Verity is the pseudonym of a programmer based in the UK. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Verity Stob: Hi! My name is Verity Stob, and I was the lead programmer on this application. Welcome to the Program Commentary track. This voice is Roy Gush...
Roy Gush: Hi!
VS: ...who helped out with organising the resource strings or something, didn't you Roy?
RG: Hahaha, Verity, you're such a kidder! And by the way, Average User, Verity is the one to blame if you come back after lunch to find your machine marooned in a large pool of leaked thread handles!
VS: Hahaha, as if!
Both: Hahaha.
VS: No, but seriously, Roy was our senior Java programmer and HTTP design guy, and he's the one you have to thank for all the really cool and clever bits in the app.
RG: (Giggles modestly.) Aw stobbit, Verity, you are making me blush! (Serious voice.) Enough of us, we should draw the folks' attention to the splash screen we have here...
VS: Isn't that something? It's really taken splash screens to the next generation.
RG: It is great art work, Verity. The bitmap was designed by that Photoshop whiz and star of the marketing department, Ed McAdvocate. Great guy.
VS: Yes, a lovely, lovely man. A very real privilege to work with him.
RG: You see that cheeky little © copyright character? That was Ed's own idea.
VS: I have very many good memories of making this application, Roy, but this has to be one of the best ones, you and I coming into the weekly progress meeting and this splash screen being projected onto the wall. I don't mind saying it was so beautiful that I cried.
RG: I think we all cried, Verity. There wasn't a spare Kleenex to be had from the programmers' kitchen right the way to the server room.
VS: In a very real sense, that's what this app is all about. I don't want to say too much and spoil things, but we'll be hearing more about Ed Hopkins and his artwork when we come to look at the About box, later on. Meanwhile we have now got to the main menu system...
RG: ...this is one of my favourite parts of the whole app...
VS: ...go to drop down the File menu, and...
RG: ...six, seven, eight...
VS: ...bet you think it's connecting to the database in the background, but it isn't...
RG: ...fourteen, fifteen...
VS: ...and there it goes, the whole menu finally displayed in all its glory. Now I know what you are all thinking, and actually it's not written using Java or its Swing library. I wrote in that delay as une homage...
RG: Not everybody can get away with saying "homage" in French, but you certainly can, Verity!
VS: Thanks, Roy.
RG: And it's "un homage" by the way...
VS: I designed the menu as a tribute to that wonderful Java library, and the unique style it has brought to modern user interfaces.
RG: Wonderful. And for those who don't want to use it, there is, of course, a toolbar, with many magnificent icon buttons...
VS: Lovely, lovely icons...
RG: Indeed, but what I really want to point out is that it really is dockable. It's the second generation in VDOs—Vigorous Dockable Objects!
VS: It wriggles under the cursor like a hard-to-catch cat being taken to the vet.
RG: It'll mate with anything it brushes against...
VS: Steady on, Roy! Moving swiftly onwards, click on the connect menu item or toolbar button to bring up the password dialog...
RG: It's all right, we won't peek!
VS: ...and we have a little hourglass cursor here, while the login script runs. While we are waiting for that, perhaps we could talk about some of the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that I know will interest you, the Average User. For example, Roy built a container structure that started out as a binary tree and then turned into a bit of a triffid...
RG: Hahaha! The good people don't want to hear about my triffidian adventures, Verity! On the other hand one thing that we are all very, very excited about is that we have abandoned the conventional, oh-sooooh-twentieth century sort order completely, and instead use the Windows XP function StrCmpLogicalW()...
VS: ...we have really high in the blackberry- and-apple-pie sky hopes for this...
RG: It doesn't sort in the order that you expect; it sorts in the order that you ought to expect!
VS: Can you guess how it sorts say, a well-known sequence of DOS releases: "Version 4," "Version 401," "Version 5," "Version 6," and "Version 62"? (Serious voice.) Can you? In a very real sense that's what this app is all about!
RG: But enough of the mind-mangling sorting fun! Back at the hot action I see the script has made the connection!
VS: Mmm. Marvellous!
RG: By the way, Verity, I hear that to get that script working, you abandoned your lofty design principles and got down-and-dirty with some primitive scalars. Is this true?
VS: Hahaha. What can I say Roy? I only do it when the script really justifies it.
RG: Hahaha.
Both: Hahaha.
VS: You spontaneously push them across the goalmouth and I'll nod 'em in. Now we are into the database, it would be a great moment to mention our house SQL guru, DBA, and very, very special guy Justin Attribute...
RG: Wonderful...
VS: He's really taken n-tier design to the next level. I remember the first time he showed us his schema for this project. I literally wept buckets...
(Etc., etc., for hours, until the user rouses that slow, sleepy program that lives behind the speaker icon and tries its Mute checkbox.)
DDJ
