Úterý duben 08, 2008

Sun Techdays St. Petersburg

Event Last week me and my colleague Julo attended Sun Techdays in St. Petersburg. We spent three days in a booth to present PostgreSQL and JavaDB. MySQL guys had a booth next to us and we created opposite to big Oracle booth. It was big action and only acceptable place was Ice Hockey Hall. I spent over 10 hours each day to answer questions about PostgreSQL. Some people returned again next day with follow-up questions. And at the end of day I was really looking forward to fall in a bed. Small complication was a language barrier because not all attendees spoke English or their English was not so good, but together with my poor Russian knowledge we were able to talk. City I have never been in St. Petersburg. It was my first visit. I heart lot of recommendation about heritages and city downtown at all. However begin of April is not good time for visiting. There was rest of snow/ice in some places and dust from sand and salt were everywhere (rest of road protection during of winter). What I really didn't expect it was heavy traffic. Six lanes roads are common in US but they are not common in European city center. It was difficult to crossover. It seemed like new form of Russian roulette. We have only one afternoon to walk through the center and it is really not enough. I personally plan to return back in the future and spend at least one week to explore a city and museums. Sun office St. Petersburg trip was also good occasion to visit Sun office and meet with our colleagues from Sun Studio development team. I specially interested in compiler optimization and how to compile PostgreSQL for best performance. C compiler has a lot of optimization switches but not all are safe to use them in all situation. I got a lot of tips and I plan to test them soon. Thanks to Boris and Michael.

Posted by hlipa ( IV 08 2008, 05:31:11 odp. CEST ) Permalink

Pátek leden 18, 2008

Arise a Elephine

Do you know it? Did you hear or read about it? Probably yes. I had severals calls, I got many emails and uncountable instant messaging messages. Do you still not know what I talk about? Yes, I talk about MySQL acquisition. I had to read Jonathan emails three time to really catch a point. It was something unbelievable and it happened in January not on first April. It had to be true. OK. It was shock for me, because I'm member of PostgreSQL team and I spent last two years to conviction people inside and outside Sun that PostgreSQL is better database then MySQL. What will I do now? What will happen with PostgreSQL support they were my first questions in my head.

I have been reading a lot of articles, blogs and comments about this deal for two last days. And some comments were really funny. I read that we are planing probably to put all three databases together (PostgreSQL, JavaDB and MySQL). Whauu ... It is fantastic idea. How will we call it? Elephine seems to be good name. And how this animal looks like? You can see it on the following picture (thank to Petr Zahradnik).

OK. Does anybody still think that it is good idea? It is nonsense. All these three databases have different architectures and cover different markets with some overlaps. Support all of them makes more sense then putting them together or stop support one of them.

Neděle červenec 16, 2006

Czech Republic championship in Programming for Young People

How you can read on Tomas Heran or Roman Strobl blogs, the Czech Republic championship in Programming for Young People occurred on last June weekend (23rd - 25th June) in the Janske Lazne. Forty youth have been divided by age to the two categories and they spent four hours to solve their task. It was 20th volume and first when Sun was co-sponsor of this competition. There is a place to say thanks to Pavel Suk and Lukas Rovensky for their interest in it. The Sun presentation described Tomas and Roman on their blog and I will not repeat it. I want focus on another think. I want focus on the history, present and future of this competition.

How I wrote it was 20th volume. I started in this competition at 1988 like competitors. It was age of 8-bits computers like ZX Spectrum, Atari, Commodore ... All competitors wrote their program in the basic. Final version of program must be rewritten to the paper, because hardware and storage media were unreliable and jury spent lot of time to check all solutions. However, There were many youth and adults which interest in. I remember that one competitor toke iron and started to solder his modified Spectrum during competition.

The turbo pascal and quick basic on MS-DOS replaced basic on 8-bits computer since 1991/92. Only two of competitors used C. However, C is good language, but not for speed programing.

How time went I was too old to stay like competitor and I have started like member of Jury (since 1995). We have started to submit one complex task instead many small tasks. I remember one task was text editor with blocks feature. Four hours were enough for many competitors to solve this task and it was very difficult to choice winner. Pacman was task next year and it was difficult to avoid to play pacman and finish evaluation.

Next change came about 1998 when MS Win push out MS-DOS. RAD tools (Delphi/Visual Basic) started to play major role in programming and task was adjusted for new programming environment. But what happened. Number of competitors in all Czechia go down and their quality too. We started to search where is problem. What is root cause?

I think there are many causes. First is that RAD tools are good for quick user interface design, however, implement algorithm is difficult and people use only prepared component without knowledge of their internals. Programing requests bigger and bigger knowledge and is difficult to start. There is no easy way how to write program "Hello world!". The barrier is multiply by the Windows which covers everything under graphics interface.

The next cause is quality of programming lessons. Many good programmers taught children at the beginning of nineties. They taught very often in the centers of children free time. However, they have lost time for teaching and new teachers don't have experience. Pavel asked me, if I know about some place in Beroun where his child could start to learn programming. I said him "Beroun had good center for children with very good teachers." I tried to find some contact person, but I must say again "Beroun had ...". Nobody teach children to programming in Beroun now. It is common scenario in all Czechia. Only few centers teach children to programming and many children prefer game playing.

The Sun cooperate with many Universities and it shares our technology knowledge with students. It is very good. But Universities expect basic programming knowledge from their new students. It should be problem in the future. Many excellent musician start play when their was young children. It is similarly with programming skill. The question is where young children can start learn programming and who will be their teachers?

I afraid that if we can solve it quickly we will have problem find excellent programmers in the near future.