.NET Core

Last month, in addition to learning about Microsoft Azure, I also installed and used .NET Core on my MacBook Pro. This is not the first time I used .NET on Mac OS/X. I already used open source Mono and Xamarin Studio Community when they are available few years ago.

A note when install .NET Core SDK, you must restart your Mac after installed. Otherwise, you can not see or issue "dotnet" command.

Started at the basic, simple and move on...

Visual Studio Community

My wish become true. Few years ago, I suggested Microsoft should give a developer a free IDE development tools. Apple gives developer XCode and many developers using Eclipse for Java and Android development. Now, Microsoft joins the trend: involving more on Open Source development and give developers a great tool Visual Studio Community 2013, a full professional edition of Visual Studio 2013.

I love it.

As Apple gave Mac Users a free upgrade on OS X Mavericks (v10.9) and OS X Yosemite (v10.10), I guess Microsoft will do the same with Windows 10. Let see...

How to Install Windows 10 Technical Preview on Oracle VirtualBox Virtual Machine

I'm enjoy learning a new thing everyday. To learn more about Windows 10, I'm using Oracle VirtualBox Virtual Machine to install. Since VirtualBox 4.3.16 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (VirtualBox Guest Addition) not work with Windows 10 yet, I cannot see a full screen and using a shared folder. Hope the next version of VirtualBox will work well with Windows 10

Install Eclipse on Mac OS/X

After I upgraded my MacBook Pro from OS/X 10.7 "Lion" to OS/X 10.9 "Mavericks", many my applications did not work correctly so I uninstalled them. Install Eclipse IDE on Mac OS/X is simple, just extract the zip file and you are all set.

How do I put Eclipse icon on launchpad?
Move whole Eclipse folder to your Applications folder

Microsoft SQL vs MySQL

I'm working with both databases and love them. Here are my notes their SQL syntax difference.

Select first 10 records from table:
In Microsoft SQL:

SELECT TOP 10 SchoolID, SchoolName
FROM schools
ORDER BY SchoolID;

In MySQL:
SELECT SchoolID, SchoolName

ORDER BY SchoolID

LIMIT 10

Create new table and insert data from existing tables
Microsoft SQL:
SELECT * INTO Schools_Bak20130916 FROM Schools;

MySQL:
CREATE TABLE Schools_Bak20130916 SELECT * FROM Schools;

Using GitHub for Windows with Bitbucket

GitHub is a popular Git version control hosting but it's not provide free unlimited private repositories like Bitbucket. I end up using both. To push files to Bitbucket.org using GitHub for Windows:

1. Open Git Shell
2. Change to other directory if need (cd "..\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\DisplayRSSFeeds")
3. Add .gitignore
4. Add readme.txt (optional)
5. Initialize empty git repository: git init
6. Add the existing files to the repository: git add .
7. Commit the files: git commit -m "First commit" or git commit -a
8. Log into Bitbucket.
9. Create a new repository.
10. Add a new remote: git remote add origin-bb https://yourusername@bitbucket.org/yourusername/yourgit.git
    (Note: See picture below. You cannot push or remove the remote origin, so just make a new one called origin-bb as I did).
11. Push up the repo for the first time: git push -u origin-bb --all  

Other git commands
# view current remote
git remote -v

# remove remote
git remote rm origin-bb

# Use these sequence git commands to update Git repository in both local and remote later.
git add .
git commit -a
git push -u

Further reading:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/BITBUCKET/Import+code+from+an+existing+project
http://git-scm.com/book/ch2-5.html

Compare Files and Folders

In Linux or Mac OS/X, using diff command at the terminal.

To compare two folders:
diff -rq folder1 folder2

To compare two files:
diff file1 file2
diff 'first file' 'second file'

For more options:
diff --help

For Microsoft Windows computer, use WinMerge, an open source software, to compare and merge files and folders.

Available for Hire

A developer with 25 years experience in software development, mostly with small start up companies, available for hire. I love to have an opportunity to work full-time on:

1. Mobile application development using Android. 
2. Web application development using Open Sources technology: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS ... 
3. Web application development using Microsoft technology: Classic ASP 3.0, ASP.NET, C#, IIS 7, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2008R2

Should Developer Tools Free?

Last week, Microsoft announced the next free version of Visual Studio 2012 (or Visual Studio 11) will not free for develop desktop applications. "To create desktop apps in Visual Studio 2012, you need to use Professional 2012 or higher." Other Express versions used to develop Metro, web or mobile applications still free. It's not a good decision. After a strong objection from developers, Microsoft reversed its early plan.

Actually, I do not care whether Microsoft provides free tools for developer or not. If I need a tool, my company will pay for that. The last time, I developed Windows desktop applications twelve years ago. After that, I spent most my time for web applications. Now, I'm learning to develop mobile application in my spare time. 

I'm enjoy to use free and open source development tools such as Eclipse IDE, MonoDevelop, gedit, Notepad++, WinMerge, Git, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Sqlite, Python, Ruby, JavaScript... for both web and mobile developments in Ubuntu Linux and Microsoft Windows environments. If I need to develop in Mac platform, I can get Xcode 4 for free from Mac App Store. 

Today, it's not make sense to charge developer or anyone interest in programming for development tools. 

64-bit Operating System

I'm not pay much attention to 64-bit operating system until few months ago. At that time, I needed to evaluate  Windows Server 2008 R2 Operating System and tested our applications in that 64-bit operating system.

After I downloaded a trial copy from Microsoft site, I could not install it as a VirtualBox virtual machine on my 32-bit Ubuntu 10.10 desktop. So, backed up my stuff before installed 64-bit Ubuntu 11.04 beta on my laptop to host 64-bit guest operating system. It still not work. I did some research on the internet, someone said need to enable virtualization in BIOS. My BIOS did not have it. According to the specification from Intel web site, my CPU did not have Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT). Too bad. I could not install 64-bit guest operating system on my current 64-bit PC.

Let not quit yet. Try VMWare Player. Same problem. I could not install Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit  as a guest virtual machine.

This experience taught me a lesson: Your next PC should have virtualization technology. As I mentioned in my blog last month, my next PC will be a Mac. 15-inch MacBook Pro using quad-core Intel Core i7 processor. This CPU supports Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) along with many advanced technologies.

While waiting to acquire a new PC, I loaded Windows Server 2008 Standard (32-bit) on my 64-bit PC running 64-bit Linux Operating System to evaluation and test our applications. Below is the picture of my desktop:

Two virtual machines: Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Standard run on Ubuntu 11.04 desktop.

My Next PC

My next Personal Computer (PC) will be a Mac. The first PC I used was an Apple computer, Apple II, when I was in college. After a quarter of a century using Microsoft Operating Systems (DOS, Windows), I'm switching to Linux. I'm so happy with Ubuntu and Open Source applications. I pick Mac not because it's better than Microsoft Windows PC or Linux PC. Mac is so expensive! The lowest MacBook is $999 while the you can get the Microsoft Windows PC for about $400. With a MacBook Pro, I can program or test number of difference projects: iPhone mobile applications, Android mobile applications, PHP web-based applications, Python programs, mySQL,... Using VirtualBox on MacBook Pro, I can run Windows and Linux applications on guest machines. I must buy a Mac machine because Mac/OS license is not allow to run on virtual machine. It must run on Apple hardware.