This is a story about my 11 year old son, Nick, and a father's pride.

I coached Nick's Little League baseball team this year, and now that the regular season is over I'm coaching an 11-12 year old All Star team. Being the youngest on the team, Nick struggles with his self confidence even though he's an excellent baseball player. He's not the tallest player, but he's faster and more athletic than many of his older teammates. Even so, he doesn't want to take any risks or make any mistakes, and his insecurities often prevent him from performing at his best.

A few weeks ago in the league tournament Nick hit a ball against the fence, just short of going over. That was the closest he came all season to hitting one out, and was perhaps the first time he started to believe that it was possible. A few nights after our team was eliminated from the championship tournament, a kid hit a walk off grand slam with 1 out in the bottom of the 6th, down 9 - 6. Nick and I were there to watch it. I heard that the same kid hit one more out of the park later in the tournament. Those were very likely the only two over-the-fence home runs all year in our local league.

Sometime during tournament time, Nick's baseball bat disappeared from the trunk of my car. I suspect he didn't close the trunk all the way one night, and someone stole it during the night. The following week, in exchange for Nick agreeing to mow the lawn this summer, I bought him a shiny new baseball bat, a new bat bag, and new cleats to replace the old ones with holes in their toes. Nick was itching to play again so he could try out his new toys.

Fast forward to the all star team's second scrimmage earlier this week. In his first at bat, Nick got walked (then stole second, third, and home over the course of the next few pitches). In his second at bat, Nick hit a hard line drive into the gap, and got to second with a stand-up double. It was just a scrimmage, there was no pressure, and Nick was feeling good about himself, perhaps even daring to feel confident in himself.

His third time at the plate, Nick crushed the first pitch well over the center field fence amid groans from the opposing team. There was a mixture of surprise and elation among the other players on our team. Some had never seen a player at this level hit a ball over the fence, and I even had to remind them that they were allowed to enter the field to greet Nick as he crossed home plate.

The excitement was soon forgotten as the game moved along, until Nick came up to bat again and everyone jokingly told him to hit another home run. And then, with two strikes, two out, and two on, he did it again!

It's amazing how much difference a shiny new bat can make.

From the NewsFeed on my ADSK v ODA web site:

"The court today issued an order denying Autodesk's motion to dismiss the charges in the Vernor lawsuit. Normally such a denial is perfunctory and mundane, but in this ruling the court performs a breathtaking analysis of whether the AutoCAD software was a sale or a license, and reaches conclusions that, if not reversed, are certain to change the face of software sales in the USA. Technically, the scope of this order is limited to simply refusing to grant Autodesk's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but the implications of the judge's analysis are almost stunning in their rejection of Autodesk's legal claims. I'm sure you will be hearing much more about this order in the coming weeks, as the entire software industry will certainly take notice of this case."

Labels: Autodesk, CAD Industry, legal

I have presented a class entitled High Octane ObjectARX at Autodesk University the past two years. In 2006 the focus was on project organization, and last year I focused more on techniques for supporting multiple versions of AutoCAD with a single Visual Studio solution, touching briefly on testing and profiling. For 2007 I plan to focus on debugging.

To get you in the mood, I decided to blog about a capability of Visual Studio that often goes unnoticed and unused: breaking on an exception. This works just like breaking on a code breakpoint, except the debugger breaks execution *before* the exception handler gets control, thus allowing you to get a clearer picture of what was happening immediately before the exception occurred.

In an ObjectARX project, all kinds of exceptions can occur. Sometimes they are perfectly normal exceptions caused by and handled by AutoCAD. Many times, especially during development, your code triggers an exception that causes AutoCAD to crash, and it's not obvious what caused things to go haywire.

When unexpected things happen while running your code under the debugger, the first order of business is to inspect the debug output window to determine what happened. The debug output window (Debug->Windows->Output) displays a message whenever an exception occurs. Sometimes a series of exceptions occur, usually all caused by the same root problem. Breaking when the first exception occurs will likely yield the most useful information about the cause.

Once you examine the debug output window to determine the type of exception that occurred, open the Exceptions dialog (Debug->Exceptions) and tell Visual Studio to break when the exception is thrown:

Visual Studio contains a prepopulated list of common exceptions to choose from, or you can add new ones if you need to break on an exception that is not already listed. Many times, breaking when the exception is thrown allows you to inspect the stack trace to determine which one of your functions is to blame -- and in the vast majority of cases, it will be your code that is at fault!

Labels: Autodesk University, ObjectARX, programming, Visual Studio

Steve Johnson asks "where have all the developers gone?", and Deelip Menezes wonders in a comment whether Autodesk's annual release cycle for AutoCAD is part of the problem. I've always said that an annual release cycle is untenable. The annual release cycle is motivated by Autodesk's desire to make the subscription program look attractive. Has it worked?

Based on what I've read and heard through the grapevine, it has definitely worked. More customers than ever are choosing the subscription model. In many cases, the annual subscription business model actually works well for software like AutoCAD, providing benefits for both Autodesk and their customers. But subscription is not for everyone.

In typical greedy big corporate fashion, Autodesk have overplayed their hand. Instead of concentrating on those customers for whom subscription makes sense and leaving the others to choose a different model, the "more is always better" marketing machine kicked in. Ergo, the annual release cycle carrot and the AutoCAD retirement program stick were invented. [Oh sorry, it's called the Autodesk Loyalty Program.]

I am already seeing the beginnings of a movement of discontent among Autodesk customers, and I expect the annual release cycle to collapse under its own weight within another year or two. In the meantime, tremendous damage is being done. Customers, third party developers, authors, and consultants all suffer under the strain of the annual release cycle, but that's only the tip of the iceberg.

To pull off annual releases, Autodesk have to be working on multiple versions of AutoCAD in parallel. While AutoCAD 2006 was being beta tested, AutoCAD 2007 and 2008 were already under development, and AutoCAD 2009 was already in the planning stages. When CUI was first introduced to the public, the new ribbon UI was likely already in the planning stages. Is it any wonder that the angry feedback about CUI was ignored?

When you have an annual release cycle with 3 or 4 future releases on parallel tracks, you can't just stop and fix a fundamental design flaw. All you can do is increase your public relations budget. The harm done to third party developers is substantial, but the inability to shift gears and correct fundamental design flaws is the real travesty of the annual release cycle.

Labels: AutoCAD, Autodesk