Newsletters- Winter 2004

Making Your Own Future

by John Stout

The executives and staff of Stout Systems would like to thank all of our clients for helping us achieve record goals in 2003, growing by 40% compared with 2002.

I am asked how we have achieved our success, how we stood up to and in fact grew in the face of the recent recession.

In this business, your success isn’t determined by which technologies you embrace or evangelize or which methodologies you espouse. These things are subject to marketing hype, fads and fashions. How many technologies were in vogue—or at least promoted as being so—in the past two or three years that are now passé? In the Windows world, COM is one such example.

No, the bottom line is whom you hire to implement your solutions using the technologies and methodologies. Unlike an agency that is strictly involved in recruiting, Stout Systems also accepts outsourced projects from its clients. Putting together a team for an outsourced project requires the same level of attention and care any business applies to the hiring process. So we are in the habit of screening candidates very thoroughly for their technical skills and background. Over the years, we have interviewed thousands of direct hire and contractor candidates for our projects and for our clients. We have our system down cold.

While there has been a reduction in the number of jobs and amount of work in the high tech industry the past three years, Stout Systems has managed to parlay that into a positive rather than a negative. Our reputation for providing highly efficient and cost effective solutions has dovetailed with trimmed down budgetary and staffing requirements faced by our customers. The demand for efficient results in cost and schedule is where the people equation pays off. Results are first obtained by getting the best people on a project.

This is even true when comparing billing rates. Recent articles in business periodicals have shown that the hoped for reduction in costs in offshore projects aren’t realized the way that companies have been promised. For example, in Business Week, Christopher Kenton wrote, "Like a lot of larger businesses, I’ve discovered a number of hidden risks and costs." In fact, despite dramatically lower billing rates, the overall costs are frequently comparable to "onshore" work. No surprise—the end client has far less control in the people involved. The way to control costs is in the qualifying of the people doing the work.

Of course, even if you have a great development staff, you’ll need to let potential clients know about them. That requires a sales and marketing plan that takes into account how you are going to get the people in the industry interested in your product or service. We have been fortunate to have a great market research resource that helps us get our message out so that it’s listened to.You don’t have to be up on the latest technologies and buzzwords, or be the cheapest, in order to succeed. The competence and track record of your technical staff and the way you communicate that competence is the key in any business climate.

John W. Stout is the founder and president of Stout Systems. He has twenty-five years experience in the software development industry consulting for many companies on a wide variety of projects. He is also sought after as a technology speaker, presenting sessions at developer conferences and user groups.  Email .

-back to top-

---

The Meaning of LongHorn

by Richard Hale Shaw

Longhorn—the well-known code moniker for the new version of Windows that Microsoft unveiled in Los Angeles in November—is the most important reason to start writing Managed Code (using the .NET Framework) today. It effectively will be an incorporation of everything we currently know of as .NET—and more—into the operating system itself.

This doesn’t mean that .NET won’t live on, outside of Windows. It will. But it does mean that new Windows applications won’t be based on the Windows API (e.g., User32, will only be on Longhorn for backward compatibility the way that DDE is still there today). Instead, new Windows applications will be written in Managed Code.

So just what is Managed Code?

"Managed code is code written for the .NET runtime or CLR (Common Language Runtime). More specifically, managed code is ‘managed’ because the code is under the control of the CLR... Because of the notion of strong types, the CLR can provide a ‘managed execution environment’. What does that mean? It means that the CLR knows everything about a type and can provide services such as lifetime management (garbage collection), security, reflection, and more. These services can only be provided to code that is written to target the .NET Framework... and is compiled to managed code." (Source: ondotnet.com)

In other words, whatever Managed Language you use, the compiler will generate binaries containing rich type information (metadata) and intermediate language code (your implementation) which is not unlike a processor-independent assembly language. Consequently, you get the ability to implement and consume components in any managed language, type-checking is far stricter than in C++ or Java, and the system itself can manage memory and resources in a fashion far safer and more efficient than even seasoned programmers can. The bottom line: vastly increased productivity, decreased implementation time and more robust applications.

If you’re still writing Unmanaged C++, or using Visual Basic 6 or some other unmanaged tool, you’re wasting your time. And if you don’t write Managed code for your customers, somebody else will.

But don’t take my word on it. Read what Bill G. has to say about it.

In response to my position on this, one of my readers recently wrote: "With all due respect to you and your Group, I am really sick of hearing this junk every time MS comes out with a new product. We’ve heard this in the past, we’ll hear this rhetoric again in the future. I believe that these scare tactics, particularly in light of the fact that we are still using some of the technologies that MS has said will cease to exist and all those who use it, are still here."

Well put. A brief review of Microsoft’s marketing messages through the 90s to the present could largely be summed up as, "Just write it in XXX." Where XXX was the latest in a long line of (IMHO) relatively inferior technologies (starting with Visual Basic 1.0), moving through their alphabet soup of database technologies (ODBC, DAO), ActiveX (a euphemism for making COM objects downloadable and scriptable), and culminating with ASP (now prefixed with "Classic", like a soft drink).

Why shouldn’t you respond the same as the fellow above did? After all, didn’t Microsoft spend most of the 90s touting these second-rate technologies? Did you ever hear them pushing the more superior ones? Did MS Marketing ever say, "Just write it with COM", or "Just write it with ADO"? Not likely.

So I wouldn’t blame anyone for being skeptical. And if you’re still using some of these technologies, i.e., you’re stuck with them, then I blame you even less.

But you owe it to yourself to evaluate Managed Code, specifically the .NET Framework, with your own eyes, and judge for yourself."

Question Authority, and think for yourself."

So don’t take it on my authority—or Microsoft’s. Try out the .NET Framework and find out.

Richard Hale Shaw, CEO of the Richard Hale Shaw Group, provides on-site training services, teaches and produces public seminars and workshops on .NET, XML, and UML, ASP.NET and other topics. He created the "Developer BootCamp" notion of intensive, hands-on training where lectures follow hands-on exercises that eschew an academic approach used by others. His specialties include Architectural and Debug consulting, as well as a variety of problem-solving services to clients of nearly every sort. Find out more about him or e-mail him via www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com

.-back to top-