Building Better Software for Everyone

Posted on May 25, 2020 by way0utwest

When I first started to use the Internet, everything was text. We used Archie and Gopher, crawling through Usenet lists, with most everything in text format. When the WWW gained popularity with Netscape and visual browsing, this was just a new way of getting information for me. It made sense, and seemed easy.

These days, using the WWW is something many of us do without a second thought, browsing on mobile devices as well as large computer screens. Many of us have become used to transacting business and using software as a tool throughout much of our lives. However, that’s not easy for many people, including lots of those with some sort of disability. To them, much of the content available seems disjointed and disconnected.

Not too long ago the US Supreme Court let a ruling stand that notes the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to online content. Plenty of web developers and designers might decry the additional work they may have to undertake to comply, and certainly lots of companies would rather not spend any resources, or few, in this area. However, this is something that has started to matter more to me over time.

I’m getting older. At 50+, my eyes and ears don’t work that well. I find myself struggling at times to consume the information on a screen. More than once I’ve gotten annoyed with the text on the screen and tried to zoom in, only to have everything get larger, requiring me to scroll left and right to read something. What happened to the reflow of text on the WWW when we zoom in?

There are ways to change font sizes, and I find myself taking advantage of them more and more. However, there are many people with disabilities that are harder to overcome and they expect that websites and apps have accessibility features. I’ve seen no shortage of complaints that too many software designers are highly connected, physically capable 20 and 30 year olds, who design for themselves, not for a wider audience with varying needs.

I am trying to do better. I don’t want perfect to be the enemy of good, and I know that some of the content on SQLServerCentral isn’t as accessible as it could be. When I find things pointed out, I work to change them, and I also am trying to do better with images and media content to be more compliant. As I’ve grown older, I appreciate more and more that my work gets used by many people, and the way they interact with the computer isn’t the same as mine. Accommodating them just seems like the right thing to try to do.

Steve Jones

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Daily Coping 25 May 2020

Posted on May 25, 2020 by way0utwest

I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to share photos of 2 things you find meaningful or memorable.

I’ve got lots of photos, but I’ll share two work related ones.

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Before SQL Saturday Albuquerque, a few of us drove to Taos to ski for a day on Friday. We did this twice over the years, and it was an incredible memorable time with friends from Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and more.

The other photo that I think about a lot as a memory of work is this one. I had a lot of fun putting this together with people from Redgate, it makes me smile every time I see it.

dbateam8

What photos are memorable for you?

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A Byte of Redgate–Bonus Queso Recipe

Posted on May 25, 2020 by way0utwest

As part of the Community Circle effort at Redgate, we’ve released a cookbook: A Byte of Redgate. You can read about the story in this blog, and it was a fun project. Andy Warren had the idea and I suggested it for us since Redgate has a baking club, a cake club, a cooking club, and probably more.  We even have a real cookbook author, Dave Rook.

You can download the free book (pdf/epub), and it includes a guacamole recipe from me. However, I had a bonus recipe that I sometimes make with the guac. I don’t do this too often, as it’s not the healthiest dish, but my family loves when I do.

If you want to enjoy a Mexican-American themed Memorial Day, you might enjoy this with the guac, some chips, and a refreshing drink. That might be all you need for dinner today.

Ranch Queso

The ingredients needed are these

  • 12oz sharp cheddar

  • 4 oz cream cheese, softened (room-ish temperature)

  • 1 Tbsp cornstarch

  • 1 Tbsp butter

  • 1-2 jalapenos, diced

  • 2-3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, chopped

  • ½ small yellow onion, finely diced

  • 2 cloves garlic, minced

  • 1 ½ cups half and half. I often use half milk and half whipping cream

  • optional – chorizo

Instructions are fairly quick, but require you to pay attention for a few minutes.

  1. Optional – cook the chorizo and set aside

  2. Grate the cheddar cheese first, set aside. I usually hand grate from a block, but you can use shredded is you wish.

  3. Chop up the onion and jalapenos

  4. Open the chipotle peppers and have ready.

  5. Set aside a tablespoon of corn starch

  6. Heat a medium sized saucepan over medium heat

  7. Add the butter, as this starts to melt, drop in the onion, jalapenos, and garlic, stirring for 3-4 minutes

  8. While this heats, I usually chop the chipotle peppers

  9. Once the vegetables are softened, but not browned, add the half and half and chipotle peppers

  10. Stir to combine everything. As this gets heated, add the cornstarch and mix in thoroughly.

  11. Lower the temperature to low. For my gas stove, not quite the lowest setting, but pretty close

  12. Next add the cream cheese in small chunks and stir to combine.

  13. Once this is combined, start to add the cheddar, stirring to combine. The mixture should then thicken.

  14. Pour into a bowl and serve. Optional, drop a spoonful or two of chorizo on top

This usually makes about twice when my family of five will eat with chips before dinner, so I drop rest in plastic and reheat a day or two later.

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The Build Book of News

Posted on May 23, 2020 by way0utwest

Every year Microsoft has held the Build conference for developers. I’ve been lucky enough to go a few times, and I was hoping to get the chance to attend again. With the pandemic, the entire event went virtual, and was held across 48 continuous hours. I was slightly disappointed as a few sessions I wanted to see were early in the morning or late at night, but I am sure most of these will be available on demand later, so I can watch them if I wish.

One of the things Microsoft has done is produce a Build Book of News, a 55 page PDF book of all their announcements and changes. You can download it from Paul Andrew’s blog, or you can look at the announcements online at Microsoft News.

I randomly watched Build on and off this past week, having some of the sessions in the background while doing other things. There certainly were some interesting sections, though not a lot of data platform focus, but I found a few items that you might like.

We’re all remote now, or the majority of us are, and I can see that remote tools are
important. I know there has been some remote code work in Visual Studio in the past, but I didn’t think many people would use it. Now in watching some of the remote code demos, I think these tools might be interesting, especially when a few people are trying to debug a crisis situation. Being able to see the code on my own machine, and seeing what others might change or think is a better (or worse) solution could be very helpful.

The mobile GitHub tools for review are getting better, and that’s good. Since it’s likely more of us might be in different locations, on different schedules, the ability to approve a PR could prove really helpful. Codespaces are especially interesting. Maybe not so much for databases, but maybe. I wonder if we could easily get data provisioning in here.

Azure CosmosDB is still something I want to play with, though I’ve been hesitant to set up a db because of cost. Serverless CosmosDB might get me to try something. I have no real excuse since they’re an emulator, so maybe not. I wonder how many of you might try CosmosDB out. There are also announcements about PostgreSQL and MySQL on as PaaS services getting feature parity with SQL Server in many ways.

Lots of Synapse changes, which might be of interest to those of you with larger warehouses and looking to take advantage of the cloud offering. Quite a few AI changes as well, with Bots, speech, ML, and more. I especially liked the keynote on AI, which I think was interesting. It provides some vision of what could be possible.

Tons of developer sessions, and I’d suggest that you browse or search the sessions to see what interests you. There aren’t a ton on demand as I write this, but likely more will appear this coming week. I hope the Cloud Skills Challenge will also remain up there, as I’d like to spend some time experimenting with services. If you haven’t worked with the Azure services, I might give that a try and get a feel for what’s possible.

Build is always interesting, and I’m not sure if I love this virtual format, but I’m glad the event was still available and once again I’m impressed with all the work Microsoft is doing to help developers build solutions.

Steve Jones

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