Redditech Blog

What Programming Language Should I Learn?

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:15:00 +0100

This was the question a colleague asked me today. It suprised me, even though an urban myth in the non-IT community is that every “techie” person can or likes to write software. So when the question was asked of me, the first thing I did was ask more questions:

Why do you want to learn to program? To go into the profession? To add it to your resume? A quest for enlightenment? (The last one is a joke)

This had my colleague thinking, so I furthered with the most pressing question, that in hindsight, should have been my first:

What do you want to build?

Today, we have mobile applications, web applications, Windows applications, Cloud-driven applications and embedded applications, just to name a few. For each type of application, there’s usually a different language that preferably “fits” into the style a programmer wishes to adopt to maximise performance in building applications for each. And to compound things, each language usually has a preferred IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that makes rapid development of applications in that language that much quicker.

This is also where language frameworks start to matter. Just as different languages can each be optimal for building each type of application, each language usually carries its own language framework, sometimes called a system library, or simply a framework. The framework attached to a language usually provides a series of commonly used classes, methods, extension points and other useful “plumbing” that gives great power to a developer using that language. While this is definitely fun for the passionate programmer to learn, it definitely comes with an overhead cost for those of us trying to meet a deadline.

This is where the Visual Studio 2010 and the Microsoft .Net Framework starts to make much more sense for those of us passionate about building all types of applications and not afraid of learning different programming languages but still concerned about losing the “experience advantage” gained by the investment in learning a framework attached to a programming language of choice, along with a preferred IDE.

This might be getting abstract, so let me bring it back to real experiences for a second. Pre-university I learnt QBasic, a DOS-based programming language that came with most versions of MS-DOS purchased at the time. Great, I was off an running as a programmer! And then my school’s computer lab got Windows 3.1, and subsequently Windows 95, there was Visual Basic ready for me to maximise some of those “Basic” skills in programming (pun intended) as I learnt about GUI development.

Then it got a bit tricky. At University I had to learn Pascal for the first year. While it was definitely a more structured programming language that built my discipline for the craft and prepared me for OOP challenges of later years, it was painful to have to learn this new Pascal library framework. In my final year at University, we were then introduced to Java. While not as painful as it could have been for me, since I had dabbled in OOP (Object Oriented Programming) with Java between breaks in Secondary School and University, I saw so much pain in my fellow students as they painfully, again, had to learn a new library framework, this time Java’s. I won’t get started on what happened when I had my Computer Graphics course, and got to know about tuples with much grief now understanding what the CPython libraries were. I wasn’t the only student who cried “Good Grief!” that year, or in subsequent years, I’m sure.

Would it not have been simpler, and more beneficial for me as a student, to have been able to maximise the investment I made in learning a standard framework that crossed multiple languages, and maximise it moving forward as I advanced in my degree, not to mention my subsequent professional career?

What would have happened if, on entering University, I had started with C# as an entry to learning proper OOP? The Microsoft .NET Framework would then be exposed to me as well, and moving forward provide a foundation for branching into the various application programming languages and the problems learning them would help me tackle: perhaps something like VB.Net for Windows GUI application development, Silverlight and ASP.Net for mobile, web and rich Internet application development, F# for functional programming etc.

With the advent of the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) even the dynamic languages could now be available to me. Life would be so much simpler if I did my degree today, since using IronPython for Computer Graphics I could rely on my previous years’ knowledge of the Microsoft .NET Framework experience to get right into the mysterious of tuples and image transformations and not get too tied up in the non-essential “plumbing”. And what’s more, each of these languages works within the same IDE provided by Visual Studio!

So the answer to the question that started it all? What programming language should I learn? Well, it still depends on what I want to build. But with Visual Studio 2010 and the Microsoft .NET Framework, I now know that the effort I put into learning a language such as VB.Net, C#, F#, Visual C++, IronPython, IronRuby or any other language to come that utilises the Microsoft .Net Framework and compiles to the CLR (Common Language Framework), will be an investment bearing great fruit by minimising my own learning curve and overhead when I choose to learn a subsequent language for something else I wish to build.

Bipolar Order art exhibition in #Trinidad. The man is truly...

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:25:00 +0100

Bipolar Order art exhibition in #Trinidad. The man is truly talented! The artist really appealed to me with those pieces of his inspired by London, where I lived for about a year, as he truly captured many of my “perceptions” that stood out as a Trinidadian living in this strange land. From now till May 8th, check out some fantastic pieces by my friend Kevin McMayo at Brian McFarlane’s Mas Camp on Rosalino Street, Port-of-Spain. You can find more details of the exhibit from the Facebook page as well.

#trinidad #ttcs lunch at Asian Buffet in Trincity Mall was fun...

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:39:47 +0100

The Asian Buffet

A few folks during the meetup

A few more folks during the meetup

#trinidad #ttcs lunch at Asian Buffet in Trincity Mall was fun yesterday! Nice to see everyone excited about actively planning the next set of events.

A few things I’d be interested in hearing feedback on:

What is the best day/time/location in Tobago for the TTCS Monthly Lime? The weekend would make most sense for those of us from Trinidad wanting to visit to participate, but we really want to encourage Tobago computer users and TTCS members to attend at times most convenient to them.
Are there any TTCS members currently in Tobago willing to volunteer to drive the logistics of arranging such an event?
What developer products and tools (Microsoft or otherwise) would you like to see the TTCS hold a user meetup on?
What Microsoft products would you like to see the TTCS hold a user meetup on?

My personal picks for the ‘sessions I’d like to see’ are:

For the desktop computer user focused around Cool Stuff in Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s Home Security Essentials product and Office 2010 (especially PowerPoint 2010 since I’m seeing some ultra cool new stuff in it)
An ‘In Plain English’ Cloud Computing Introduction (possibly using the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform as an example).
A really meaty developer session focused on ‘Building in 60 minutes or less’ something in Visual Studio 2010. My idea on this was around an ASP.Net MVC 2 Web Application using jQuery, ADO.Net Entity Framework 4 and SQL Server 2008 R2. Alternatively this could also showcase how simple it is to use the Windows Azure platform products to host and provide remote file and database storage for real web applications built in Visual Studio 2010.

Whatever events are planned next, I’m sure they’ll all be exciting stuff!

Here is one of the #trinidad teams in Microsoft’s Imagine...

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 13:33:00 +0100

Here is one of the #trinidad teams in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition collaborating intensely as they get their entry ready for the local finals’ April 28th deadline. This past Thursday was a busy one as well for me, as aside from meeting with this team from the University of the Southern Caribbean (USC), I also headed to the University of the West Indies’ (UWI) St. Augustine campus to meet with the UWI Computing Society and talk about what the Imagine Cup competition is, and how they could start preparing now for Imagine Cup 2011. I also talked about how programs like Microsoft Live@edu, MSDN Academic Alliance and Microsoft Dreamspark were giving Computer Science (and other) undergraduates access today, legally, to the software tools they needed to learn that not only better readied them for entering the workforce when they graduated, but to collaborate with other students to build into reality the innovative ideas they had today!

Interesting events around movietowne #trinidad, sadly not part...

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:44:44 +0000

Interesting events around movietowne #trinidad, sadly not part of the #ttlug meetup

Happy Birthday Reeza (guy on right), our resident MSTT Software...

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:58:10 +0000

Happy Birthday Reeza (guy on right), our resident MSTT Software Architect, the dude’s probably as old as MS itself

Can you guess where I’m working now?

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:31:13 +0000

Can you guess where I’m working now?

At the Microsoft #trinidad developer bootcamp in the hyatt...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:44:06 +0000

At the Microsoft #trinidad developer bootcamp in the hyatt regency

Safe trip little brother. Here my big brother and I say farewell...

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:31:51 +0000

Safe trip little brother. Here my big brother and I say farewell to my little brother Runcie as he returns to his duties in the US Navy.

At the #ttcs pizza hut lime in Valsayn, #trinidad

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:24:23 +0000

At the #ttcs pizza hut lime in Valsayn, #trinidad

Courtesy of ICTS, Paula Richards of IBM took some time to...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:01:00 +0100

Courtesy of ICTS, Paula Richards of IBM took some time to educate Trinidad on Cloud Computing. Many solid facts that apply to cloud computing considerations for any platform’s offering were brought up, although product offerings such as Lotus Live, Cloudburst and Tivoli Services Automation Manager did have their appropriate mentions. Her own watchwords of ‘design and architecture’ when it came to applying the cloud computing paradigm to current systems were quite refreshing to hear. I thank ICTS executives of Fenwick Reid, David Green and Cindy Ramsook for making this event happen, as well as my friend Richard Lee at IBM for pointing me to such a pleasantly informative event.

Some takeaways and near-exact quotations from this seminar for those who want an idea of the pulse of the talk follow:

In a cloud world, QoS (Quality of Service) and SLAs (Service Level Agreements) become uber-important.

“Cloud makes IT consumable” - The Apple App Store is a good example of a ‘cloud application’

“Cloud Services vs Cloud Platform” - IBM is working with open standards bodies to define the API for Cloud Services around the aspects applications, provisioning and metering. Websphere is an example of platform as a service.

Businesses are using cloud to “get control of IT” by bringing value to the business service itself.

IBM has an ROI tool to help businesses calculate the impact of undertaking Cloud initiatives, and the bottom line impact.

In IBM’s ROI analysis, going with cloud ‘liberated funding’

Cloud Services Delivered = Smart Business Services

Cloud in a box = Purpose-built infrastructure = Smart Business Systems

The low hanging fruit for cloud include Analytics, Collaboration, Development + Testing and Desktop services

At TTLUG Meet’n’Greet demoing OpenSuse Linux...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:07:00 +0100

At TTLUG Meet’n’Greet demoing OpenSuse Linux development using ruby on rails and aptana radrails. We meet in J. Malones at Movietowne every month, come join us for a drink or to share your latest Linux hacks

My last private job as a techie setting up a wireless router for...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:54:48 +0100

My last private job as a techie setting up a wireless router for a friend. Details will follow soon on my first purely non-techie role in Trinidad!! I’m very excited!

Just off the west coast of Trinidad there are also several much...

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:54:09 +0100

Relaxing In Gasparee Island

Talya and I relaxing 'Down The Islands'

Gasparee Islands view from the villa

Just off the west coast of Trinidad there are also several much smaller islands that are frequented by nature loving vacationers who don’t mind trading in the Hilton/Hyatt for a more rural, nature-trail experience. I was lucky enough to visit Gasparee Island and as the pictures tell, it was a very relaxing mini-vacation. Called collectively ‘Down The Islands’ by locals and frequent visitors, this type of ‘adventurer’s experience’ is definitely recommended.

Part of my perpetual professional ethic to work hard is that I often forget the ‘play hard’ part of the original saying that brings balance to this equation for a good, well-balanced life. For the last several weeks, between job hunting, re-associating with old business contacts, blogging about local events of interest to me and other geek-related activities I realised I was falling back into my workaholic habits, covering at least 6 days for the week without any leisure activities.

Thanks to my good friends, I’m reminded that this a habit I have no shortage of company to help break. Many birthday greetings to my friend Aaron, whose birthday bash led us to ‘Down The Islands’ in the first place, and to my carpooling buddies Marc, Ahmad, Matthew and Talya as well as the host of new friends I made who made for excellent company during this mini-vacation.

The India-Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce...

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:05:00 +0100

The newly formed ITTCIC logo

Friendship Lamp Lighting By Officials

Friendship Lamp Between Our 2 Flags

Naparima Sea Scouts

Dev Gosine - ITTCIC

Mariano Browne - Min. Trade+Industry

Malay Misra - India H.C. to Trinidad

Joseph Ross - Tourism Minister

Paula Gopee-Scoon- Min. Foreign Affairs

The Head Table at ITTCIC Launch

The India-Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce launched yesterday to a packed room at the Centre of Excellence. Political officials were aplenty, with 3 Ministers, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and at least one other Member of Parliament present.

To me, there was not enough hard facts given about how exactly the organisation would be helpful that gave value to me as a technology entrepreneur being there. There was no general networking (or even bathroom break) time given in the almost 3 hour schedule. Other than the period between the advertised and subsequent late start, the face time I had was only with those at my table, which in itself was valuable enough to make the event worth it for me, given that I sat with persons I met at eTeck’s seminar the previous week.

This seemed more a room for the older heads, or those with already established businesses looking to collectively gather their resources as a lobbying force. Some interesting points of note came up though.

Dev Gosine, who seemed to be a driving force behind the formation of ITTCIC, promoted several factors as to why to become a member of ITTCIC. According to him, membership in ITTCIC would give the member:

Access to Technical Awareness and Training resources
An initial stepping stone if one was an entrepreneur in the making, creating a growth path for future captains of India/T+T industry
fertile soil to grow the economy by bringing Asian resources here, helping stem the traditional ‘brain drain’ effect that happens
an open invitation to break bread with other members, and forge linkages there
an instrument for the creation of wealth in Trinidad

The devil *will* be in the details on these points and I’d love to pick his brain further on the actual implementation details of these points that he gave.

According to one presenter, Dr Tim Shaw, chambers of commerce are de-facto think tanks. I’d love to meet the new ITTCIC thought leaders and share further insight into what sort of real, concrete objectives they’ve targetted to build their credibility as this type of true think tank.

The Indian High Commissioner to Trindiad and Tobago, Shri Malay Misra, who I gained much respect for his having not read from a prepared text, (the last person whose speaking presentation I attended to have done this so elegantly was Kwame Ture), made several notable points as well.

Mauritius is the biggest investor in today’s India, because of a Double Taxation Avoidance agreement between their two countries. Trinidad and Tobago is a similar size, and already has a similar agreement in place, so there is no reason we could not become the same.
Trinidad has 3 frameworks signed already with India for trade, and he would like to see a Preferential Trade Agreement with CARICOM appear on the horizon of discussion someday.
A major challenge is not just the 22 hour flying time (not including stopovers) between India and Trinidad and Tobago but also the cost of the flight. Talks are ongoing with regional carriers to provide cheaper flights between the two countries.

All in all, it was very informative for me in getting to know the players in the formation of this new not-for-profit, non-political, “purely commercial” entity. I hope they live up to their motto of “Our only business is your success” and keep the confidence, trust and support of their membership with their future actions.

My notes from this Leo Laporte interview from Mashable Two...

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:01:00 +0100

My notes from this Leo Laporte interview from Mashable

Two pre-requisites for popular Internet media websites
- Have great content
- Make it easy to access
We’ve trained our audience to sit down and shut up
- TWIT/Leo trains them to stand up and be heard
People prefer to be active participants in the content!
Leo’s foundation of popularity in Internet-media was based on mainstream media, but launching off this is getting harder and harder, and will in a few years be impossible

eTeck impressed me with their symposium on Developing Financing...

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Layne Ainsworth of Whalen Ainsworth

Ronald Hinds of Teleios

Layne explains various investment models

Nigel Chinapoo of eTeck

eTeck impressed me with their symposium on Developing Financing Solutions for the ICT Clusters this past Wednesday. Honestly, I have so far stayed away from the bureaucracy of government enterprises because they just cannot seem to get things done. Thanks to great people such as Angela Hordatt of eTeck, not only did such an enterprise manage to organise and get together in one event (for the first time) multiple key stakeholders in both the finance and ICT sectors, including newer entrepreneurs such as myself, and leading capital management experts from the USA such as Layne Ainsworth of Whalen Ainsworth Capital Management, but many hiccups in the scheduling and coordination were often managed gracefully, with these complications being oblivious to the eyes of many of us, myself included.

Despite what most prominent media houses alluded to in what they reported of the event, the feedback I got in networking with many of those present, including several of the speakers who presented, was very positive about the event. Presenters such as Ronald Hinds of Teleios who led the conversations with a very simple, but applicable Google analogy to Layne Ainsworth of Whalen Ainsworth Capital Management, whose insights into an emerging form of financing for early stage startups provided those present with a unique insight into how the US economic system works to profitably fund their “innovation society” structure.

Ian Chinapoo’s presentation gave me tremendous insight into the thinking of a banker, as well as what to expect in terms of changes in bank lending systems to make it more favourable for entrepreneurs such as myself to gain capital through these traditional lending mediums. As a director of First Caribbean International Bank, his recommendation website for a Small Business Administration (SBA) Business Plan Outline is going to be a heavy favourite of mine over the coming weeks as I learn more about structuring proposals for acceptance by banks for financing. I would love to get a copy of his presentation to post publicly, or at least use for reference in explaining banking systems to fellow budding entrepreneurs in the ICT sector.

Below I’ve included my key takeaways (and several anecdotes) from the various speakers at this very informative, and well put together event. I would have tweeted them live, but the Trinidad Hilton charges exorbitantly for wireless Internet access and I am still a very underfunded entrepreneur myself. Despite this, my kudos to the organisers at eTeck, job well done!

Nigel Chinapoo

- “Technology has a time and a place” - this is in response to his use of a Blackberry instead of paper to read his prepared text, but failure to do so because of feedback generated by his mobile phone into the microphone system.

My potential tweets: Very good breaking of the ice with what seemed before to be a very poised audience Nigel, intentional or not!!

Angela Hordatt

- “ICT already contributes 3% of GDP.”

My potential tweets: The fact that it is percentage, and not part of a percent says alot to me. We’re not starting from zero in Trinidad, which means we can gain momentum more easily to build this ICT sector in Trinidad into a greater percentage contributor to economic growth locally

Ronald Hinds

My potential tweets:

- I liked that he stood away from the podium, he connected with me personally because of this not-so-formal speaking position.

- He was also gracious enough to shorten his presentation to facilitate the minister, but at the same time expert enough at presenting to not have his words lose value to the audience.

- I wish I could get a copy of his ‘Some Observations’ slide, which I think was the 80% value of this presentation for me.

- The way he made a jab at the banks and I could instantly identify the bankers in the community by their nervous responsive laughter was just priceless in my books.

Minister Browne

- ICT penetration of Trinidad globally is still low (we’re below 60th)

- Tamana is in phase one of a multi-phase growth plan.

My key takeaways

- The plan is still moving

- The government wants to encourage private sector financing solutions for the ICT cluster, which may have led to the comment he made which was so misquoted publicly it gets upset to even think about given how much value was actually there that day that was *not* reported

Eleanor Brown

- A very loud, and energetic speaker. I can’t help but like the amount of sense that comes out this lady’s lips during the presentation, despite being a little scared that she didn’t need a microphone to ensure everyone heard her

- She touched briefly on different behaviours of West Indian communities outside of the Caribbean when it comes to levels of per-capita income. She asked the right question, Why does this happen?

- She talks about the “creation of an enabling climate” in Caribbean economies which would allow others to create Venture Capital with focus on IT operation risk factors. An example of one of these risk factors is given as ‘not the right people running the company’

- She also talks about the need for financiers to connect with ICT initiators. My friend Chike Farrell of CaribbeanIdeas.com asks the excellent question, ‘What are the short term solutions?’

- The term ‘Exit Probability’ and raising this is mentioned. I later Googled this and found much information on business exit strategies, something I hadn’t seriously considered to this point, but which I realise now I must for any serious endeavour to get funded.

Various folks from NorthCore Technologies and SouthCore Technologies

-GEAsset.com looked very interesting

- The ideas of ‘Working Capital Engine’ and working with the “right” vendor strike some very real truth bells with me

- SouthCore Technologies is looking for business partners in the Caribbean!

Ian Chinapoo

-A talk too packed with info to be part of another post. I really hope I can get a copy of his presentation from Angela so I can go over its many gems and jewels (and most definitely blog appropriately about them afterwards)

-A major takeaway is his attempts to spearhead change in the banking systems away from collateral based lending, which isn’t condusive to funding early stage startups needed to make a vibrant ICT cluster. The move will be towards Viability Based Lending.

-Another major takeaway was his slide on obstacles to getting funded in the current system from the business’s side, including lack of things such as a business plan, accounting info etc.

Layne Ainsworth

-Introduced traditional models of startup capital acquisition, but focused much on a very new form which his company, Whalen Ainsworth, is attempting to build a fund around.

-The fact that this fund by its nature requires those seeking capitalisation from it to maintain a level of accountability on outstanding projects during delivery is very, very interesting. It reduces risk to the investor, plus makes the business itself a more delivery focused organisation, with real metrics on delivery (since they’re a direct requirement for continuing to receive funding). I’d love to learn more about this.

Dr. Neil Parsan

- Healthnett is looking to lead initiatives to unify the costing structures of all private medical institutions in Trinidad.

My neices are such angels. You can just thank technology for...

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:35:59 +0100

My neices are such angels. You can just thank technology for this sibling bonding event, it reminds me of myself and my older brother when we had our first computer, a Commodore 64, and we sat together huddled around that monster for hours on end.

Mike talks as Claire draws using Paint on our interactive new...

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:23:43 +0100

Mike talks as Claire draws using Paint on our interactive new whiteboard in #ttcs #trinidad event for software freedom day. The wiimote is placed on the chair to the left, allowing the infra red signals from the lightpen being used to be picked up. Using Bluetooth and some free software the wiimote communicates these signals to the pc and thus allows the projected image to become an interactive whiteboard.

Anil and Dev Anand prepare for the Wii hack presentation. Part...

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:18:53 +0100

Anil and Dev Anand prepare for the Wii hack presentation. Part of software freedom day activities in #trinidad and organised by the #ttcs