Atomic Object provides software development services including contract programming, software development training, and software process improvement consulting. Major clients include X-Rite, Priority Health, Burke Porter Machinery, Siemens Dematic, Valley City Linen, and Notions Marketing.

Carl will talk about software development practices in a small company, what AO looks for in developers, how XP practices work for contract programming, what you should have learned in school, and whether any of us will have jobs in the future without moving to Bangalore, India. Questions are expected; opinions will be happily provided.

Audio from this event - 32k MP3 (15MB)

The talk will be somewhat technical in nature covering some background in computer architecture and the work currently being done at AMD. As some of you may know, we have had representatives come to speak in the past and their presentations are very interesting and well attended events.

We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday! And yes...the tradition of cheese cubes will continue on! :)

The Autoconf/automake/make trio is commonly used to build software on UNIX and Linux. Because of its various deficiencies, several variants of 'make' have been built, each with slightly incompatible features. Therefore, certain types of complex software require a specific variant of make.

The Autoconf/automake tools were written to enhance portability of software, by automatically generating the appropriate makefile(s) for a given system. Autoconf, automake, and configure use a mixture of Perl, Bourne Shell, and the 'm4' macro-preprocessor to build makefiles. The Bourne shell and 'm4' were chosen because they are available on every UNIX/Linux system. However, the Bourne shell is NOT well suited for building large (1000+ line) programs, since it lacks many of the features of a true high level language. Because of the complexity of these tools, building the proper configuration files can be difficult and time-consuming.

Although using an existing autoconf/automake configuration or makefile may not be difficult, programmers who are developing new software spend far too much time maintaining autoconf/automake configuration files and/or makefiles. The typical build system based on autoconf/automake and make is inflexible, and unreliable (How frequently do you type 'make clean', just to be safe?). Most programmers tolerate the many "quirks" of these tools simply because they haven't encountered a good alternative.

SCons provides a modern, powerful alternative tool for building software. SCons automatically scans source files for dependencies, and uses MD5 checksums (rather that timestamps) to determine whether an object needs rebuilding. It integrates autoconf-like functionality. SCons is cross-platform (including Microsoft Windows). Written in Python, it can easily be extended and enhanced. It is simple to use for small projects but also handles complex projects that build multiple libraries and use many include files.

Audio from this event - 32k MP3 (7MB)

Computer science students all learn to code, but rarely do they apply their skills outside of assigned homework and labs. Open-source software is an awesome way to apply your coding skills that will benefit both the community at large, and yourself as well. One popular open-source project that we use for our benefit is the MythTV project (http://www.mythtv.org) - a PVR software that allows you to record TV programs on your computer. Instead of buying a Tivo, try looking at open-source software for the same functionality.

This talk will look into the basics of open-source software and how you can get involved, the history behind the MythTV project, and a couple of demonstrations of MythTV in action.

Audio from this event - 32k MP3 (6MB)
PowerPoint Slides