People, process and products

Source: NY Times

Ping
The Unsung Heroes Who Move Products Forward
By G. PASCAL ZACHARY
Published: September 30, 2007
The success of Apple, Intel, Google and scores of other technology companies has as much or more to do with their process innovations as the products.

Goes to the old debate about how entertainment figures draw so much attention while modern innovators rarely do as well, and maybe part of it is just visibility.

Like the opinion article linked to above mentions, these are people in the background building products which are what people see.

But it is so much bigger than computers, as who are the innovators figuring out the latest cars or airplanes, or making televisions flat or I wonder, how many people around the world know the key inventors of the television set?

Go way back and who figured out how to make glass? Or my own personal favorite when considering this question, how many people know what person or persons developed the spoon?


James Harris

Class Viewer for C?

I have been thinking for a while about what to do next with the Class Viewer project and I keep thinking that an enterprise version is a logical step and it occurred to me that other languages would be a nice step as well, like for C++.

An enterprise Class Viewer could be a gateway to a software development company's javadocs, offering a nice middle level app between them and users as well as their own developers.

And other languages would bring the ease and functionality of Class Viewer to other domains.

But there has to be a need and a market where I'm not going to do the work without knowing if either exists so I put the idea thinking that a natural funding source for venture capital would be Google as they put their apps out there for free already.

But I'm not going to contact them so I just throw the idea on my blog. Maybe something will happen.


James Harris

My idea for managed copy

With "managed copy" in the news lately it seems a good time to mention again my idea for allowing end users to make personal copies:

Digital Media: Copy protection

REALLY simple idea which involves having end user's own machine encrypt copies to itself, so that it can read its backup copies made of DVD's but other people cannot--without a key that can be passed by flash drive--and also it burns onto its copies identifying information.

My idea includes allowing users to use a flash drive to pass a key to their other systems or to friends for maximum flexibility, with the knowledge that the copy they pass tells who they are, and also cannot itself be copied.

To me that idea solves all the problems involved with protecting digital media from casual copying, though criminals may of course go that extra mile in trying to make copies for money, there would be an end to the very casual copying where usually law abiding citizens consider it to be like speeding on the highways and would do it as a matter of habit.

Today it is like everybody does it, there is no onus on it, and it is very easy.

With this idea, a friend could get angry with you if you pressed for a copy, since it would contain information about them and possibly leave them open for prosecution, so what kind of friend would you be in pressing for one?

Knowing that yeah, you can give your friend a copy but if that ever gets to the FBI, they have your digital signature all over the thing, which your friend cannot use without a flash drive for them to get the key anyway, and they cannot copy it again themselves, would take most casual copiers out of the equation, leaving only the die-hards.

I am an idea person so I know how hard it is to get attention for even great ideas, so rather than go through the pain and misery of trying to copyright that idea, and market it, I have given it away open source.

It is a free idea. It is free!!!

Does not mean anyone will use it though as hey, I know, no matter what most people think, mostly we have a dumb world. I know because I have had lots of ideas.

Easy solutions are routinely ignored if people do not like the source.

Brilliance is mostly a burden and a source of frustration today, as hey, people really do not like you for coming up with simple solutions, as it makes them feel stupid.


James Harris

Javadocs, deep linking and quick reference

My Class Viewer project gives two key things with javadocs:

1. A handy way to keep up with all of them using an xml file, which I call packagedirectory.xml, where you can put in public javadocs as well as your own, and then, you can just forget about worrying where they are!

(Note the xml file can be edited easily in a text editor.)

2. Deep linking into javadocs to the method, where if you don't know the exact method you can do searches using a single char or as much of a string as you want with any piece you might think is in the method as I made the search as flexible as I could.

Understanding deep linking is just about seeing it done once, and you can see an example in my previous post, but the gist of it is that you get taken to your method in the javadocs, so no more scrolling down searching!

But these features have been available from my project for over three years now.

Ok, yeah, there was a long period with a minor bug where when a method had multiple arguments the URL would have an extra space in it, so you'd get taken to the top of the javadocs page---which is a gracious failure---but I finally fixed the code.

The problem still remains though with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, last time I checked, which is yet another good reason to get Firefox!

Oh and did I mention that once you put your javadocs location in packagedirectory.xml you need never worry about where your javadocs are again? Yes I did, but that is such a huge feature, and there are other solutions out there like javadoc online but there you do not get deep linking and what about your own projects and your own javadocs?

Why not let the computer keep up with all that detail, which you can do with Class Viewer?


James Harris

Gateway to javadocs

I have been wondering if there might be a market for a custom Class Viewer for a software development company where Class Viewer is used as a gateway for that company's javadocs.

So, when first opened instead of the "No Warranty" message on the left and a blank window on the right it might have the primary packages for that company's code on the left and possibly news on the right.

To me it has always been a middleware app which bridges the gap from Sun Microsystem's excellent javadocs format to casual searching and quick reference.

And that was on purpose as when I was working as a Java developer for a major corporation, I would at times find myself wandering around through javadocs trying to get answers to highly specific questions, like, I'd be looking for a method in the String class that I knew took chars but I couldn't quite remember the name, which is why I use that as an example for my Class Viewer screenshot.

Covering all the bases Class Viewer returns ALL public methods that have the character string "char" in them:

char charAt(int)
boolean contains(CharSequence)
boolean contentEquals(CharSequence)
static String copyValueOf(char[],int,int)
static String copyValueOf(char[])
void getChars(int,int,char[],int)
String replace(CharSequence,CharSequence)
String replace(char,char)
CharSequence subSequence(int,int)
char[] toCharArray()
static String valueOf(char[])
static String valueOf(char)
static String valueOf(char[],int,int)

And, of course, that's not hard to do, but what else let's you do it?

I've actually been tempted to try and contact Sun Microsystems to see if they wouldn't put some custom Class Viewer up on their site versus only directly giving you javadocs when you go to the reference links, as I spent enough time years back wandering around on their site trying to find things, while now if, say, you want to know how to replace one char with another, you can search out "char" on Class Viewer like above, and just double-click on String replace(char,char) and Class Viewer will deep link you into the javadocs wherever you tell it, and right now mine gives me:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#replace(char,%20char)

And the ability to be taken directly to the method in javadocs is just a neat feature that is part of the Sun Microsystem underlying design, which should be exploited, as once you get used to it, it feels so tedious to scroll down looking for a method, and also like such a waste since the machinery is there for a more efficient process.

In any event, just kicking some ideas around, and I've just not felt confident enough about success to actually approach anyone, and like, what would I charge for custom work? But hey, it's open source so if that's a good idea, it's not like some other programmer couldn't do it, or companies just do it themselves.


James Harris