Alston Grove

Just finished reading Joel Spolsky’s (of Joel On Software fame) book, “User Interface Design for Programmers.” There is a Slashdot review of it.

I like this book a lot. It is fun to read, amusing, and Joel tells it like it is. He presents rules for interface design, like “Every time you provide an option, you’re asking the user to make a decision.” Then he explains the rule, explores it, and illustrates it. (”The problem comes when you ask the user to make a choice that they don’t care about,” like the Setup Wizard for Windows Help: “Minimize database size, Maximize search capabilities, Custom search capabilities.” The user just wanted help on a particular task they were trying to accomplish!)

The Vintage Computer Festival was held this week, and they auctioned one of the C-64 prototypes still in working condition. Some people were valuing the machine at $10,000. It caused me to remember how much joy that machine brought me.

So I fired up my C-64 last night. I can’t believe it still works. I really can’t believe all my floppy disks load without error. The media is pushing 20 years! I remember thinking I had a bunch of games back then (over 300), but when I visit archive sites like C64.com, I realize just how popular this machine was — I mean is! It still makes me feel good to play games like Pooyan and Test Drive.

The C-64 had to be the most usable machine ever made. It had color video with sprites, sound, character sets, Basic ROM, expansion, and was easy to program. I looked at some of my programs I wrote back when I was 12. I was writing 6510 ML routines for smooth-scroll text and raster-interrupted split video modes for demos and games. Now I develop web pages. When did I become so stupid?

At one point, I wanted to copy my 5.25 disks to files on hard disk, but I found out that the disk format is too physically different for a PC-style floppy drive to read. I also lost my RS232 adapter long ago, so I couldn’t transfer over null modem. I gave up. Just recently, I ran into Star Commander, which takes a different approach. Using an X1541 cable, a Commodore 1541 drive can be connected to a PC, and Star Commander can read disks from it. Amazing. Now I can start my codeography.

Things seem to be going well for Joel and Fog Creek Software. They just moved into new office space, and had the place designed for programmers. Each coder gets their own window office with dual-screen LCD, UPS-powered outlets, and a network switch. The hang-out area reminds me of a dot-com startup … a kitchen, flat-screen HDTV, pool table, and game console. He has pictures with a write-up here.

Forrester has a new research report on Open Source Strategy that has some interesting data. Of the firms they interviewed, 72% plan to use more open source. The biggest reason for using open source? — 68% responded with cost as the primary factor. And 80% say that the SCO lawsuit has no effect on their plans. (Thank you, I’m glad that people get that SCO is “smoking crack,” as Linus said.) Their analysis concludes with “open source will move relentless up the software stack.”

They evaluate the major open source players, including Linux, MySQL, Tomcat, and JBoss. They deem Linux is ready for the enterprise, but JBoss is not. Check out the “Forrester Wave” graph on the right to see what other open source software they say has enterprise visibility.