Bruce Armstrong

Read an interesting article about the .NET Developer Association user group in Redmond, Washington. You would think that the user group in Microsoft's backyard (the meetings are held at Microsoft's offices) wouldn't have any problems lining up guest speakers and drawing a crowd. Well, it looks like they do because they've had to cancel several recent meetings and have proposed taking a six-month break to try to determine how to revitalize the group.[1] It had me wondering why such a group would have difficulty holding meetings. Of course, the issue may be specific to that particular group. I don't know enough about the group to judge that. However, assuming that is not the case, the most likely causes would either be (a) a malaise setting in for .NET groups in particular or (b) a lack of interest in software developer tool user group meetings in general. It wouldn'... (more)

What Ever Happened to ‘Device Convergence’?

I'm sitting here at yet another user group meeting... perhaps you've seen me at one or at TechWave, or perhaps you have seen pictures of me at them on Facebook. I've got a laptop propped open where I'm usually working on some pet sample code project. Next to it is my iPad in its case/stand with an external keyboard where I'm taking notes on the event for my WordPress blog and perhaps sending out Twitter updates. Next to that is my Android smartphone so I can text message, go on Facebook, and take still photos of the event. And somewhere in the general vicinity is the Panasonic Lu... (more)

Creation and Consumption of Web Services with PowerBuilder

PowerBuilder 12.5 introduced a number of significant enhancements to web services support, both for creation and consumption. In particular, the following were introduced as new features in PowerBuilder.NET: WCF client proxy WCF service target REST client proxy We're going to look at what those new features provide and how to use them. We're also going to look at how we can package some of that functionality so that it can be used from PowerBuilder Classic applications as well. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) First though, some background. When support for a web service client... (more)

Perhaps You Can Teach an Old Dog a New Trick Or Two…

Struggling to get familiar with the new PowerBuilder.NET IDE and the technology it allows you to use (e.g., WPF, REST, WCF and the rest of the alphabet soup)? Then you should run, not walk, over to the free eTutorial series that Sybase just made available for PowerBuilder 12.5. The training was put together by Yakov Werde. Yakov, for those who may not have heard of him, is the managing partner of eLearnIT LLC. Prior to that he spent more than 10 years as a trainer for Sybase, teaching classes on PowerBuilder, Java and .NET. And before that he was a software developer like you an... (more)

How Quickly the Mighty Have Fallen

On November 9, Adobe announced in a blog post[1] that it had decided to cease efforts to develop browser plugins for mobile devices to play Flash, indicating that HTML5 was "the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms." In case that sounds like Adobe abandoned Flash entirely, it should be noted that Adobe indicated their intentions to continue to develop the AIR player for mobile devices, so that the role for Flash on mobile devices would be restricted to native apps, just not browser-based apps. A few days later in another blog po... (more)