Month: February 2004

Due to a provider change my phone numbers have also changed.
Please update your contacts with the new numbers:

Phone: +49.(0)2151.3864844
Fax: +49.(0)2151.159404
Mobile: +49.(0)176.23207379

For a limited time you can reach me with the old numbers as well.
Thank you.

Yesterday I got my new XDA II PocketPC. It runs Windows Pocket PC 2003 Phone edition.
I’m impressed of the power and functionality of this device. I think there is no device on the market which comes close to it.
And the best is that It hosts the .NET Compact Framework. Together with a GPRS flatrate it is very suitable as device for webservice clients.

The JSE1.5 Beta 1 has been released. The list of features is very promising.
The release will include a lot of things I appreciate very much in C#.

For instance:

Metadata
Generics
Boxing/Unboxing
Enums
Foreach equivalent
Formatted output
etc.

This release is a good example how competition drives innovation.

On his weblog Martin Fowler expressed an interesting opinion about Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and the use of UML.
He speaks out what I have experienced in a lot of projects. The model driven approach is heavyweight and often impractical.
One reason might be the lack of reliable and fast,handy tools especially when it comes to code generation, an other is the inaccuracy of UML in terms of programming languages.
Often this leads to a “overstereotyped” models which are almost useless outside the problem domain and for new team members as well. I’m curious about MDA will change that.

UML is great. I recommend to use it but mostly to communicate design ideas to others.
The rest of the documentation can be easily generated from the sourcefiles, e.g. with javadoc or C# xmldoc.
What is your experience?