Speaking of IDT drivers causing serious woes, I would suggest to every Dell Studio XPS 1640 user planning to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 manually (ie. not using a ghost image provided by Dell) that you kindly DO NOT DO SO. Drivers such as the ones for IDT consume 40-50 CPU constantly for doing nothing of essence in the background. A simple “remove driver” wouldn’t work either. If Dell plans on shipping drivers like the current one, I would not even go to Dell for an upgrade to Windows 7.

Dell better come up with a fix quickly. I think I’ll call up Dell’s premium tech support just to tell them about this issue and hope its fixed quickly. On a side note, for some reason, side scroll on the track pad doesn’t work on Windows 7 in the current version of Firefox :( It works fine for every other software. Weird.

Update: Just talked to tech support. Seems I’m the only one who has issues. Weirdly enough, a reinstall of the driver seems to have fixed the issue. ¬¬ Some odd quirk I guess.

I’ve been using Windows 7 ever since the first beta was made public. I have been using Sensible Vision’s FastAccess on every build I’ve used so far. Currently, my laptop is on Windows 7 build 7137.

I have 3 major issues with FastAccess.

1. On every boot, it refuses to log me in. But if I logout/lock workstation and return a few times, it starts recognizing me. It seems as though it is not able to store its data and every reboot needs it to be recalibrated (even though there are different texts for the first software boot as opposed to every other time it starts up, it just seems that way).
2. This is not really a Windows 7 specific bug but why can’t Sensible Vision start its software after the camera boots up? Not doing so seems pointless to me.
3. Fine, you can’t bring the camera drivers up the boot order. I think I’ll just type in my password if you don’t mind. But FastAccess does mind. It actually logs me out 5 seconds after I logged in. I find this extremely irritating.

I have tried googling up for Windows 7 support and there seems to be none. In fact, when searching for “Sensible Vision FastAccess Windows 7″ on Google the second result you see is of this blog :|

First, I’d like to hear feedback from any FastAccess users out there who are on Windows 7.
Second, I’d like Sensible Vision to let its users know about its Windows 7 plans and whether it is planning to use something like the Windows Biometric Foundation (WBF) (Assuming they are applicable).

Note: As far as I’ve read so far, WBF seems to be for Fingerprint sensors though I’m hoping they might provide support for other kinds of biometric data such as facial recognition. Still looking into things though.

Not many know this but despite mIRC scripting being non mainstream and not a perfectly good platform to do a lot on, I spend a lot of time (perhaps more than I should) working on it simply because its fun. It might be because I do spend a lot of my time on IRC on a certain network for helping users of a certain software :P I have been battling with myself to make the scripts (for myself and maybe even the ones for others) I’ve written public but I never managed to win that debate.

Another such example is my work in PHP. I am not much of a web designer but god knows, I’ve tried my hand at it :) I do however enjoy the occasional web development most of which arise from a need to do something. One such example would be a web scrapper I developed to get information about future Manchester United matches. I was on the brink of making it SMS me results and notify me of future matches but then my source, the Manchester United Official website decided to change its data format. A small fix would bring things back on track but with 2 matches left in the season (one league and one Champions League final) I didn’t see any point in doing so. I was planning to expand this and include feeds for Real Madrid’s matches which my dad follows along with league tables for both the leagues but all of these are things that will remain known to only a handful of users (at the moment, 3 to be precise)

I have spent most of my spare time in the last 2 months working on Project Euler. I haven’t written many solutions since mid way April when college exams began but that is where I have spent at least a couple of weeks of good development time. Why? I like solving computational problems. I enjoy finding efficient solutions.

The popular view (at least here) is to judge a developer on the basis of his performance on the work he has done. Now my discussion today is limited to students. One (commonly used) yard stick (at least here) would be the number and more importantly the quality of projects one has worked on. People judge the grade of the work and things such as the technologies used. Also, the technologies one is familiar with is also granted as a plus.

I for one, find this extremely flawed. The above yardstick doesn’t go too well for programmers who spend less time developing full fledged software and are more into component based development. For example, writing a script in mIRC where you need data from an application running on your machine would require you to make a dll to get this data for you. Thus, what seems like a script in mIRC is actually a script along with a dll probably made in something like C++ or Delphi. The number of technologies one is familiar with does not show the level of fluency and in depth knowledge.

This “method of judging” I speak of is one used when you don’t have direct physical communication with the person in question or when you have to have a first glance impression of someone. Sure, first impressions are quite often incorrect. But given a choice, wouldn’t you want to make an accurate judging of someone’s skill at first glance. So if you have limited access to them, say you only hold to their resumes, how do you judge them?

Which path of developing should students choose? One path would certainly be to dedicate myself to making big time projects; applications that would have wide scale appeal. Another would be to work on those projects as them come but along side work on small scale pieces of code. The latter allows a developer to indulge in what he enjoys until he strikes and idea worthy of pursuing. If a potential employer asks you of the things you have developed, small scale experience in the above stated platforms wouldn’t have too much commercial application (PHP yes, but I certainly am no expert. I could be with a bit more practice :) mIRC scripting is certainly non commercial).

How do you judge yourself as a developer? Especially when you are a student who spends his “free” time writing code, what parameters do you use to judge yourself. One (commonly used) yard stick (at least here) would be the number and more importantly the quality of projects one has worked on. But doing so, a developer who works on various non-commercial platforms wouldn’t rate too high.

I for one feel that this yardstick isn’t fair. I know a lot of developers who work on small time components which are crucial to achieve targets. Others work on different platforms, quite a few of which aren’t all that commercial. Most of them are really talented and when needed they will move to any necessary platform and get the job done (which is what a good developer should have the ability to do; take concepts and apply them to different situations). Sure, a lot of young coders out there are into popular platforms such as Ruby For Rails, Perl and Python. Just because others aren’t, does that make them any less of developers. Is it a combination of the type, size and quality of projects along with the platforms you’re good at that make you a good developer (basic versatility) or is it something else?

How would you describe a fresher (student with experience working in an organization) as a good developer? If its past records are the way to go, how much does experience in non-commercial platforms weigh in against commercial ones?

That’s 5 questions I’d like people to answer. I had a discussion along these lines with a friend recently and thought I wondered what others felt. Do let me know what you think :)