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2000 |
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SD SALARY
SURVEY COMING SOON!
Are you being paid
what you're worth?
Be on the lookout for the 2000 Software Development salary
survey, to be published in the November 2000 issue�the most popular
issue of the year! Working for the first time in partnership with
InformationWeek, creator of the largest IT salary survey in
the industry, Software Development provides the only
developer-specific analysis of hiring trends, skills and salaries in
the high-tech publishing world. Don't miss your chance to
participate in the data collection and compare what you're making
with what the top professionals in the field are pulling down. It's
worth far more than a few minutes of your time, so be on the lookout
for a special invitation to participate coming soon.
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HACK(ER) WRITING
Is
'technolibertarianism' on the rise or merely a phenomenon of the
1990s?
A volley of literary criticism recently flew between the New
York Times and Salon.com, though few may have taken note.
Critic Michiko Kakutani's June 27, 2000 piece entitled "When
the Geeks Get Snide" examines the semantics of cyberslang as
compiled in the books Jargon Watch (HardWired, 1997) by
Gareth Branwyn, The New Hacker's Dictionary (MIT Press, 1996)
by Eric S. Raymond and Cyberspeak (Random House, 1996) by
Andy Ihnatko. She concludes that "geek-speak conjures up a chilly,
utilitarian world in which people are equated with machines and
social Darwinism rules."
Kakutani
also quotes Paulina Borsook, a former writer for Wired
magazine, who "points out in her new book Cyberselfish
(Public Affairs, 2000) [that] the digital community is increasingly
a world that mirrors our 'winner-take-all, casino society,' a
community that projects the attitude 'I've got mine (or certainly
intend to if the bureaucrats don't get in my way),' so you don't
matter."
Raymond, in particular,
took offense at Kakutani's criticism in an article on Salon
entitled "Don't
Tweak the Geeks!". Both she and Borsook have it all wrong, he
says; hackers are human�and as altruistic as anyone. "The most
important movement in the geek culture today is open-source software
development," Raymond writes. "Open source is a form of worldwide
cooperation premised on the voluntary renunciation of
intellectual-property rights. It's radical sharing, justified by
sound market economics but not really founded on an economic
impulse. Nor is this a novel phenomenon�the standards that made the
Internet work have been developed in the same way for over 30
years."
Not to be left out,
Borsook responded to Raymond's attack in an essay of her own ("Paulina
Borsook to Eric Raymond: Don't you Kakutani me!") also posted on
Salon.
"I think there is
also something of a reversal of causality in your documentation of
political blinders and free markets," writes Borsook. "It's
precisely because I see the political blinders in the technology
culture that surrounds us (Quiz: Where would you rather create a
start-up, in Chechnya/Sierra Leone or in Northern California where
the roads are good and the food and pharmaceutical supply is
untainted and bandits don't lurk around corners on Skyline Boulevard
and houses mostly won't fall down after they are built and
work-study exists and libraries are free and the Arpanet/Internet
had 20 years of slow, commercial-free development? All due to the
fine invisible hand of government...) that I ask the questions I do
and take the positions I hold."
"Some of my best friends are technolibertarian," Borsook concludes.
"How many of yours are bookish lefty feminists who hold the
heretical notion that not all of what matters in life should be
monetized and marketized?" |
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CODING IN THE KEY OF C
In a move seen widely
as a challenge to Java, Microsoft introduces C#
Announced on June 26, 2000, Microsoft C# (pronounced "C
sharp"�not "C hash," as some disgruntled developers have claimed) is
a new object-oriented language designed to harness the computing
horsepower of Microsoft's Visual C++ language with the ease of use
of Visual Basic. The language is a product of work begun by Colusa
Software, acquired by Microsoft in 1996, and though it is rumored to
be a Java competitor, C# does not currently specify an execution
model or have any class libraries. Rather, it is designed primarily
to realize the potential of Microsoft's recently unveiled .NET
Platform.
C# adds several
Java-like features to C++, including garbage collection, automatic
initialization of variables and type-safe variables. In addition to
native support for the Component Object Model (COM) and
Windows-based APIs, C# allows restricted use of pointers and other
C/C++ features such as manually managed memory and pointer
arithmetic inside specially marked code blocks. C# will be included
in the next version of Visual Studio, which will be called Visual
Studio.Net. A prerelease version of the product will be given to
developers at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference, July
11-14, 2000 in Orlando, Fla. Visual Studio.NET is one of a series of
interlocking building blocks calculated to migrate Windows from a
desktop platform to an XML-driven, server-based service available
over the next few years that will run across multiple platforms.
Other building blocks that are part of the strategy include MSN.NET
(the next generation of Microsoft's AOL clone, MSN) and Office.NET,
an online version of Microsoft Office.
Although many months away from
commercial release, Microsoft has submitted the C# language
specifications for standardization to ECMA, a standards body based
in Geneva, Switzerland, which has already standardized the version
of the JavaScript scripting language�called ECMAScript�that both
Microsoft and Netscape have pledged to support in their respective
browsers. Microsoft expects C# to be ratified by the end of 2001.
Sun had submitted Java to ECMA but withdrew it in March.
While both Microsoft Chief
Architect Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer in their June 22nd
comments to the media touted Microsoft's use of XML so that .NET
services could be invoked over the Internet "from any application,
running on any platform," Gates acknowledged that "the richest
experience would probably be the latest version of Windows.NET
running on a fully configured PC." |
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CONFERENCE UPDATE
Free hands-on Jini
camp
Two free two-day Jini programming camps, July 24-25 and July
27-28, in Mountain View, CA, will show Java developers how to set up
the Jini run-time environment (web server, RMI activation daemon,
Lookup service and selected tools) as well as how to write Jini
software-based services and clients.
Prerequisites for the camps
include previous experience programming with Java. Some experience
with Swing, the Java 1.1 event model, JDBC and RMI is recommended,
but not required. You can register online at http://www.sun.com/developers/edu/
camps/jini-register.html but you'll need to do it soon, since
space is limited. |
I SEE YOU
Open source available
for computer vision research
A group of computer vision technology researchers working with
Intel Corp's Microprocessor Research Lab recently released a new
computer vision library and its source code. The open source
computer vision library at http://www.intel.com/research/
mrl/research/cvlib/ is designed to help researchers, commercial
software developers and camera vendors develop ways to use computer
vision as a way for people to interact with computers using
real-time gestural control or other methods. The Visual
Interactivity Group in Intel's Microprocessor Research Lab began
developing the library two years ago and has made two alpha releases
of the code prior to this first open source release. The release
includes sample applications and source code that use functions from
the library, including gesture recognition, object-tracking, face
recognition and camera calibration tools.
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