A place to give heads-up about good articles in various technical publications and websites.
Please place your watch at the top of the list.

DATABASED ADVISOR Enters Its 26th Year John walks through tech history to remember our roots.: http://my.advisor.com/doc/19533

Microsoft Site CodePlex Turns 2 [Visual FoxPro is mentioned.]

Agile Software: Business Impact and Business Benefits By Steve McConnell

Where have you gone, Visual FoxPro? (By David Worthington) June 16, 2008 — VFP is no longer at the edge of Microsoft’s saber, but the database management system still commands a loyal following and invokes fond memories of its heyday from the community that surrounded it.

Architecture astronauts take over

A classic worth a re-look: VFP Error Handling Matrix

Is Eeyore Designing Your Software? -- How complicated things can be in large software companies.

Mobile Applications, RIP -- Probably, but not inevitably, correct.

Link Value Factors Explained -- What makes for a valuable link for search engines?


Hashtables, Pigeonholes, and Birthdays -- A rule of thumb for estimating the number of values you need to enter in a hashtable before you have a 50 percent chance of an existing collision is to take the square root of 1.4 times the number of possible hash values.
Examples:

• The common birthday problem: SQRT(1.4 * 365) = 23
• Given a 32-bit key, like SYS(2007,n,1) or SYS(2017,n,1): SQRT(1.4 * 2^32) = 77,543 -- Steven Black

What’s Ailing ASP.NET Web Forms? Best pros and cons of ASP.NET and best description on ASP.NET MVC I've seen so far.

Windows XP Significantly Outperforms Vista - ready to "upgrade" to Vista?

Bach to basics as hedge fund tunes in to violin investment

The Stradivari and Guarneri collection of David Fulton, who sold his FoxPro software to Microsoft in 1992, is among the world's best.

Programmer's don't like to code - they like to solve problems and learn. Totally on the button.

Developing with a strategy - composition vs inheritance

The Search Engine That's Already Better Than Google

Granted, this engine doesn't operate perfectly for every query (not even close), but for me, it's become a search destination when I know the regular engines can't acceptably fulfill my needs.

Conditional comments for Internet Explorer AND non-IE browsers <-- Using conditional comments for browser-specific HTML.

Martin Fowler: Dealing with Roles

Life Without Microsoft (1998 Article)

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

Examining User Expectations for the Location of Common E-Commerce Web Objects

Comparison of different SQL implementations

Rick Strahl: Beyond HTML: Rich Internet Applications . Five big stars for this one. -- Steven Black

Warning Signs Your Web Application Project May Fail
7 Signs Your Project Will Never Make it to Production
Top Ten Signs Your Software Project is Doomed

Database scalability - Dispelling myths about the limits of database-centric architecture

Two articles about managing programmers: Theory P: The Philosophy of Managing Programmers and Seven tips for leading FOSS programmers. Note that the first article, while disparaging towards programmers, does contain useful techniques.

I have nothing to hide" - or the Sainsbury's Lesson about data mining, patterns, and personal risk.

Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb FoxPro features in When Borland got shirty

Why they don't upgrade (and what to do about it)

Dashboard: Developers Face Ajax Compatibility Crisis

FoxPro 'stars' in The Daily WTF

The Future of Human-Computer Interaction

The wiki-fication of MSDN


Demystifying AJAX for CRM

CRM is an ideal area for AJAX, but the decision to adopt AJAX shouldn't be made without truly understanding the ramifications of this new development model

Is it a coincidence the author refers to Foxpro twice?

Ward Cunningham on Wikis, Patterns, Mashups and More

Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Foxpro Part II

Next-Generation Data Access: Making the Conceptual Level Real

Passion is a Wonderful Branding Tool

Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Foxpro Part I

The Noble Art of Maintenance Programming

Search Engine Indexing Limits: Where Do the Bots Stop?

Making Considerate Software - by Jeff Atwood

SQL MythBusters – MSDE/SQL Express has a 5 concurrent user limit

The Eventual Death of Developer Magazines

IntuiCat: AJAX made sooo easy with Visual FoxPro and West-Wind wConnect .

When The Long Tail Wags The Dog

If I have a particular need that can be fulfilled by a tool, the tool I will choose is the one that I know will more likely fulfill that need. If I have to limit my "toolkit" in advance to just a few tools, I try to include those tools that will meet as wide a range of needs as possible from the range of needs that I think I will have in the future. Tools that can be used for a wide range of purposes therefore become very popular: Hammers, screw drivers, pliers, word processors, personal automobiles, etc.

Product Roadmaps Are Dangerous .

Software Engineering, Not Computer Science Excellent article on what software development "should" be: engineering. -- Randy Jean
Original PDF: http://www.stevemcconnell.com/SeIsNotCs.pdf

Leaky Abstractions excellent article, and very apropos, I think, for those hiring (and working with) programmers, particularly programmers of highly-abstracted languages like VFP and the frameworks built on it. - Lauren Clarke

FoxPro Not an Endangered Species by Mary Jo Foley.

Korby Parnell says some very nice things about the wiki in Loyalty to Visual FoxPro: the SednaX Generation . Thanks, Korby. -- Steven Black

Which online discussion archetype are you? -- Great RSS feed for this site too.

Microsoft Windows Live? Not Yet--And Maybe Not Ever

Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet unreview by Charles Jade. Great review, and hilarious. I think I'll wait. -- Steven Black

Does Visual Studio Rot The Mind?

Article on Open Office.org 2.0 with a quick, positive mention of VFP (albeit referring to it as a "personal database program") http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1874157,00.asp

A nice little review of VFP9 in Personal Computer World (UK) December edition:
"a particularly strong release", "beats Access hands down", "FoxPro is a hidden gem"
The magazine's "Database" section usually concentrates on Access so it was good to see such a positive review. Not yet available on the mag's web site - Geoff Franklin

Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox: Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes .

Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox: Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

11 Clients You Need to Fire Right Now It's time to cut loose those clients who are earning you gray hairs. Software Development Magazine - September 2005 Issue - Vol 13, No. 9 (not online for a month or two).
Try this link http://www.christopherhawkins.com/06-13-2005.htm

Anders Hejlsberg, the Father of C# on The Past, Present and Future of Programming

Sources said high-level Microsoft architects are focusing on how "Orcas," the follow-on version of Visual Studio, will more easily and efficiently handle data via future versions of both Visual Basic and Visual C#. In fact, Anders Hejlsberg, a top Microsoft software architect, is working on Visual C# 3.0 and has produced compiler technology that accelerates data integration. The Visual Basic team is working to deliver similar functionality, based on Microsoft's FoxPro technology base, sources said.

---

Several articles, all related to the pros and cons of SQL Server Stored Procedures. Always a contentious issue, see also Stored Procedure Myths.
Stored Procedures vs ad-hoc SQL
To SP or not to SP in SQL Server
TheServerSide Debates: Stored Procedures v Parameterized Queries
Who needs Stored Procedures, anyways?
Stored procedures are bad, m'kay?
Using parameterized SQL queries


Expand Accelerators Speed Up Foxpro Remote Access Over Citrix By 100 percent Expand Networks Press release Yahoo says "Document Has Expired" [2005.08.09]

So is this article above essentially reaffirming the fact that the way VFP presents it's GUI is sub-par? Meaning, since VFP draws bitmaps of each part of it's GUI rather than using standard Windows GUI objects, we need to purchase additional "accelerators" to compensate for the additional bandwidth used to draw VFP apps hosted on Terminal Server or Citrix? - William Fields

Developers Report on Power, Productivity and Extensibility of New Visual FoxPro 9.0 Microsoft new Press release on VFP 9.0

How FoxPro works internally -- Excellent article by Christof Wollenhaupt on VFP works behind the scenes.

What Great .NET Developers Ought To Know -- Checklists of questions for coders and architects.

Gartner: Outsourcing (customer management operations) costs more than in-house -- Gartner says 80 percent of organizations that outsource their customer management operations purely to cut costs will fail to do so, while 60 percent of those who outsource parts of the customer-facing process will have to deal with customer defections and hidden costs that outweigh any potential savings offered by outsourcing.

Mr. GrimesÂ’ Farewell : Richard (Grimes) is stepping down from his post of commenting on all things .NET. In his farewell address, he looks back at some missteps in the development of .NET and offers words of warning about the future of the platform.

I found it! The perfect programming shop: They Write the Right Stuff -- This Dec 1996/Jan 1997 article is about the team that writes software for the Space Shuttle , with insight into their methods.

The Basics of What Users Want : Six things all users want.

I have to question this article. Yeah, the guy has some credentials. The utah.gov website has won lots of awards, but here he's talking about what users want. One thing is they expect a web site to be complete and fully functional, yet all over his site you see "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Proin semper varius nulla. Fusce est lorem, feugiat in, tristique sed, sodales ut, purus. Vestibulum id ligula ac felis iaculis mattis.". How difficult is it to add your marketing crap before posting the page? -- Craig Berntson

Craig, Maybe you dug harder than I did, but I only found the gobbledygook on one page and it was preceded by "Coming soon!" I agree that he should have killed the Latin, but I think it's okay to lay out a website and get it running with the key pages in place and "coming soon" on others, as long as "soon" doesn't turn out to mean "never." -- Tamar Granor

Has Visual Basic Lost its Way?
Note: Foxpro is mentioned in the above article - but the author is obviously ignorant of the fact that Visual FoxPro has had OOP since 1995. I say we start an email campaign....

Contractor or Scapegoat? Keys to Successful Contracting.

Excellent blog entry by Rick Strahl titled Comparing West Wind Web Connection and classic ASP + COM

VisualFoxpro helps climbers get up Mt. Everest

A fine article in Computer World about the Sydney FoxPro User Group and the Australian FoxPro DevCon.

OOP Is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice: at http://www.devx.com/DevX/Article/26776
Unbelievable. Someone still questioning the benefits of OOP? "but one can reuse code without OOP—often by simply copying and pasting"... I will admit that some of the things he mentions about OOP have some validity. Which makes me glad I'm using a hybrid like VFP so I can still do some down and dirty procedural code if necessary.

The top 20 IT mistakes to avoid at http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/19/47FEtop20_1.html.

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3423238⊂jectID=348909
Summary: Most software projects fail to meet their goals. Can this be fixed by giving developers better tools? The article includes this summary forecast from Gartner Dataquest:

Visual Foxpro 9.0: Still Here, Still Relevant, by David T Anderson, http://www.devx.com/opinion/Article/22488

Security in FoxPro (protecting application and data) by Christof Wollenhaupt http://www.foxpert.com/docs/security.en.htm

Introduction to Web Application Security http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/secmod/html/secmod71.asp

Help: I Got Hacked. Now What Do I Do? - Microsoft's Technet - By Jesper Johansson, Ph. D. [MS] http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/secmgmt/sm0504.mspx

How A Criminal Might Infiltrate Your Network - Microsoft's Technet - By Jesper Johansson, Ph. D. [MS] http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2005/01/AnatomyofaHack/default.aspx

Firefox browser takes on Microsoft at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3993959.stm

Endangered species: US programmers by David R. Francis at http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1014/p17s01-coop.html

Ten Things I Hate in a Web Site by Jason OConnor www.marketingprofs.com/4/oconnor1.asp

The State of the Computing Industry By Brian Livingston. http://windowssecrets.com/040923/.

Rick Strahl: : "Browser wars? Maybe not, but..."

Interesting article on OOP terminology. http://www.toa.com/pub/abstraction.txt -- Mike Yearwood

The great hollowing-out myth, in the Feb 19 2003 issue of The Economist website.

Please Sir May I Have A Linker ? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PleaseLinker.html

The Threat From Below - editorial SQL Server Mag 12/2003; Somebody needs to tell this guy that Microsoft does, in fact, serve small businesses with products like Visual Foxpro. http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=40689

Interesting article from a MS tester http://headblender.com/joe/blog/archives/microsoft/001280.html#001280

Microsoft Visual FoxPro as an Enterprise Development Tool: http://www.cycla.com/software/vfoxpro.htm (Late 2002)

Choose the right Microsoft database for your development needs: http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6329-5056993.html

A bunch of great articles on XP/Patterns/Study Groups/Refactoring etc.: http://www.industriallogic.com/papers/index.html

SCO lawsuits and Fox - who would have thought there was a connection: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030619.html

How not to design a dishwasher: http://www.asktog.com/columns/055Dishwasher.html

Good article on the Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA)
http://news.com.com/2030-6681_3-1001641.html?tag=vs4_toc

Joel On Software
Most of you have probably read them but in case you haven't...
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html

Interview with Grady Booch: "Language Once Was Key — Now It's Design"
http://www.fawcette.com/dotnetmag/2003_02/online/lthe/default.asp

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-objprev/
Unleash the power of object orientation with a better persistence strategy
Object Prevalence

http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html
A great article on Technology Industry Trends (a MUST read even if you do not agree with everything he says):
-- Randy Jean

http://www.fawcette.com/dotnetmag/2002_03/magazine/columns/architecting/
Adapt Your Web Architecture for .NET
(Is Windows DNA and COM dead? This author and I think so.)

http://www.silicondefense.com/research/sapphire/: The Spread of the Sapphire / Slammer Worm, an excellent analysis of how and why it spread so fast.

Rick Strahl on the two faces, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, of DotNet
http:// style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">www.west-wind.com/presentations/Editorials/TwoFacesOfDotNet.asp

Language Wars
http://mcpmag.com/columns/print.asp?EditorialsID=450

http://www.ronin-intl.com/publications/classTypeArchitecture.htm
A Class Type Architecture For Layering Your Application

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020512.html
Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability

http://ww