Digital Dave

Started a TCP chat client/server yesterday.  It’s mainly…. GUI right now.  I decided to code in C# instead of Java.  No particular reason, as both languages are incredibly similar.  I just wanted to dip into C# some more, and I felt that this would be a good time to do it.  We’ll see how it works out.  I have until the 17th to finish it.  Essentially, the application should do the following:

• Provide a Chat Service utilizing a TCP connection-oriented service
• Provide a Directory that will allow other clients to view the active servers
  • Allow the client to select from these servers to connect too
• Extra Credit: Remove Servers from the Directory that have disconnected

Had an ACM meeting today, which Union Pacific provided some excellent pizza and soda for.

Talk about some incredible projects.  They have this one project that essentially is the platform that maintains and displays all of the data for the trains on their network.  This ‘old’ platform JUST got replaced within the last week.  That ‘old’ platform had been in use for nearly 40 years, and was developed using some really old languages.  I think they said that in their IT department, about 4 or 5 people knew the code thoroughly.  And because of that, they invested 100 million into developing a up-to-date platform. Thank goodness.  It looks a LOT better, and is a LOT more functional.  Why in the world does it take 40 years to replace such a dysfunctional system?