An introduction to “Blockchain, blueprint for a new economy” and author Melanie Swan

An introduction to “Blockchain, blueprint for a new economy” and author Melanie Swan

1. Overview Editorial
1. Although Melanie’s book was criticized by the technical side she appears to be a wide ranging technological futurist philosopher attempting to break in and provide voice to many edge technologies beyond just cybercurrency.
2. The world has room and need for the kind of voice that Melanie provides which is a contribution into the conversation of technology from the sociological aspect of the technology tapestry.
2. Author
1. Melanie Swan, Founder of the Institute for Blockchain Studies
1. http://www.melanieswan.com/bio.html
2. https://www.edge.org/memberbio/melanie_swan
3. https://www.linkedin.com/in/meswan/
3. Resources
1. https://www.slideshare.net/lablogga
2. https://twitter.com/LaBlogga
3. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/authors/melanie-swan/
4. Melanie Swan (Blockchain Studies): “You can compare the blockchain with electricity”
5. Biocurious health
6. https://kiteba.com/2015/03/14/melanie-swan-on-nanomedicine-and-cognitive-enhancement/
4. Reviews
1. GoodReads
1. There's some good overview and some good ideas in this book, but much of it is just a catalog of existing projects, and much of the rest is speculation (some of it outlandish). The book is brought back to Earth in the end with a sober look at the problems that Bitcoin faces ... but it's ultimately just another list.
2. Amazon
1. This is not a technical book on Blockchain or Bitcoin, but it is an excellent summary of the current technology supporting cryptocurrencies and an inspiring collection of ideas for how Blockchain could support a multiplicity of applications, in both the short term and the long run.
2. Copiously sourced with an extensive index. Puny appendices on basic crypto, but again that's not the point of this book; for that see Satoshi white papers and relevant RFCs.
5. Book
1. O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (February 8, 2015)
2. Amazon
1. https://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Blueprint-Economy-Melanie-Swan/dp/1491920491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507470950&sr=8-1&keywords=blockchain+blueprint+for+a+new+economy
3. GoodReads
1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24714901-blockchain
4. WorldCat
1. http://www.worldcat.org/title/blockchain-blueprint-for-a-new-economy/oclc/898924255
5. Google Books
1. https://books.google.com/books?id=RHJmBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false

T-Commerce

T-Commerce

1. 
1. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Print-Poster-Vintage-Racing-Cars-Race-Car-Model-3-17x22-inch-/231284544572
1. Case study
1. http://www.amzur.com/case-studies/creating-next-generation-t-commerce-solutions-at-icuetv/

Digital Game Development

Digital Game Development

1. Seems like the space wars of software development.
1. 
1. https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-nerd-pointing-up-to-blank-copy-space-papercut-image26804893
2. Recruiters
1. http://www.tekshapers.com/game-development/
2. 
   

Finding Scott Guthrie

Where is Scott Guthrie now?

Scott Guthrie was a hugely successful product development manager who became a voice of Microsoft Web development. He seemed to reach widely and bring in everyone who was looking for leadership in leaning into the Microsoft web development products. Since he was promoted where is his social activity?

His blogs were excellent and become so popular over the years outlining nuts and bolts level of the Microsoft direction for web development. The post would be lengthy covering the forward step of the product in detail to quicken implementation. He would outline the approach at a high level however brought in the cadence of all the little challenging details and then returned to facilitate all manner of questions from the great variety of operational machine configurations.

Occasionally over the years I would retune into his blogs and they seemed to move somewhere new each time I looked for them. However this time I was unable to find a current blog.

Blogs at that time were still popular and worked well for his feature tours. However a survey for his current social effect looks like the social style for an executive vice president is all about twitter.

From a Bing search:

Missing for over a year

https://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu

Same blog destination

http://scottgu.com/

His Facebook account has one note from earlier this year.

https://www.facebook.com/Scott-Gu-60792624775/

He is very active retweeting and up to date on Twitter

https://twitter.com/scottgu

Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/guthriescott/

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Guthrie

Microsoft executive page

https://news.microsoft.com/exec/scott-guthrie

The current Microsoft executive team

https://news.microsoft.com/leadership/

A comment to Scott Hanselman's blog

Subtitle: A casual and long chat towards the question of github for Microsoft

Today my first comment was made on the Scott Hanselman blog. As you know Scott is a popular social and technical voice of Microsoft and technology life.

Scott is in the "Paul Westerberg" school of writing meaning he writes like he talks which was the advice from Paul to songwriters. This brings a very organic and realism to his posts.

The influencers are influenced by their downstream feedback which is part of the great cycle of feedback in the community. It certainly would be interesting to get Scott's take as he is aware of the artistic and community light that lives in technology.

So to comment it was best to create a gravatar account which unfortunately didn't have a facebook login however required a wordpress account. I didn't mind creating a new blog on wordpress since I have been curious as to how the feature set compared with blogger where my occasional blogs are.

Here is my comment today:
The soft skills side of this post - "up on github" brings up codeplex and its demise. Considering many aspects - will .net based projects become a department within github in the way it was with its own site or will all projects just be part of a big graph like stones on a great beach with attributes? The list of languages available on github is impressive.

Reviewing your post on Sept 10th 2009 when the codeplex foundation was created so much of an open source perspective has increasingly found resonance with Microsoft. However for whatever that means - how will advanced search in itself on github be able to bring out the sense of a community continuity - the creativity and synergy of an awareness of the Microsoft language category that you are suggesting in this post - other than by way of the threads you have realized over time.

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExploringCQRSWithinTheBrighterNETOpenSourceProject.aspx

Parent technology of meta-languages

Out of interest, here is what I was trying to say/find

SGML is the root parent of html

XML is a cousin to html and nephew of SGML

http://webdesign.about.com/od/sgml/a/how-are-sgml-html-and-xml-related.htm

This one separate a database language into two parts: DDL like create, alter, etc.

And DML as in all the commands: select, update, etc

http://www.tomjewett.com/dbdesign/dbdesign.php?page=ddldml.php

What is the Test Pyramid?

What is the Test Pyramid?

1. One of the more well-known models in the test automation world is the Test Pyramid. Originally coined by Mike Cohn in 2009, the Test Pyramid is designed to show what a well-structured test suite looks like, based on the application layers being tested. It has gone through many variations over the years, but generally, it looks something like this:
1. 
2. https://dzone.com/articles/a-test-pyramid-heresy

The next wave of software development

The next wave of software development

1. What is the current wave?
2. What is a wave? 
1. A wave is a paradigm shift, a different approach of development than the preceeding way.
3. News of the next wave
1. Learn AI and data science - shadows of the future
2. http://www.infoworld.com/article/3160088/application-development/want-to-be-a-software-developer-time-to-learn-ai-and-data-science.html

PolyFill

PolyFill

1. Definition from the creator?
1. Alex Sexton also classifies polyfilling as a form of Regressive Enhancement. I think that sums it up nicely.
2. A shim that mimics a future API providing fallback functionality to older browsers.
3. A polyfill, or polyfiller, is a piece of code (or plugin) that provides the technology that you, the developer, expect the browser to provide natively. Flattening the API landscape if you will.
1. https://remysharp.com/2010/10/08/what-is-a-polyfill
2. Phonegap
1. “The ultimate purpose of PhoneGap is to cease to exist.”
2. PhoneGap is the most comprehensive, and most influential polyfill in the history of web development. PhoneGap had the audacity to envision the web as a first-class citizen on mobile, and did so in an era when we were hacking around the bug-laden iOS 4 and Android 2.2 browsers. But like all polyfills, PhoneGap was built with its ultimate obsolescence in mind — in fact, it’s one of the frameworks’s founding goals.
1. http://developer.telerik.com/featured/diminishing-use-case-hybrid-apps/

.Net Core Business Reasons

.Net Core Business Reasons

1. 2017-01 Scott Hanselman
1. If you want to create an ASP.NET Core application that is cross platform;
2. If want to take advantage of building container applications;
3. If you want to break free of global installation with side-by-side versions of .NET Core;
4. If you want superior performance.
1. http://developer.telerik.com/topics/net/the-net-core-2-wave/

2. Choosing between .NET Core and .NET Framework for server apps

1. You have cross-platform needs.
2. You are targeting microservices.
3. You are using Docker containers.
4. You need high performance and scalable systems.
5. You need side by side of .NET versions by application.
1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/articles/standard/choosing-core-framework-server
3. 
   

Philosophy of the computer program

Philosophy of the computer program

1. is the term "computer" outdated?
2. Is the term "electronic" too often aimed at the digital action of a device powered by electricity?
3. Is electronic different than electrical? An electrical device vs. an electronic device.
4. Statements that boggle
1. A computer program is a specification of behavior.
1. Context: A computer program is a specification of behavior. The purpose of a program is to make a machine behave in a certain way. The text of the program consists of the instructions that the machine follows. The sum of those instructions is the behavior of the program.
2. http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/01/13/TypesAndTests.html
3. Questions on this:
1. What is a "specification"?
1. 
   
2. Is a computer program a specification in whole or in part?
3. 
   

Helper Apps - in what form to get started

When the opportunity to create a helper app arises no matter how small the action of it will be the question is in what form should this helper app be made in?

Form meaning through what framework.

In considering a protocol of helper apps the first step could always be:

1. Console app - work out general methods

Beyond that it might be beneficial to bring the general methods into UI. Either for self development or for the benefit of others. Although it can be beneficial to have a console version for low fi sharing.

1. WPF - is there a benefit to a UI?
2. WCF - is there an advantage to the practice of the web?

And then question arises for the .net developer if having the app in another language would be beneficial for continual learning?

So is it better to have a working console app and then copy it into another language so to have those comparisons available? Or is it better to just start in another language?