Managed World

Hello everyone. I'm throwing this post out there as a call for ideas. Here in Portland, Oregon, we are looking at having a Game Development track at our Code Camp towards the end of July. I have a bunch of things that *I* would like to see, but Code Camp is not about me, it is about all of you out there. What kinds of things would you like to see (or even present) when it comes to a Game Development track? None of these talks need to be DirectX-specific as the Code Camp is not sponsored by Microsoft.

I would throw up the ideas I have but I don't want them to influence all of your ideas. Please feel free to shoot me an email at jolson88 AT yahoo DOT com or simply post a comment here on this post. I'm hoping to combine all these ideas over the next week to start to get a good idea and doing some planning for the track soon.

And remember, Code Camps are about the local community. So if you are wanting to perhaps be a presenter, let me know and we'll see what we can do.

While at Tech Ed this last week, I was able to have a couple conversations with John Lam of http://www.iuknown.com fame. One of them regarded the importance of notation when expressing a problem. There are certain types of notations that are best at describing certain solutions. Take for example musical notation. What you can express compactly using musical notation would take a lot of text to express in English (or any other language for that matter). The same goes with fields like mathematics, chemistry, etc.

How does this relate to programming? A programming language is a form of notation. What can be expressed well in one language can not be expressed well in a different language. That is one reason (of many) to learn multiple languages. By learning different languages, and hence different notations, you start to realize better ways to express a given problem by using different notations. Where the idea of notation really gets interesting is when you start looking at the idea of Model Driven Architecture and Software Factories. In some ways, MDA and Factories are similar, in some ways they are quite different. However, they both try to solve a similar problem using different notations. I’m going to take this opportunity to discuss Model Driven Architecture and, more generally, a tendency in software development that I like to call Picture-Oriented Development.

While I believe that Picture-Oriented Development does have its uses, it can also be abused quite easily if you’re not careful. While pictures are good at expressing a thousand words, pictures are bad at expressing a single word. The problem is that once a picture fully expresses a problem, the view of the entire system as a whole has been lost due to the sheer amount of detail present. This syndrome is quite similar to a thousand voices talking. When there are only three voices talking, you can isolate and listen to a single voice. But once there are thousands of voices speaking in equal volume, your brain loses the ability to isolate a single voice. In a way, pictures are a form of macro-communication while certain aspects of building a software system really need forms of micro-communication in order to be successful. Solving micro-problems with a form of macro-notation presents an inherent disconnect between the problem and the solution. In our job, we need to avoid this disconnect and any associated context switches as often as we can because software development is inherently a complicated process.

I’m not trying to say that Picture-Oriented Development is a bad thing. I’m saying that it is easy to buy into the hype of it all, especially with the new glitz and glamour that is coming in Visual Studio 2005. You might be able to tell that I am still quite skeptical of using MDA as a software development platform from beginning to end. Do I have a better solution? No, I do not. I am just doubtful that Picture-Oriented Development is the way to go. I do believe, however, that we need to find a better way to develop software. I just think that when discussing MDA vs. Software Factories, Software Factories seems like the more realistic way to go.

I realized something when I woke up in the middle of the night before leaving Florida. There was one particular common quality (among many) between all my favorite sessions at Tech Ed that got me thinking. All my favorite sessions were talking about software issues that were independent of a given Microsoft technology. Meaning, in my favorite sessions, the technology used in the solution to the problem was merely an implementation detail. Of the sessions I didn’t like, a good number of them were sessions that were simply “hocking their warez” (“drinking the Microsoft kool-aid” if you will).

I’m a strong believer that the qualities that contribute the development of high quality software are qualities that trascend their implementation, qualities that are can be applied to numerous different technologies. It is in part due to this belief that I enjoy presentations that discuss these qualities. If you’re not a good developer now, there is no amount of technology that can be applied in order to make you a good one. Technology can’t make crap into a diamond. Perhaps technology can make crap into crap of a less pungent nature, but technology won’t eat swallow crap and spit out a diamond. Often times, it is garbage in, garbage out. I suppose that’s why I’m intrigued when people keep looking for technology that will make them develop better. Improving efficiency is one thing, but improving quality is a whole different ballgame.

I’m so interested in these abstract qualities that I get rather turned off when people start selling their products and explaining how the said product will fix everything we need fixed. Perhaps I’m just getting more skeptical the older I get, but I’ve seen way too much vaporware to seriously listen to marketing speak. I’m not saying that the presentations were all marketing speak. It’s just that I would much rather see content related to the world than watch an hour and a half firework show.  

I was watching ESPN the other day when I saw this product name: “Elephant Beautiful Balls.” I’m serious, this is no joke. Is it just me, or do any of you think that this is quite an unfortunate product name?

I just finished this track presented by Ted Neward (of TheServerSide.Net) and Gregor Hohpe (author of “Enterprise Integration Patterns”). I have to say (and this may surprise some of you that have been reading my prior Tech Ed posts) I totally enjoyed this session. Since I’ve been focusing on the presentations and such, why stop, eh? Gregor obviously knows what he’s talking about. I find myself, especially after the first day, enjoying seeing presentations where the presenter isn’t just reading off the power point slides. Quite a bit of the presentation was more conversation, architect to architect, which I also enjoyed tremendously.

Although I’m sure there are others that might not like Ted Neward’s presentation style, I am not one of them. I like how personal he is. I like how, as a presenter, he talks with/to his audience (rather than reading to). I think with some of his jokes, there might be people that get offended which is too bad because it’s nice anytime seeing a presenter who has a sense of humor. I’ve lost count of how many dry presenters I’ve seen over the years. The act of presenting and listening can be awkward enough, let alone when the presenter isn’t making an effort to relate to or interact with the audience.

I found that this presentation basically drove home a lot of points that I’ve been thinking about lately. I like messaging patterns. Not only for their scalability but also for their ability to lower the coupling within an existing system. Today I plan to attend the cabana so I can chat with Gregor and Ted. I basically want to get their opinions (with their experience) about some of the ideas I’ve had. Mainly, the idea of using a messaging system (or messaging patterns in general) in order to lower coupling between subsystems within the same application. I personally feel that messaging patterns just don’t shine in distributed applications. I think that when applied properly in the right context, they can be very powerful within a single application also. Any of you who have read my prior game articles have possibly seen the lean towards messaging structures that I’m starting to take, when applicable.

Hopefully a couple more of the sessions I attend today and tomorrow are this good (perhaps I did just wake up on the wrong side of the bed Monday). I give this one 9/10 IBM Thinkpad X41s (just because the new X41 is THAT sexy). 

This is a quote directly from Don Box when he was asked to describe himself for a video that Mike Hall was making for Tech Ed (in the middle of his session). It was actually kind of eerie because Mike and two cameramen came running in from the back of the room and ran all the way up onto stage. It was almost like watching a very geeky version of Cops. Anyways, here’s the quote:

[Don Box describing himself]: “Consider me a representation of an ideal”. Classic! What a great quote! I was laughing any time I thought about that today. Way too geeky!