CodeToast

Source Control for the unwashed masses

Visual SourceSafe (VSS).  Those words make me shudder, and it’s been years since I have touched it.  I was snapped back to the reality so many Microsoft-centric developers deal with when my friend Dave sent this: More…

I’m bored of all this Smorgas.

It’s common in software that often the absolute basics get trumped by candy-coated interfaces and lists of features that mostly go unused (hmm.. MS office 2001-present?). In fact it used to be that the Operating System’s central role was actually memory and I/O management, can you imagine?  It is an easy mistake to make. It is fun making new features; tail-wagging dogs that help you search or desktop gadgets that crash in new and interesting ways. The saying that “every program will eventually expand until it can read mail”, is pretty insightful.  I swore off using Winamp on the dark day that it took over my video associations, but still couldn’t seem to handle ’shuffle’ correctly - it seemed at the time that every application was expanding until it could play movies.

There is way too much going on here.

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Other People’s Code

As I mentioned in a previous installment, I had started the dreaded task of analyzing the source of the rdesktop project, to see how I might best integrate it into ToastControl. For non-programmers, ‘having the source’ often seems to be 99% of the solution, when in fact it can be closer to 10%, or I could argue even a liability sometimes. While it may seem like having the plans to a building - I don’t know of many architects that use their own system of measurement for dimensions (variable names), re-define the standard types of rooms and what they do (functions / methods), or hopefully none that use recursion (Frank Lloyd Wright meets M.C. Escher?).

The possible issues are many. First of all, rdesktop is a great piece of software and I have great respect for it, and owe thanks to the author, Matt Chapman. That could be part of the problem - what if this guy is a genius, and I’m not able to even comprehend his masterpiece?¹ I risk not being able to figure it out, damaging my fragile binary ego. Even worse would be that he thinks he’s a genius, but falls somewhat short of the mark - creating an obtuse and abstruse monstrosity that seeks to reinvent software development at it’s core (you know, I’ll bet I can do better than this silly Boolean stuff…). For examples of this, look no further than the Daily WTF. More…

ToastControl starts to crawl…

I’ve managed to plug away at ToastControl a bit over the last couple weeks, and have some items to report.

Decisions decided

• - I’m going to use Python. I wanted to use a dynamic language that would be flexible. The heavy lifting is done by the plug-ins like Rdesktop / mstsc and VNC anyway, written in C - the surrounding application doesn’t need tons of speed. Ruby was a contender, but Python seems much more suited to cross-platform thick-client apps like this, at least at the moment.

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The Zen of Operating Systems

I am a self-diagnosed O/S addict. If hardware is your computer’s body, then the Operating System is it’s soul. Makes you wonder what karmic mistake we made to deserve Vista, eh?

This vice of mine started with the various computers I use at home or work - I have an general rule that with all the choices out there, each system should use a different O/S. Sure, it’s a bit more administrative work - but it is fun, and gives me an excuse to keep up to date. And to read new posts on DistroWatch like a kid on Christmas morning. More…