Running VMware Workstation 7.x on Windows 8

Well I just upgraded my development machine to Windows 8.  I then tried launching a Virtual machine in VMware Workstation, and got a nasty error that VMware couldn't allocate enough memory.  Panic ensued!  It suggested I go increase the total memory allocated to all Virtual machines.  When I tried to do this I was greeted by another error telling me VMware couldn't get a lock on its config.ini file.

The solution to this problem however turns out to be simple.  Right click on the VMware icon and on the Compatibility Tab set VMware Workstation to run as Administrator.

SaaS Capital Launches New Fund

(Cincinnati, OH and New York, NY) April 30, 2012 – SaaS Capital, the pioneer provider of debt financing for SaaS businesses, today announced the launch of a new fund designed to provide growth capital to emerging software-as-a-service businesses. Building on the success of its first fund, SaaS Capital will provide senior debt loan facilities to SaaS companies with more than $3 million in revenue. The fund is being launched in partnership with DH Capital, a leading boutique investment banking firm with deep industry expertise in Internet infrastructure, telecommunications, and SaaS.

Read More...

Java is not dead, but be careful...

So this is the past due followup to my blog post "I guess Java is not dead, or is it?"  You may recall I included a link to a survey titled "My Dream Programming Job" and promised the results on the 2nd, so yes I'm a little late, but here we go.  First let me say I was quite surprised that the survey was not flooded by responses from indignant Java programmers, but only 28% of the respondents indicated they were currently programming in Java (which was question #1).

The second question dealt with the area of an application that the respondent would like to work on.  Interestingly a respondent could choose more than one answer, most chose on average two.  The results here were pretty much evenly split between back-end development (Data Access, Business Logic, Web Services, API), front end web client development, and front end mobile application development.  A small percentage wanted to work on Database schema and programmability, and even fewer wanted to work on desktop applications.

The third and final question dealt with language preference and again respondants could choose more than one answer, and here they chose on average just under three.  The first and most interesting takeaway was that Java programmers want to stay being Java programmers.  Outside of that it was statistically a draw between C#, Java and JavaScript, with Objective-C coming a close second, trailing the pack were Ruby, PHP and VB.NET.  Most developers chose JavaScript in conjunction with some other language, which did not surprise me.

So in summary Java programmers are happy being Java programmers, and honestly that's not surprising because when you look at the major job boards the demand for Java programmers outstrips all other languages combined by about 2:1.  On the flip side, if the responses to the survey are accurate only 1 in 3 is currently a Java programmer. This might make Java a really bad bet as language choice for a startup because your going to find it almost impossible to hire programmers and they likely will cost a lot more.  As my prior blog post titled "Platform choice for startups should not just be about technology", indicated you might struggle to scale as a company if you cannot recruit talent.

Tips on Starting a Software Company

This is the video of my Lightning Talk at the Business of Software 2011 Conference (see all 5). For a list of reasons why you should attend this excellent conference read my prior post. For those of you not familiar with the Lightning Talk concept it revolves around 15 slides that advance automatically every 30 seconds. Giving you 7:30 total. This is the third time I have subjected myself to this type of torture, having previously given 2 talks at Ignite Cincinnati.  Not making excuses but I have to confess for the 12 hours leading up to this I had been extremely ill, but as the saying goes, the show must go on. However I was sure that my presentation was going to result in a messy and viral #fail moment at any time.  I hope you enjoy it, and if anybody would like me to come speak for more than 7:30 at a pace I can control just let me know.