The difference between rich and reach applications used to be clear. Rich applications ran natively on a PC, leveraging local graphics, CPU, memory, and storage capabilities. Reach applications were written in HTML and deployed in the browser, minimizing system dependencies. Now we’re seeing a blurring of the boundaries. AJAX applications download significant amounts of code [...]
Tag Archives: Bracket
{ End Bracket }: The World-Wide Telescope
Posted by james on October 1, 2011
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Someday all scientific literature and data will be online and accessible to everyone everywhere. The astronomy community has made unusually good progress toward this vision of online science in addition to addressing the associated challenges of data publication.Much of astronomy involves comparing data from many instruments (from different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum) taken at [...]
{ End Bracket }: Your Innovative Ideas
Posted by james on September 22, 2011
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Perhaps you have had the experience of talking to an executive about an idea that you thought was so fantastic it would be your ticket to fame and fortune. Much to your amazement, you were told, “Thanks for coming to me with that idea, but we can’t even include half of the features we originally [...]
{ End Bracket }: Dirty Rectangles.
Posted by james on September 15, 2011
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Our Kid’s Programming Language (KPL), a programming environment designed for kids, is a Windows® Forms-based application built in C# atop the Microsoft® .NET Framework. To capture and hold attention, KPL emphasizes graphics and game programming, including drawing, use of 2D graphical sprites, and simple 3D graphical programming. Everything KPL offers is a simplifying abstraction built [...]
{ End Bracket }: Geopegging
Posted by james on August 31, 2011
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Code download available at: EndBracket2007_04.exe (174 KB) Browse the Code Online As part of my birthday haul last year, I received a gem of a gift: a new camera. And not just any camera, either. It was a new Nikon D200.One of the features that really grabbed my interest was its built-in GPS capabilities. If [...]
{ End Bracket }: Dependency Management
Posted by james on August 28, 2011
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The many layers of dependencies in today’s complex projects create plenty of opportunities for collaboration. Unfortunately, there are often no guidelines in place for facilitating this cross-group collaborative work. Dependency management, in which one group provides a software component to be utilized by others, is one key area where collaboration skills play an important role. [...]
{ End Bracket }: Singularity
Posted by james on August 26, 2011
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James Larus, Galen Hunt, and David TarditiWhen the C and C++ programming languages were invented, computers were slow, memory was limited, and compilers were simple and memory challenged, so a practical language could be little more than a veneer for assembly language. Times change, though, and so do the limits on software development. Today, program [...]
{ End Bracket }: Transactions for Memory
Posted by james on August 13, 2011
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Injecting parallelism into your app is easy—managed code offers things like explicit threading and a thread pool for that. Ensuring your code remains correct when run in parallel, on the other hand, is not quite so simple. And if you manage to make it correct, tuning it to effectively exploit parallel hardware is even harder. [...]
{ End Bracket }: On Being Crew for Fantasia 2000
Posted by james on August 9, 2011
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On Being Crew for Fantasia 2000 I was asked to reminisce about my experience as a software technical director on the Firebird segment of Disney’s Fantasia 2000 in the special effects group. They’re the group that puts the twinkle in Mickey’s eyes, literally. This group was a mix of artists who draw by hand and [...]
{ End Bracket }: The Pay as You Go Model
Posted by james on July 30, 2011
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How would you feel if you were having your dream house built, but when you inspected the house you found some fairly obvious flaws in the work—cracks in the foundation, support beams missing, crooked and leaning walls. Then to make matters worse, the construction foreman walks up to you and says, “Isn’t it beautiful? And [...]