Bug Hunter in Space
In 1987, Acorn launched the Archimedes home computer. At the time, it was the fastest desktop computer in the world, and at the time, I was fortunate enough to have one to experiment with.
The Internet in 1995
Recently I was clearing through a box of old stuff, and I found a copy of ".Net - The Internet Magazine" from March 1995. Seeing the magazine again reminded when I bought it - I was in my third year at University, and the only practical way I had to get onto the net was to use the Sun Sparcstations in the university lab. From what I remember of the internet in 1995, most of it was about Monty Python or Star Trek. What I found in the old magazine pretty much supported that memory.
Web Services between Dot Net and Not Net
If you've only ever worked with Web Services in Dot Net, you could be forgiven for expecting it to be easy to use Web Services to interface with other platforms. In Visual Studio, it's all a bit Fisher-Price: you define your Web Methods, then add a Web Reference to the client and everything ticks along nicely. You don't even see any XML.
Sql 2000 Concatenation Trick
Last year I worked at a client site writing imports into the database for an Ascent CRM system. The import process was being implemented using Sql 2000 stored procedures. After getting used to a C# environment with source control and unit testing, working entirely in T-SQL was like going back to the 1970s. Still, the client had their reasons; although the job could have been done in C#, the charity in question figured that T-SQL would be cheaper to maintain in the long run, with programmers easier and cheaper to find.
