Author Archives: Ron Bieber

Zdot Podcast : Why Subversion Rocks

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Surfing around this morning I found a podcast that talks about Subversion. I’m in agreement with all of the points he makes in this podcast. As anyone who reads this site somewhat regularly would know, I am a big Subversion fan since the early pre-release days. It was cool to listen to someone who gets as excited about this product as I do.

An outline of some of the things talked about:

  • Challenges encountered in using CVS with Java
  • Early Adoption – Version 0.18
  • The Subversion Teams’ Process Maturity
  • API and database format compatibility commitment
  • Compatibility between clients and server versions of software
  • Recommendation of the Pragmatic Version Control with Subversion
  • Quick description of TortoiseSVN
  • Subclipse Eclipse Plugin – discussion of features
  • Reasoning behind running Subversion on the Apache Webserver
  • Integration with Apache Authentication Modules (specific example was integration with ActiveDirectory)
  • ViewCVS – Repository Viewer
  • Tool set growing around Subversion

While this podcast focuses explicitly on the Subversion tool and ViewCVS module, there are a number of other tools that you can use in your environment to lower your cost and increase your productivity, such as CruiseControl.

In a recent study I performed on my development groups process improvement over the past 5 years, we found that we had cut the cost of managing our build and release process by approximately 92% by incorporating Subversion and related tools like CruiseControl, ViewCVS, and other custom software (and major process changes that accompany them) to integrate and automate our release management processes. This savings does not include the reduction in licensing costs that come with using Open Source Software in lieu of proprietary software. They are time and people costs only. Now, this has been our experience. Your individual mileage may vary.

If you’re looking for a new version control tool, this podcast could be a source of information that can help you in your decision.

Check it out.

Picture of the Day

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Ron, the kids, and Guitars

Photo by rbieber

We grabbed some toy guitars in 2002 because the kids said they wanted to learn to play. The only one still playing is me.

I found this in some older pictures as I was tooling around the home network. It’s amazing how much kids grow up in just three years.

Movies: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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Last week the family went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the remake of the Gene Wilder film of the 70’s with Johnny Depp in the title role. Overall, I liked the movie much better than the original.

This film is much darker than the original, which is actually the main thing I really liked about it. While Gene Wilder played the role as a little eccentric, Johnny Depp took it to a whole new level, characterizing Willie Wonka as a very inept and socially retarded character.

Some comparisons though. I liked the Oompa Loompas in the original movie much better than the replicated ones in the new movie. I also disliked the much “hipper” versions of the songs done at the demise of each of the children in the movie. The original movie did these things much better than this one did, in my opinion.

However, I did like the dark disposition of this movie a lot. It was interesting to see Willie Wonka portrayed as a bit of a tortured soul, rather than just a goofy shut in. Tim Burton did a great job in putting this one together (as usual – check out the first Batman movie compared to others in the franchise).

I think the movie is well worth seeing. I enjoyed it. If your looking for something to do on a 95 degree day in air conditioning, this might be something to go see to keep you entertained for a couple of hours.

Great Article on Scripting Languages I Found …

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While looking around this evening I found this really great article by Rick Nooner on the advantages of scripting languages over lower level languages. The article gives some really good examples of some complex applications written in languages like Python.

In answering the question “Why use high level languages”, the article points out the following:

Truth of the matter is that we all write about the same number of lines of code with approximately the same error ratio no matter what language we write in. To become more productive, we have to increase the amount of work done per line of code and make errors easier to find.

This is the advantage of Python over other languages and one of the reasons that I got hooked on it as soon as I took the time to play with it. You can do a lot in a small amount of code in Python.

Take some time to check this one out when you have some free time. It was a great read.