HiberSense Inc. appointed Chris Lawson as channel sales manager for the U.S. market.

Posted by Gordon Fyodor Lyon on Oct 05

Posted by Gordon Fyodor Lyon on May 05

Scandinavian green energy startup Aira plans to offer a 10-year service guarantee and a monthly fee that includes installation, maintenance.

Industry experts are telling contractors to stay informed and get involved with the new regulations that are likely to impact everyone this coming year

There are numerous factors for this trend, including energy efficiency, government incentives, and technology improvement. But HVAC contractors are still the boots on the ground in this electrification mission.

All-electric options have come a long way since their inception, and there’s never been a better time to get on board.

This new private-public partnership wants to quadruple heat pump installation in California over the next 6 years.

The equipment in this month’s troubleshooting problem is an electric furnace that has been in service for at least ten years and has no service history.

HVAC industry representatives are pushing back on a bid by more than two dozen public interest groups for an eventual ban on new fossil-fuel-burning heating appliances.

If contractors in colder climates focus on educating their customers on what new higher-efficiency furnaces bring to the table, often times the furnaces will sell themselves.

The decision is a win for the California Restaurant Association, which challenged the ban that took effect in 2020. The city has not decided whether to appeal.

If contractors don’t have a plan in place to handle red tag furnace second opinions, they can expect some mistakes.

Posted by CISA on Mar 21

Posted by CISA on Mar 21

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Posted by CISA on Mar 28

Posted by Dave Aitel via Dailydave on Aug 02

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Posted by Don A. Bailey via Dailydave on Aug 13

Posted by Dave Aitel via Dailydave on Aug 13

Posted by Dave Aitel via Dailydave on Sep 30

In this Episode, Eberhard and Markus provide an introduction to Model-Driven Software Development. Since the discussion turned out to be too long, we separated things into two episodes, thus Episode 6 will be the second part of this discussion. In this first part we disucsss core concepts of MDSD, the relationship to MDA, and hint at a couple of tools.

After discussing some of the more technical aspects of MDSD in the last episode, we take a look at other important topics in this one. This includes some tips on how to introduce MDSD into projects and how the development process has to be adapted for this to work, as well as a look at the return on investment for MDSD. The relationship of MDSD and Agile software development is also discussed. Finally, we take a look at offshoring in the context of MDSD.

In this Episode, we talk to Michael Stal, a Senior Principal Engineer at Siemens Corporate Technology, POSA 1 and 2 Co-Author and Editor of the german JavaSpetrum magazine. Since Michael's core focus is middlware, much of our discussion centered around that topic. Webservices and SOA, of course, have also been covered. Other topics include Java vs. .NET as well as Patterns.

In this episode Arno and Alex talk about the basics of software development processes. They discuss why and when software development processes are needed and also why some developers don't like them. They discuss the theories behind different processes and talk about defined vs empiric processes in general. This episode is the first in a row that will later on describe specific processes like eXtreme programming or the unified process.

This episode is an interview with Guy L. Steele Jr.. Guy is a Sun Fellow and heads the Programming Language Research Group within Sun, and a generally well known "programming language guy" (see here for details). We briefly talk about Lisp and the resurgence of dynamic languages before we delve into the main topic, the Fortress programming language he is working on. Fortress is a language intended to replace Fortran as a scientific computing language. We talk about how mathematical notations, syntax extensio and built-in support for parallelism are crucial properties of such a language. We then briefly talk about potentials for compiler optimization before taking a closer look at the type system (static typing, type inference), traits and contract specification as well as first-class support for hierarchical components. We conclude the discussion with a look at automatic partitioning and distribuion of concurrent algorithms and a brief look at the future roadmap for the Fortress language.

This episode is an interview with Werner Vogels, the CTO of amazon.com. We first talked about what scalability is, and which aspects there are to scalability. We then took a brief look at the technologies used at amazon, specifically, the middleware systems and the issue of vendor lock-in. Web services, and the role of SOA was the next topic. Then we covered what a service actually is add Werner explained the term "pizza teams". Testing and Deployment was the next topic followed by a look at architectural characteristics of scalable systems, the value of simplicity and the CAP theorem. We concluded the discussion with a brief look at the future of distributed systems

In this episode, we're talking to Obie Fernandez about agile DSL development in Ruby. We started our discussion by defining what a DSL is, the difference between internal and external DSLs as well as the importance of the flexibly syntax of the host language in order to make DSLs worthwhile. We then looked at a couple of real world examples for DSLs, specifically, at Business Natural Languages. We then progressed to the main part of the discussions, which centered around the features of Ruby that are important for building DSLs. These include the flexible handling of parentheses, symbols, blocks as well as literal arrays and hashes. We then discussed Ruby's meta programming feautures and how they are important for building DSLs: instantiation, method_missing callback, class macros, top level functions and sandboxing. Features like eval, class_eval, instance_eval and define_method are also important for DSLs in Ruby, as well as using alias_method for simple AOP.

This episode is a conversation with Bruce Powel Douglass on real time systems. We started by discussing what real time software is, and explored the difference between hard and soft real time. We then looked at different scheduling strategies, and the meaning of terms like urgency and importance in the context of scheduling. Next was a discussion of typical architectural styles for real time systems and how architectures are described in this context. This led us to a discussion about the importance of modeling, formalisms and languages as well as the role of automatic code generation from those models. We then looked at how to model QoS aspects and the role of SysML for modeling real time systems. We then had a brief look at which programming languages are used these days for real time systems and the role of static analysis to determine various properties of those programs in advance. The last part of the discussion focused on some best practices for building real time systems, the challenges in distributed real time systems and how real time systems can be tested effectively.

In this episode Eberhard Wolff speaks with Jürgen Höller, the co-found of the Spring framework. Spring is a tremendously successful Java framework so they discuss the design of large frameworks and the issues that arise in the evolution. Jürgen explains the management of dependencies in the framework, how to structure such a framework, how to offer compatibility for the existing user base while evolving the framework and the role of metrics during development.

In this episode we talk with Jeff DeLuca about Feature Driven Development (FDD). As one member of the agile methods family FDD is not so famous as Scrum or Extreme Programming but is becoming more and more popular, especially for situations where you have fixed price contracts. As the inventor of FDD Jeff gives short introduction to the method itself, talks about the basic ideas behind FDD and discusses with us how FDD relates to other members of the agile family.

In this Episode we're talking with Dick Gabriel on Lisp. We started by looking at artificial intelligence as the historic context of Lisp, the goals AI tried to reach, and how Lisp was supposed to help reach those. We then discussed the language itself, starting with the Data As Program / Program As Data concept that is a foundation for Lisp. Then we discussed adding a meta-circular interpreter, programming as language development, and the blurred boundary between language and frameworks (because everything uses the same syntax). We then talked about Lisp's type system and the importance of macros to extend the language. The next section concerned CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System and its important concepts: generic functions, multimethods, mixins, and method combination. We also briefly looked at the meta-object protocol but agreed this is a topic for a separate episode. After a discussion about the various dialects of Lisp and Scheme, we concluded the Lisp discussion by explaining why Lisp did not really catch on ("AI Winter") and Lisp's role in today's industry. We ended the episode with a couple of details about Dick's other life as a poet and his Poem a Day effort. Make sure you listen till the end, where we have added a song about Lisp (courtesy of Prometheus Music.)

In this Episode, Arno talks with Oliver Jucknath about the art of writing computer games. A lot of myth is attached to this area of computing, and while a game technically is just another program, it is written in a different context than typical business applications. This is true at the code level, where aggressive optimization is a focus throughout development. It also applies at the team level, where collaboration between specialists is pronounced. And the business context is different as well, which in turn influences the development effort as a whole.

In this episode we're talking to Dirk Riehle about open source business models. We started looking at the way OS projects work and defined different kinds of open source projects. In the main part of the discussion we looked at various ways of how to make money with open source: consulting, support contracts, commercial variant of an open source project, etc. We then looked at the chances and risks of each of these approaches. The next part focused on different open source licenses and how they are suitable for open source business. We concluded the episode by discussing a couple of specific questions and loose ends. After the show, Dirk informed me about the following three corrections: Black Duck Software's main product is called protexIP not IP Central, there are presently 70 licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative, and EnterpriseDB has so far acquired $37M in venture capital

In this episode we're talking to Andreas Zeller. about debugging. We started the discussion with an explanation of what debugging and how it works in principle. We then briefly discussed the relationship between debugging and testing. Next was the importance of the scientific method for debugging. We then looked as debugging as a search problem, leading to a discussion about delta debugging, the main topic of this discussion. We concluded the discussion by looking at the practical usability of delta debugging and the relationship to other means of automatically finding problems in software.

In this espisode we take a closer look at relational database systems and the concepts behind them. We start by discussing the relational paradigm, its concepts and ramifications, and go on to architectural aspects.

We start our discussion with a brief look at what Haskell is and how a pure functional language is different from non-pure languages. We then look at the basic building blocks and the philosophy of the language, discussing concepts such as the lambda calculus, closures, currying, immutability, lazy evaluation, memoization, and the role of data types in functional languages. A significant part of the discussion is then spent on the management of side effects in a pure language - in other words, the importance of monads. We conclude the episode with a look at Haskell's importance and community today.

In this episode we're talking to Bran Selic of Malina Software about modelling in general and UML2 in particular. Bran covers the basics of modelling, the history of UML, and what's new in UML2.

In this episode we're talking to Eelco Visser about parsing text. We start at the basics - what is parsing? - covering classic tools such as Yacc and classic parsing approaches such as LALR before examining how more recent approaches such as scannerless parsing can make parsing easier and enable previously impractical use cases.

In this episode, Michael Plöd is interviewed about Object-Relational Mapping technology. He talks about the common concepts, compares the range of different tools that go by this name, and goes into the design and architectural consequences of using an OR mapper.

This episode is a discussion about code and metrics visualization with Michele Lanza. Michele invented the Code Cities idea about which he talks in this episode.

This episode is a discussion with Michael Nygard about his book "Release It" which covers aspects of software architecture you often don't think of initially when starting to build a system. Some of the points we discussed were capacity planning, recovery as well as making the system suitable for operation in a data center.

In this episode, Dirk talks with David Frankel, resident Metamodeller and MDA expert at SAP Labs LLC, SAP's subsidiary in the Silicon Valley. Dave's extensive experience provides a big picture, from the early days of CORBA all the way to current issues that are bugging most enterprise architects' work with MDA.

In this episode, Arno talks to Jim Melton about the SQL programming language. In addition to covering the concepts and ideas behind SQL, Jim shares stories and insights based on his many years' experience as SQL specification lead.

In this episode, Allan shares his insights about how learning is a necessary part of software development. He covers the personal as well as the team and the organizational level and offers practical advice.

Michael and Markus discuss what makes a good R&D manager and how to potentially become an R&D manager. You will learn what some of the essential skills are, what the challenges are, and what the 'mission/vision/strategy thing' is actually good for.

Michael discusses with his guest Chuck Connell the differences between software engineering and computer science. What makes software engineering so unpredictable, with so few formal results? And how can we advance the field of software engineering without these results?

In this episode Johannes Link interviews Lasse Koskela - the author of "Test-Driven" - about test-driven development (TDD). We cover the basics, the rationale behind it and the challenges you face when doing it in more difficult environments.

In this episode Michael talks with Bas Vodde about how to apply agile principles to large and distributed development organizations.