Rafa Vargas on Software Development

I have been wondering about that question for a long time. According to NetApplications, Windows owns 88% of the operating system market share. However, how many of them could we call “power users”?

Lately, there is so much buzz about Linux security after this article. It seems some part of the Linux community have been living in Mars, since they firmly believed their system was intouchable. But there is something that makes virus in Linux infeasible: user education. Most of Linux users know how to use their system and know what to do when unknown senders send them email. On the contrary, on Windows, most of users would open an executable file from anyone only for curiosity (and, as we know, most of people use Administrator accounts when navigating on the Internet).

So, how would you measure how much people really know Windows? Would we obtain a good approach counting the people who use limited accounts to surf the web? How would you do it?

The Business of Software has been one of the most influential books I have ever read. Although it is not a self-help book, it made me feel great and gave me hope when I first read it. Since then, I knew I wanted to build my software company someday in future.

There are anecdotal experiences  from Eric Sink in this book like when he speaks about the C compiler he developed. It was not better than the C compilers out there, but it was able to compile itself. That’s impressive!

During college I wrote a C compiler, just for fun. It was written in C, entirely from scratch, with a handwritten recursive descent parser. I even did some peephole optimizations on the back-end. It wasn’t very fast, but it could compile itself with no errors. I released it under the GPL, but I was only the person who ever used it.

During last semester, I have wrote a Lexer, a Parser and a Tree Parser for a college project. It was not a compiler after all, but it is somewhat near a compiler. This project was an open assignment, I mean I could choose whatever language to parse (even an invented one up to certain degree of hardness). I have not written all the code from the scratch, like Eric did. However, I studied how ANTLR works and all the theory behind language parsing and I think I have done a great work.

Personally, I had never managed myself to recognize languages properly until I passed this subject. I was afraid of building a lexical analyzer: I never knew where to start. But now, language processing has become something fun :)

Months ago, I wondered whether I had to host my own blog or sticking with WordPress.com service’s crippled customizations. After a year and a half, I made up my mind: WordPress.com. After studying some offers from different hosting providers, I thought it was not worth the trouble maintaining my own blog site. Now, as you can see, this blog has turn into http://rafavargas.com.

Okay, time for Q&A.

Why have you done something like that? I thought you were able to bring the famous 5-minute installation…
Yes, I can :) But, what would have happened with you, my fellow reader? As Scobleizer’s “ Corporate Weblog Manifesto” rule twelve says: Never change the URL of your weblog. A few months back, I wanted you to change the feed and only 30% of you did it. For those of you who still did not update the RSS, click here. (If you add this RSS feed, you will sometimes receive a list with my last posts on delicious.com)

How much was it?
Hey, this questions should be made in private! But it would be okay for this time. It was 11.68 € with the current USD-EUR exchange rates. Really cheap, easy and good. The process is pretty straightforward so thumbs up for the Automattic team! If you are still debating what you should do: take this post as advice.

What was what made you to change mind?
An ad. Have you ever seen those little yellow boxes on the top of the dashboard? There was an ad instead of an announcement. Good for them: they got a new client. If ads were like that instead of the lousy ones we saw on the Internet, I think people would not ignore them.

Thanks for your time.