Peter Coffee

Enterprise and academic systems are equally challenged by thickening jungles of system complexity and massive flows of data. Research communities in both worlds are responding with innovative efforts aimed at every level of the IT stack—from the lowest level of logic and memory hardware to the most abstract models of application function and user interaction. […]

The hoped-for economies of outsourced or offshored development will quickly disappear if the code thats produced wont do the job. Successful outsourcing therefore requires upfront investment in adopting, implementing and mastering an infrastructure of design, specification, collaboration, testing and life-cycle support to bring quality code to market in a timely manner. The tools of decentralized […]

Like any other IT novelties, outsourcing and its cosmopolitan cousin, offshoring, have gotten much more than their Warholian 15 minutes of fame. In the quiet that follows the echoes of overstated cost-reduction projections and apocalyptic predictions of the death of U.S. programming skills, software development teams should seek a more accurate perspective. Yes, some developers […]

Sometimes a multifunction device is a brilliant synthesis; sometimes its just a stupid hardware trick. The technical path of least resistance leads more often to the latter destination. Integrating the functions of a PDA with those of a personal communicator is a good example of being technically clever but functionally silly. Yes, it lets me […]

I see no good reason for continued contention between the Java and .Net platforms. Thats why Im pleased by the packaging of next weeks OJ.X conference in Detroit, a Compuware event that speaks to the entire managed-code development community — with Java and .Net tracks to address platform-specific topics and nuances, but with an overall […]

The ideal network is invisible: bits go in at one access point and come out at another, in zero time with zero error and with zero administrative workload. All those ideals are challenged, though, by the exploding workloads, surging performance requirements and unpredictable usage models arising from acts of man and nature alike. Anyone whos […]

I cant resist a good paradox. Hardened software and softened hardware are high on my list of interesting contradictions. This week will see two examples of the former and one of the latter coming from the sibilant trio of Softricity, Solidcore Systems and Silicon Graphics. I cited Softricitys application-virtualization technology in an eWEEK story on […]

Twenty-one years ago, the first formal software recommendation that I ever wrote was an in-house memo recommending our companys adoption of a 2-year-old product (barely out of diapers) called AutoCAD. That PC-based technical drawing tool had a solid foundation of floating-point data representation for drawings over a wide range of real-world size, combined with ease […]

Computers defy our everyday experience of knowing what a device cant do. Your TV set cant suddenly start sending information on your video rental habits to the PTA newsletter. It simply doesnt have that capability. Your car cant suddenly take control and drive you to a restaurant specified by the automakers business partner when you […]

With Microsofts Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles filling much of my agenda for the rest of this week, this seems like a good time to look at the progress of developers continuing quest for abstraction: the not-so-secret ingredient, so far, of Windows success. Instead of every commercial application developer needing to master the low-level […]

As I hiked into our final campsite, above Gem Lake in Californias Ansel Adams Wilderness, the three Boy Scouts whod gotten there ahead of me pointed out an appalling mess. Scattered over an area that we later estimated at 2,000 square feet were chips and splinters of broken glass—some of it in pieces large enough […]

People often treat IT in the same way that they treat prescription medications. When they walk into the IT architects office, they dont want to be told to make lifestyle changes like cutting fat from their organization charts and workflows. They want a technology pill that will make them better. Like patients who watch too […]