Where did the time go? - blog

Windows Troubleshooting Tip of the Day: Failed ActiveX object creation

Jeff Klawiter — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:25:44 GMT

So today I was tasked with helping a client move an old custom VB6 app to a new Windows 2003 server. The company that created it was asking for an arm and a leg for a simple transfer. After we moved the entire program directory over everything seemed to be fine until we encountered an "ActiveX component can't create object" error. I was perplexed on how to track down the issue. There were not accompanying DLLs or OCX files. I tried Process Explorer to see if I could find any failed openings and the strings contained in the exe.

After some searching on the net I found this lovely page http://www.cryer.co.uk/brian/windows/trbl_nt_axccco.htm . It details on how to use Sysinternals Regmon to track down issues with failed ActiveX creation. Basicall you watch your program for registery key openings and look for any failed opens in the HKCR/Classes path. After running the program and encountering the error I found it.
HCKR\Classes\cdonts

When I saw that come up I immediately knew what to do. cdonts is no longer included with windows server. It is an emailing library using cdo. I've had to install it on new Windows 2003 servers more than once so old ASP classic sites could run. All I needed to do after figuring it out was copy the cdonts.dll over to the C:\windows\system32\ directory and run regsvr32 on it. Everything was golden.

I've been using Sysinternals for years. I'm always amazed at what new ways I can use their utilities to track down issues. Process Explorer has been a godsend for me over the years. After discovering it, removing malware from computers took me less than half the time it used to. It gives me so much information I'm not sure how I got by without it.

The Sysinternals Suite is a must have for any serious windows programmer or administrator. It ranges from programs to monitor network connections to being able to see and suspend individual threads in a program.

Twin Cities Code Camp 5: Over and Out

Jeff Klawiter — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:59:53 GMT

Well Code Camp 5 is in the bag. It was a large turn out and many great talks. My talk however drew no interest. Oh well, I tried and will try again. I'm thinking of making my post about LINQ and Refactoring into a talk.

The talks I went to:
The Intersection of F# and LINQ
This was a great talk about how F# takes LINQ and adds much more value to it with it's functional nature. The demonstration was a ray tracer that used LINQ to build up all of the reflected pixels. It was quite impressive. Combine it with the Arc talk and I am now very interested in Functional programming.

The Arc Programming Language
I had seen this talk a few days earlier. The speaker was hilarious and did a great job of bringing excitement back to lisp. Arc is a new dialect of Lisp that aims to cut down on parenthesis and add shorthand for common operations. He added objects to Arc with six lines of code, quite impressive.

BOO! A Wrist-Friendly Language for the CLI
BOO! is a another language along the lines of Lisp where it can redefine parts of itself through macros. The difference is it is statically typed like C#. It does offer quite a bit of reduction in code written. The presenter Justin Chase did a good job showing many aspects of the language. I also won a shirt for figuring out that the mystery function was calculating a fibonocci sequence. The code for it was quite cool, a,b = b + a or something like that.

Building MyTube with Microsoft Silverlight 2
Jeff Brand from Microsoft was giving this talk. It was a basic overview on SilverLight, the purpose for it and how to implement a simple youtube interface. I didn't stay for the entire thing, I had to go get ready for my talk.

My talk "Pick/Multivalue 101"
No one that was interested showed. Not that I was surprised but still a bit disappointed. While giving the talk at my work we had over 15 people show. One of my co-workers showed and the other guy that showed was just looking for a place to sit. So instead we talked about LINQ, customized programming in Linux and a bit about Multivalue

I went to the speakers after party, got to gossip with some people from Magenic. Learned that Justin Chase left Magenic a few weeks ago to work on the Blend team at MS. He's a lucky guy and seemed rather excited for the features they are working on that he can't talk about. I'm sure some of them may come up soon at PDC. I did hear some gossip earlier in the day that SilverLight 2 RTM is going to be released as early as tomorrow (Oct 13th).

Advice: How to be a successful developer

Jeff Klawiter — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:28:37 GMT

Being a developer is one of the luckiest professions in the world. Just take a minute and think about this: How many professions out there are you paid to learn? Seriously, if we wish to succeed we must learn. Many times we need to learn during the project. We are given the opportunity and often encouraged to learn new ways of doing something, come up with innovative ideas, implement new technologies. Many companies offer compensation for developers to get certified, keep up, to learn. I've also found that many of the people I know that went to college for CS came out ill prepared for the real development world.

I was lucky in some ways. I got a job running websites during high school, I was paid to learn and mature as a programming. I wasn't lucky that pay sucked and I had to get food from charity at times. But there was always being able to learn on the job and the outlook that real developers jobs paid very well.

Over the years as I've matured as a developer I've learned quite a lot. I strive to keep on learning, branching out into new areas. I've found that my inner urge to learn is also what has allowed me to succeed. Below are some of my tips to being a successful programmer

Be passionate

The one thing I've seen in every great developer I've ever met is passion. Passion for the job, passion for learning, passion for being challenged. There is no way to improve without having a need for it. If being a developer is just a job, just a way to make money, I'm sorry but you should find something else to do. I've seen many developers that have that attitude and they just don't make it. They make mistakes and never learn from them, they have difficulties completing anything on time, and wind up getting fired quite a bit.

Never be afraid to try something new

While sometimes it's hard to break out of things you know that work, learning that things can/cannot be done another way expands your experience and keeps your mind trying to work outside the box.

Keep up with the Joneses

This one can be very hard if you have a full schedule. But trying to keep up with the new technologies will expose you to new ideas, new ways of tackling problems. One cannot grow if one does not see another way.

Pursue certifications

Some people see certifications as a croc. They see that lots of tech schools teach for the test and thats it. I can understand that. I have persued certifications as a professional goal. Going through the MCTS certifications for ASP.NET and Winforms has exposed me to many things I probably wouldn't have known about in .NET. I try to read through the entire training kit books MS puts out for the certifications.

Gaining the certifications are also good for ones ego. Having the goal to set out and earn the certification can keep you discleplined and give you a sense of accomplishment. It's something you can show your bosses and peers that you do indeed know what you're talking about. It gives you more bargaining power when negotiating a raise or looking for a new job. While some may not help you as much as you'd hope, having both real world experience and certifications can be a 1-2 combo.

Microsoft's certification track is the best I've seen. You can start out by getting Technological specific certifications with the MCTS series. You can get just certified in ASP.NET, Windows Applications, Windows Mobile.. and on. Then you can expand on those with Professional certifications with the MCPD's. These ones include application lifecycle components. Professional ways of breaking down an application into logical, component and class diagrams to implementation of architectures and finishing with deployment and maintenance.

Learn new languages

This one can be hard for people that only use one language at work. Learning a new language again helps you get exposed to new ideas and ways of tackling problems.

The hardest thing is actually finding something to do in that language to learn it. I've found that the best way is to have something you implement in every language. Whether it's some tool you've developed or a little game. I had the Al Bhed translator. I originally developed it in PHP to help me out with the game Final Fantasy 10. I then tried doing it in JavaScript, then Java, then C++, XUL (firefox extension) and then in C#.NET Winform. It gave me a common goal in each of the languages and forced me to find out how to do it in each one. They all had their own strengths and weaknesses. PHP's Array functions made some of it very easy to implement, where javascript was a bit clunky. C# wasn't as elegant as the PHP but it was much faster in execution.

Try to find languages that have a different goal than just another application. Languages like F# for example. While it's possible to write every day applications with it, it's real power lies in analyzing and transforming data. Learning it opens up a world of mathmatics in new ways.

Learn new platforms

Simply this means do not just be a web developer or an application developer. Continuously expanding the platforms you know can increase your understanding of how other people develop. I started out as a web programmer and over the years I've written programs for the commandline, windows services, web services, mobile phones, automated scripts, desktop applications, rich internet apps (flash, silverlight), dynamic web sites and more. I'm currently picking up XNA and trying to learn what programming a game is like. I'm learning a newfound respect for game programmers.

Seek out challenges

If your current job is not challenging you find a way to be challenged. Sometimes even playing around things outside of work is enough. Go to your boss and see if theres ways you can increase your workload, or get into more complex projects. Express an interest in new things. If you are stuck at a job where that is impossible, I recommend it may be time to look elsewhere. Get some certifications and new skills under your belt and start looking. There are some great tech jobs out there, good places to find a place to be challenged are in start ups or smaller custom software companies. Places like where I work at, Sierra Bravo. When I joined I had 6 years experience but still would consider myself a novice programmer. Within the next year I worked on more than 20 projects, on many platforms and felt like I had finally become a professional developer.

Now being on the verge of 4 years later I feel like I'm an accomplished developer, I'm able to start incorporating more advanced concepts in to my projects. I can see a much larger picture. As the years have gone on the scope of the picture I can see has expanded. I once could only see the single web page I was working on. Then I was able to start understanding the system of web pages I would design. I then started graduating onto being able to write a complete web site. That is when I decided that desktop applications were next. The scope expanded to understanding state, threads, and desktop experience. My first applications were cluttered, did not have much for layers. I started to learn more about the concept of breaking out applications into libraries and layers. These days I've graduated to an architect that can take the project proposal. Break it down to sections, logical components and build the applications architecture. Define the database, the data layers, the data objects and the front end. I can incorporate n-tier designs, abstract out business logic to a web service. Write API's that work for websites as well as windows mobile.

Really it all boils down to is: Have passion for your job, passion to learn new things and keep yourself challenged. Never be afraid to learn new skills. In this day an age a developer needs to know more than just one platform. They need to understand a larger scope to make it.

Updates

Jeff Klawiter — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:58:48 GMT

Well I've been working on the new theme for the blog. I have been co-opting the theme from j-maxx.net since it's about the only decent theme I've ever done before. It looks bad in IE due to dashed borders having white space inbetween the dashes instead of the background color.

For some background on the blog. I chose dasBlog as my software due to it having web services built in and has a user base of programmers I look up to. That being said it was originally .NET 1.1 software and the design is getting a bit annoying in some aspects. I'm looking at adding a better syntax highlighter, but adding it so it shows up in all the themes is not straightforward. I may just remove the other themes and only allow this one to simplify things.

I've also noticed that blogs edited after the date they were posted do not show up when you click on the date their were posted in the calendar. I'll have to track that bug down.

All in all it was pretty quick and easy to get the blog up and running. Designing the theme was very easy as well. They did a great job at allowing users to separate design from logic. I'm going to delve more into the templating system to figure out how they did it.