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Archive for the 'Development' Category

Selecting Technology and Business

Published on 7 November, 2005 in China, Development, Entrepreneur and Startup. 0 Comments

Technology changes fast. So fast that before one can decide which
technology to use, a new one is out to replace those in consideration.

At the same time, there are too many competing technologies. One can hardly find time to fully understand one, let alone so many of them.

Add
these all up and sprinkle in ample amount of business activities. You
can be sure a small technology-based business owner has his hands full.

Bill Gates coined Business at the Speed of Thoughts. I wished. One thing is for sure, it is not arriving as soon as Bill thinks.

Today I took a step back and looked at what I had done, after a year of probing in China. Not very comforting. I hasn’t progressed far. In fact, certain things had even came a full circle, bringing me back to the starting point.

It is not to say there isn’t any achievement. I learnt alot, did alot, know alot of people (both good and bad, though more of the latter).

One of the thing I learnt is about selecting technology.

For a small business, selecting technology isn’t so much about what you like. It isn’t even matter so much what you know. I am talk about a small, one man, maybe two, business.

It really is about what technology people know in the market.

Fine, I should have know that. But I was idealistic, stubbornly so.

Take PHP for example. Where are the PHP developers in China? I am sure there are. Some of the wildly popular applications are coded in PHP. Some major websites are in PHP.

I can only speculate,

  1. They are all taken away by those companies or some MNCs
  2. No one cares about PHP, just use ASP whose software and books are widely available.
  3. Everyone that knows PHP decides to start a business on their own and not work for others.

While I’m still trapped with the lack of PHP developers, I starting to think whether PHP is my bet for the road ahead.

Ruby is looking very bright. Python is rearing its head.

On the development platform front, I’m not sure if developing for the web is the way to go. Sure, web 2.0 is reviving the interesting in using standard based HTML interface. Stealing the limelight from Flash and Actionscript altogether.

Eclipse is casting its shadow over many areas and possibility. Konfabulator makes developing for the desktop fun once again. Cross platform is a major overarching theme.

One year later, I am back to deciding.

Trace and Merge changes with WinMerge

Published on 30 October, 2005 in Development and Free Desktop. 0 Comments

WinMerge is of those application that really make a great difference in development productivity.

It look daunting to use at first sight, but don’t let the look deceive you. Once you start using it, you wonder how you send those years not having something like it.

WinMerge is a visual text file differencing and merging tool. What that means is that it compares 2 text files and show the difference between the 2 files. It also has the ability to merge the differences.

This is best understood by a hands on experience. Just take a file, make some changes and save it to another filename. Open the 2 files for comparison in WinMerge. WinMerge will show where the changes had been made and offers a host of options to merge the changes.

WinMerge is very useful when working in a team or with a version control system like Subversion.

What I like about ?

  • Comparing entire directory
  • Intuitive to use
  • Very simple to merge change

Room for improvement

  • When comparing more complex file changes, the alignment between some changes are not matching.

Where to get it?

http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/

Current version: 2.4
Function: Visual text file differencing and merging tool

Inviting Developers to come China

Published on 8 October, 2005 in China, Development and Entrepreneur. 0 Comments

This is an idea that we came out with to fight the lack of good PHP developers willing to work for us in China.

We are not loaded with cash. Problem is many companies are and we are find it tough to compete. In the spirit of entrepreneurship, we innovate and sidestep the challenge.

The idea is to attract developer by offering an opportunity to explore new market , experience new environment and even to be our partner if things work out.

The place is China where many exciting thing is happening in the decade down the road.

What we offer:

  • Housing
  • Living expenses
  • Visa requirements
  • Our knowledge and experience to share
  • Opportunity to experience a new and different environment

What we are looking for

  • Your skill in internet application development, particularly PHP and related technologies (javascript, css, html, … yada yada)
  • A passion for open source and everything Internet
  • Someone looking for challenge, willingness to try
  • At least 3 months commitment

Who are we?

  • SinoEthos Consulting
  • We do business consulting and other line of businesses in China
  • We incubate inhouse projects that we think will go nova.
  • We are a group of Singapore and Chinese people striking out in China.

Get in touch.

Urgh!! Lost my content

Published on 2 October, 2005 in Development, Online and Open Source. 0 Comments

My two hours worth of editing gone, when the computer hang. Only myself to blame for not hitting the save button more often.

I think the single most wanted feature for an AJAX based application must be auto-save. Not sure if any open source application has done that.

Too tired to rewrite the post now.

On to free development softwares

Published on 28 September, 2005 in Development, Free Desktop and Open Source. 0 Comments

Since software developers are typically people in the know and are more savvy, my angle will be more of sharing and exploring ideas, tips and experiences. This is something new I’m trying.

First a quick round up of free softwares I am using and where the strong holds are still to be broken.

Category
Currently using
Free?
Open Source?
 Alternative
Programming PHP
Y
Y
  
Programming Perl
Y
Y
  
Programming Ruby
Y
Y
  
Version control SVN
Y
Y
  
Version control client TortoiseSVN
Y
Y
  
Code editor Vim
Y
Y
  
SSH Putty
Y
Y
  
SFTP/FTP Filezilla
Y
Y
  
IDE Eclipse
Y
Y
  
Webserver Apache
Y
Y
  
Webserver package XAMPP
Y
Y
  
Compare/merging Winmerge
Y
Y
  
Design IDE Dreamweaver
N
N
 Nvu
Photo/Graphics Gimp Y Y  

Anything else I missed?