Geek Mode ON

OK, if you’re not into the geek kinds of blog entries, just skip this one altogether.

 just us geeks now!

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I guess the first thing on the agenda is Linux.  I’ve just upgraded to the latest and greatest version of RedHat Fedora 8.  I have only one issue with the whole thing.  The “UPGRADE” option doesn’t work.  It didn’t work on Fedora 7 either.  Both times I’ve tried to go the upgrade route rather then the install route and it failed.  To the non-geeks who continued reading despite the strong warning to do otherwise .. Upgrade means it would just upgrade the entire system .. install means that everything on the system (including my personal files) would be deleted and the whole new OS image would be put down.  For me it’s not a huge deal because I back up all the important stuff, but it’s still a bit of a hassel.

Aside from that one thing, I like Fedora 8 overall. The look and feel are better then version 7, and it comes with a bunch of snazzy new features for software developers.  They also have a new “Live Media” option at the download site.  It means that you can just boot the cdrom, and run linux off the cd w/out having to install it on your system.  It’ll give you an idea of what it’s like before making the decision to go the full install route.

Software Development.  People always ask me what I use for software development.  When I tell them, I typically get looks of disbelief.   Yes, I’ve been using the VI Editor. It’s a bit difficult, but once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. Here’s a good page to see what it’s about.   While I still love VI for lots of things, I’ve decided to make the move to a more sophisticated development environment.  I have VERY recently made the switch to Eclipse. The types of things I’ve been working on recently have changed quite a bit. I’ve been working a lot more with XML, Java, C++ and Database programming with SQL and XQUERY. Most of the development I’ve done in the past was UNIX Shell Programming, C/C++, Perl and a bit of PHP. The code was fast and generally failry light. These days the projects I’m working on have become a lot more complicatedand thus require flipping back and forth between a number of source files, classes, methods etc.. Also, I’m working on a lot more projects at once, so my snazzy new IDE is able to keep my projects seperate and better organized.

I choose Eclipse because it 1) runs on multiple platforms (any kind of UNIX and windows), 2) it’s become a development standard, and 3) it supports many different languages (instead of just being a Java IDE). There were a few runners up though. ULTRA EDIT is awsome, but the problem with it is that you have to pay for it *grin*, and it only runs on Windows. I probably would have sucked it up and made the purchase, but since it doesn’t run on my laptop (linux) it was pointless. TextPad was the other option. Its basically free (although you’re supposed to buy it at some point), but it also runs only on Windows. It’s not bad overall but it lacks a lot of the features that Ultra Edit has.

So .. it’s Eclipse.

It takes a little getting used to, and I’m not quite there yet, but I’m making the transition.

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