Clearest code wins.

Most developers at Microsoft haven't yet learned the incredible value of writing the clearest code possible.  Once I saw a someone make a checkin that added 200 lines in the middle of a 600 line function. I'm thinking it was already about 597 lines too long.  Use Extract Method to break them in to bit-sized chunks.  Use Extract Class to manage the plethora of methods you suddenly produce.  Don't stop there.

OO isn't a fad

Microsoft has pushed hard over the last ~5 years to make its software secure.  Security is hard, but there's no reason to make it harder.  For example, countless security issues came down to buffer overruns in C++ code where a buffer was passed without a corresponding length.  The response?  Let's write tools that help you find places you pass buffers, and make sure you pass a length along side. 

Hey, when you find yourself passing two or more values around together, why not put them in to a class?  Just start there.  Polymorhism, inheritance, and encapsulation can come later. 

(Hey Windows: I'm looking at you!)

It's OK to use someone else's code

At one point, the Visual Studio code base had about a dozen implementations of a C++ String class, most of them hacked out of MFC.  That's a vast improvement over passing the buffers around, but hey... these library writers are paid to work on these things full time!   Why aren't you using STL or ATL yet?

This isn't just in C++... in the original implementation of the .Net Framework, there were countless implentations of hash tables. Woah, guys!  Let's get some libraries!

Design your problems away

Every time you run in to a problem, step back & ask "How can I make sure this never, ever happens again?" 

Got buffer overruns?  Using a buffer class makes them go away.  Having trouble with refcounts? Try CComPtr.  Is your cache getting corrupted?  Remove it, or encapsulate it. 

When we did this in my last C++ project, we found our C++ code started to look remarkably like C#.  That's a clue: C# has already designed away most of the tedium of C++.

Most importantly: we can do better. 

The above complaints are specific, local issues.  In time they can be addressed indivdually, and this blog post will become obsolete.  But there's one thing that Microsoft developers should always be working on: doing their job better.  Ask yourself questions like:

• "How can I make sure this problem goes away forever?" 
• "How can I produce fewer bugs?"
• "How can I make it easier to fix the bugs I have?"
• "How can I make it easier to respond to change quickly?"
• "How can I make it easier to make my software fast enough?"

I once managed a team that did this very well.  They were largely new hires, mostly straight out of college.  But after a year, they were rocking.  They produced features faster, had fewer bugs, fixed bugs faster, and reliably beat the schedule every time.  They far outperformed teams of experienced developers working on familiar code bases, often with well-understood problems.  It was amazing.

EDIT: I wish I could have addressed these issues while I was at Microsoft, but that's hard, and I wasn't successful.  This blog post is about the last chance I have to do anything here; now it's up to you to decide if you can use this.

This morning I bike to work & shower.  There's a lunch out with the team.  In the afternoon there's an "exit interview".  Then I leave early for a doctor's appointment, while I'm still insured. :-)

Last night I tried to log in to work from home and couldn't.  Looks like they were a little overzealous with the permissions! 

What's next?  https://jbazuzi.blogspot.com/2007/10/new-adventure.html

- If you are building your own WHS in a small case, and don't have a DVD drive, you can transfer the WHS software to a USB flash drive of WHS to install from.

- If you are building your own WHS and require special drivers for your mass storage devices or network connection, you can make a USB flash drive of WHS w/ drivers.  You'll especially want this if the primary drive fails, and you want to use the "Server Recovery" option.

- If your PCs that are connected to the WHS require special drivers for your mass storage devices or network connection, you can make a USB flash drive of the recovery CD which includes these drivers.

Here are instructions for making such beasts.  Written for WinPE, but applicable to WHS. https://www.realtime-vista.com/general/2007/05/preapring_windows_pe_to_boot_f.htm

Dell D600 laptop

A laptop meets the small & low-power requirements without effort.  They also have a built-in keyboard/mouse/display and battery backup, while still being small.

Dell leases these to corporations.  After the lease expires, they are sold for cheap.  I bought mine at a popular auction site for ~$300.  It had a 1.4GHz P4 and 512MB RAM.  Most have USB 2.0 (important for adding storage) and GigE (important for pushing a lot of data back and forth).  Many have Wi-Fi, which may be useful.

D600 parts are easy to come by, and their online manuals are very good.

Pair of 160GB 2.5" drives

Hard drive prices (per GB) follow a "saddle" curve.  At the time of building, 120GB were at the bottom of the curve; 160GB were a bit higher.  Above 160GB were much higher.  I knew that I wanted space for 100GB today; 160GB would give me a little breathing room.  Since replacing drives is expensive (and replacing the primary drive is annoying), breathing room seemed wise.

For the secondary drive, I bought a 2nd HD caddy, which replaces the DVD drive.

Great print server!

It's small enough that it can fit comforably under my printer on my desk.  (I was careful to leave a little venting room.)  I like simple, obvious names, so my printer path is now \\SERVER\Printer.  The USB cable from server to printer only spans ~6 inches.

What if I need more storage?

 One of these days I will probably decide that my movies should be moved to the server.  I rip my DVDs lossless, and currently have ~400GB, so I'm going to need more room.  Upgrading the internal 2.5" drives won't be feasible for a while - they're still too small.  Until then, I will need to add external storage. 

I can use the pair of USB 2.0 ports.  With these, an external enclosure with a pair of large 3.5" drives are a good choice.  (Two drives means I can fully use the USB bandwidth without dramatically overloading it.). 

Another option is to get a PCMCIA card (there's only one slot) with USB 2.0 or eSATA. 

One downside is that the external drives won't be on the battery that's built in.  That means I will need a separate UPS if I want them protected.

In discussing the problem, a few key bits of advice have come up, and I thought it would be a good idea to write them down here.

One of the key problems appears when you consider using the WHS to back up the host.  It can certainly be done, but when the host goes down, restoring it is a catch 22.

Dedicate whole drives

Take whole drives & put only one file on each - the .VHD.  Make it as large as possible.

Use external drives

Make all of WHS's drives external.  Consider putting them all in a single enclosure for convenience.  eSATA w/ port multipliers may be a good choice.

Have a 2nd physical machine ready

It should already have Virtual Server or Virtual PC installed.  A laptop is fine.  Make sure it has appropriate ports for the WHS drives. 

Recovery strategy

When the regular host goes down:

1. Unplug the WHS drives
2. Carry them to the 2nd host, and plug in
3. Boot the WHS virtual machine.  (You may need to create a new VM with the existing .VHD files.)
4. Restore the primary host
5. Unplug the WHS drives
6. Carry them back to the primary host, and plug in
7. Boot the WHS virtual machine

dir $pshome | Select-GraphicalFilteredObject.ps1 -title "Jay's blog is the best!"

gives this UI:

Select-GraphicalFilteredObject.png

• Added 'All' and 'None' buttons
• A little space around the checked list box
• Option to set the title to something domain-specific
• Turn off CheckOnClick behavior because I think it's annoying but leave it as an option, if you like that sort of thing.

EDIT: Fix the attachment.

Select-GraphicalFilteredObject.ps1

For a while I was writing a lot of MSBuild tasks.  I found the programming model for a MSBuild tasks to be a bit awkward.  You have to write properties where fields should be sufficient.  For MSBuild to see a property accessor, it has to be 'public', even though you don't want anyone else to ever use the accessor (not even yourself!).  

So, I wrote a tool that generates the boilerplate MSBuild task code.  (I also took the opportunity to convert T[] to List<T> in your code, which is usually nicer to code against.) I wrote it as an MSBuild task, which is convenient when it comes time to hook it in to the build system. The input language is MSBuild, which is XML.  XML is an awkward language for humans to read & write, though, so it wasn't quite satisfactory. 

(Yes, the task is built with itself.  Not the latest version, but a last-known-good ("LKG") version.)

I later needed to write a lot of Windows Workflow Activities.  When you want to add a property to an activity, you have to write a lot of code.  You want to express a simple idea (type, name, and comment:) and you have to write all this:

So, using my task-generating task, I wrote a new MSBuild task that would generate this sort of property definition code.  It went pretty quickly, since I already had the task generator code in hand, and CodeCom still fresh in my mind. It was a big win, cleaning up the activity code dramatically.  However, I'm still disappointed by the use of XML as an input language. 

In both cases, the work of writing the DSL tool was difficult to justify.  In a general-purpose programming language, it makes sense to make a big investment in the tools & design of the language.  You want the use of the language to go smoothly, the language should be powerful, and the result should be readable.  However, in a DSL, you have to balance those goals against the need to make the DSL cheap.  Cost of entry is a big deal in DSLs.

In a couple places (his book, his interview), Bruce Payette talks about using PowerShell to create a DSL.  I'm hopeful that this technique can meet the goals above. 

What have you used to create DSLs?

@@:: This prolog allows a PowerShell script to be embedded in a .CMD file.

@@:: Any non-PowerShell content must be preceeded by "@@"

@@setlocal

@@set POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS=%*

@@if defined POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS set POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS=%POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS:"=\"%

@@PowerShell -Command Invoke-Expression $('$args=@(^&{$args} %POWERSHELL_BAT_ARGS%);'+[String]::Join(';',$((Get-Content '%~f0') -notmatch '^^@@'))) & goto :EOF

If you don't need to support quoted arguments, you can even make it a one-liner:

@PowerShell -Command Invoke-Expression $('$args=@(^&{$args} %*);'+[String]::Join(';',(Get-Content '%~f0') -notmatch '^^@PowerShell.*EOF$')) & goto :EOF

• RAM size
• Disk size
• RAM speed
• Disk speed

It's the relationship between these values that matter.  (All of these are considered in the context of a fifth factor: price.  For example, you can usually find a way to buy more RAM, but it may mean replacing the motherboard, switching to a 64-bit OS, etc.)

In the last decade or two, we've seen RAM and disk sizes grow steadily.  RAM speed has increased quite a bit, as well, but disk speed has lagged behind.  For example, in 1994 I bought a PC for personal use for $3000.  Of that, and $1000 was for a 1 GB hard drive (I don't know the speed, let's guess 5400 RPM).  I had 16 MB of RAM, and 33 MHz front-side bus.

Today, if I try to spend the same money on a PC, it's pretty hard to do.  If I adjust for today's dollars, it's even harder.  But we can look at a high-end PC today.  Let's say 4 GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive @ 7200 RPM, 800 MHz FSB.  This PC will probably cost $800-$1000.  So, by comparison:

HD size   500X
RAM size 256X
HD speed 1.3X
RAM speed 24X
Price 0.3X

As you can see, price has dropped dramatically, the HD and RAM sizes have grown at close to the same rate, but their relative speeds have not.

So, I ask, why is virtual memory still ubiquitous?  If I have 4 GB of RAM, I probably only need the virtual memory if I'm doing "big" things, like compiling all of Visual Studio or editing video.

Perhaps what's missing here is something in between.  Some kind of solid-state storage, faster than hard disk, cheaper than RAM.  Making up numbers, give me 24 GB of it today, at 100X the speed of a HD, for $100.  Use it for page file, and perhaps HD caching.