Get your apps out there….

I had one of those happy/sad moments today. Someone showed me a stunning little game they’d written for Windows Phone. Snappy graphics and fun to play. “Is it in the Marketplace?” I asked. “No” was the reply.

Some people hold back until their game is “finished”. This is a bad idea. There is no such thing as finished as far as a developer is concerned. You can always add bits, make it better, tidy up the class design, make all the curly brackets line up. But if you keep on like that you never get anything out there. I’m not saying that you should push out broken programs, I’m saying that things like on-line high score tables, multi-player, extra levels, a level editor etc can always be added later.

The faster you can get something out there the faster you can start getting feedback and recognition. So go for it.

Hash Tag Revision

I said that anyone revising the Software Development exam could tweet their question with the tag #08220revison and I’d answer as best I could. Here are some of the answers. Good luck in the exam folks.

Multiplicity: A library can have lots of books. The multiplicity is one library to 1 to many books.

When to pick the programming language: Analysis should be all about the problem, so the language should be picked in the Design stage.

Waterfall vs. Rapid Development: Waterfall: do each stage, move on and don't go back. Rapid: Keep iterating and adding functionality.

Coupling and Cohesion: Coupling I ask you to do things. If you change what you do, I'm in trouble. Cohesion I can do my thing without asking you anything

Stakeholder: anyone who has an interest in the system(put up the money, wrote it, uses it, gets fired if it fails etc)

Update on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 11:24AM by Rob

..and thanks to Charlotte for this link to the ultimate way to learn about Quicksort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywWBy6J5gz8&feature=related

Free Windows Phone Curriculum

This DVD arrived in the post today. It contains a whole bunch of Windows Phone curriculum content, some of which was written by me.  It includes stuff about Windows Phone development and Windows Azure on the phone.

If you want a DVD of your own, or to download the content you can find it here.

TV Gone Backwards

I’m always impressed by how clever modern things are. But I’m also perplexed how some people take all this cleverness and make things that aren’t very useful. Take my telly. I’ve got a Sony PS3 plugged into a Sony amplifier which is connected to a Sony TV. When I try to watch a Bu-ray disk on the PS3 it takes ages to connect to the TV and I sometimes get a bright green (or purple – it varies) screen. And often the PS3 has forgotten all about any previous audio settings that I’ve laboriously made so that I have to go and do them all again. And when I watch the Blu-Ray (also from Sony Columbia Studios) it shows me a warning that because the disc contains “Advanced Interactive Content” (which I have no interest in) it might take several minutes to get started. And then when it has loaded the disk it insists on showing me lots of trailers and other stuff about how much Blu-Ray is better than DVDs before I get to the main feature that I have paid money to see. Say what you like about my old record player, but I could guarantee that within 10 seconds of arriving home with a new album  I could be listening to it.

Wah. Did nobody at Sony actually try to use this stuff? Apple are rumoured to be moving into TV soon. I bet their system won’t have 30 second pauses while nothing useful happens. Here’s hoping that their presence will force manufacturers to get their act together.

Expensive Tools

Bought four of these today. Very expensive, but they did each come with a free chair.