Previous to my new job it had been a long time since I did any programming in asp. That would have been around 2003 when working on the Augustana College marketing club webapp. I was soured on it then, convinced that PHP was the superior language. To be fair, asp.net is more of a set of tools for creating a webapp (since you can use any .net language you want), where as classic asp was really its own language.


Lots of things have changed since then and I’m finding myself enjoying building apps in asp.net as opposed to PHP or Java. I will still maintain that Java lends itself better to large, scalable webapps because of ejb and its built-in transaction handling. However, if your goal is to make a complex UI and make it quickly, I’d lean towards asp.net

This is the second part of a two-part article. I was recently laid off from Nuance Communications. This is the story of what I did at Nuance and why I was laid off. Part 1 was the “why I was laid off”. This part two is about my part on the ill-fated FX project.

The FX team was very diverse and we made heavy use of offshoring/outsourcing. There were five full time developers(including myself) and the project manager

This is the story of the Dictaphone FX project – of how it almost was, and how it got canceled – from someone very close to the project (me). I have since been released from Nuance and am now working for a company called Geneca. This article is rather lengthy for me and covers several topics. This is part 1, which covers the business perspective, or ‘Why Nuance canceled the project and laid me off’. Part 2 will cover the technical perspective, of ‘What went into FX’.

I have implemented AJAX style comments system. If you click on the ‘Add Comment’ button below you can see it. The difference is that now you are presented with a comments form appears within the existing page instead of a comments form being on a new page, as was the previous behavior. This is AJAX, and it is the technology that people are calling Web 2.0.
What’s the big deal you ask? By having the ability to only update parts of a web page instead of updating the whole page every time you invoke some function, it makes the browser act more like a desktop application than a web page. The end result is more robust applications served over the web. Think google maps or facebook.

I have created a linkedin profile. At first I thought linkedin was going to be a facebook or myspace ripoff, but I see now that it’s really a great tool for professional networking. In fact, given that I’m studying business administration and that I have a passion for web applications, I think that linkedin is pretty awesome.


www.linkedin.com/in/johnsonchristopherg

I recently developed a useful ANT task to automatically increment a version number on your Java project when using perforce as your source control application. This task is intended to be run as part of an automated build. It checks out version.properties and checks it back in after incrementing. Click “more..” to see the full article.

I am excited about Grand Theft Auto IV for the 360. It comes out in a couple of months.
Check out this GTA IV multimedia display!

Yes, I am now a tool of Rockstar’s marketing machine

My website has been down for the last 2+ days. The reason: Dreamhost upgraded to Rails 2.0 without any warning. Since some of my code was not 2.0 compliant – BAM! down goes my site. Click “more..” to see the full story.

In the Operations Management course I just finished, a group project accounted for a third of the grade. My group was given the topic “Toyota Production System / Lean Manufacturing”. I suggested to the group that we use a Wiki to collaborate on the project. Click “more..” to see the full article.