware, Scrum relies on sprints (2-3 weeks of focused development based on a frozen set of requirements) followed by demonstrations of working vertical prototypes. The underlying idea being that freezing the entire requirements specification up front makes little sense, as the client is bound to change it anyway. Making rapid releases, and allowing the client to change the list of requirements between sprints, supposedly satisfies both the development team (who get to do focused work on a frozen list of requirements) and the client (who gets to see early working prototypes and  modify the requirement specification every 2-3 weeks).

These are my impressions so far:

Scrum, much like extreme programming, greatly appeals to me as a programmer with a focus on professional integrity and software quality. Indeed it appears to embody many of the virtues that I’ve been pushing for quite some time. Among these are:

• granting programmers room and conditions that support focus on “getting in the zone”
• forcing the project manager to handle impediments, organizational or otherwise
• freezing requirements during development

Considering how common-sense these virtues are, it is quite remarkable how few software developing organizations manage to adhere to them. I for one have never been fortunate enough to work in such an organization, although I should greatly like to try it some day.

With that being said, I am not entirely convinced that Scrum will work for the majority of projects in which I am involved, although it should be noted that I certainly have no empirical basis in which draw that kind of conclusion.

First, Scrum teams are recommended to consist of around 7 members, including the Scrum master. Currently we don’t even have 7 full-time staffers.

Second, Scrum appears to require that development projects take at least 2 weeks (for 7 people) to complete. Unfortunately that’s not really the case for quite a few of our projects.

That’s not really Scrums fault though. I guess it boils down to our organization having a problem with attracting even moderately sized projects. Hmm.

In the case of ExtJS I’ve been working with the 2.2 branch (3.0 was recently released), and it has enabled me (the uncrowned king of ugly user interfaces) to create pretty, responsive and reasonably productive graphical user interfaces. Not only that, it also did the job causing a minimum of frustration on my part. It seems that for 99 out of a 100 things I want to add to a user interface, the guys at ExtJS thought of it before me, and added out of the box support directly into the framework. ExtJS is not limited to user interface design though, as “ext core” has all sorts of sweet helper functionality for writing generic non-extjs-ui javascript code. Topping it all of, ExtJS guarantees compatibility with all modern browsers in use, so I get to ignore the whole browser incompatibility extravaganza. Whoohoo.

Qt is much like ExtJS in the sense that it does most stuff right. It massively reduces the need for manually allocating/releasing objects, while at the same time extending C++ with a class library rivaling that of Java. Qt additionally supports native looking gui applications across Linux, Mac and Windows. It even sports a WebKit wrapper class allowing use of a state of the art HTML/javascript engine. In the context of the project that I’ve been working on, that’s simply a killer feature, not currently supported by any other software platform that I am aware of.
Last but not least, Qt introduces an extremely powerful, versatile, thread safe event mechanism called “signals and slots”. Except for the fact that it is implemented by means of yet another C++ preprocessor, it’s exceptionally nicely done.

All in all, I take most (but not all) of the stuff that I’ve said about frameworks back. Bugger.

No wireless iPhone sync

In an apparent effort to shove MobileMe down everybodys throat, Apple has decided to disable wireless synchronization of iPhone data. Given how spectacularly well the iPhone works with wireless protocols, I consider it downright moronic to disallow non-MobileMe users access to wireless synchronization. When added to the whole apps-only-through-the-appstore extravaganza it supports my belief that the iPhone is an exceptionally evil product. That said, I do like to pet my iPhone.

Wake on USB disconnect

Everybody knows that Apple laptops play nice with “sleep” mode. Simply close the lid, and the machine goes to sleep. Open the lid, and it wakes up. Nice and smooth.

Except if I accidently close the lid and then disconnect my USB devices. In that case, the machine wakes up again, even though the lid is closed. So I have to reopen it (hoping that the screen gets turned on) and wait for it to wake up, before I close it again, and wait for it to go to sleep (again). Call me an idiot, but for some reason I tend get the order wrong most of the times that I need to sleep my laptop.

Another misfeature, that I can’t seem to figure out why Apple hasn’t fixed yet.

Spaces and lost dialogues

Occasionally apps will open modal dialogue windows. When using spaces, such windows typically open on the workspace that is currently being viewed. If however, I happen to miss a dialogue window, and navigate to another workspace, the application which originally open the dialog can no longer be interacted with, and I have to go hunting through every workspace in an attempt to locate the rogue dialogue window. To make matters worse showing all workspaces (by hitting F8) doesn’t show modal dialogue windows, so I have to manually comb through all 12 of my workspaces.

Auxillary monitors and window gathering

When disconnecting and auxillary monitor, Mac OS X gathers all open windows (and icons) on the laptop monitor. That’s all well and good. If however, I plug the auxillary monitor back in, the windows remain gathered on the laptop monitor, instead of returning to their original positions. The only way to get around this, that I have found, is to sleep the machine while the auxillay monitor is still connected, and not wake it up until the same monitor (or one just like it) has been reconnected. If I wake up the laptop with no auxillay monitor connected, all windows are gathered on the laptop monitor, and I get to spend 10 minutes shuffling windows around when I reconnect the auxillary monitor later.

No iphone mms
and why oh why does the iphone have no support for sending or receiving mms messages?

That said, I really do like working with OS X.

Obviously, differently people have different ideas about what constitutes good design, but I would argue that a primary trait for a font should be readability. Management, however, disagrees. Follow the link above, and see if you can figure out how to make sense of the new and “improved” font.

Finally, in honor of the new identity, a few of us got together and improved the new AU logo. It’s inserted below, for your viewing pleasure.

It's not a dick!

I am sure someone will take offense, but rest assured that this was made from scratch, and no copyright infringement occurred in the process.

Enjoy.

• is incapable of debugging multiple applications at once.
• manages to slow my machine down beyond anything I’ve experienced with any other application.
• lacks support for basic features, such as showing a list of all usages of a given symbol
• takes 4-5 minutes to start with a 30-project solution

I am sure that I could think of more reasons given a bit more time.

But I digress. This post is really supposed to be about the ReSharper plugin for Visual Studio. I was recently directed toward ReSharper by a colleague of mine, and having worked with it for about a month, I don’t really see how I ever coped without it. While it doesn’t do anything to speed up Visual Studio, it massively improves productivity. It extensively improves Visual Studios support for automatic code generation, refactoring, autocompletion and in-code navigation.

If you work with Visual Studio, I strongly suggest you give it a try. It’s available as a 30 day free trial here.

As it turns out, I am addicted:

29%

Cute.

My work will be centered around the InfoGallery  project. I am looking forward to getting back to the University and the people in the Hopper building.

Of course, it means that I have had to quit my job at Marimatech which I thoroughly enjoyed. I am just hoping that this new job will work out as well as think it will.