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Someone on our Lockergnome site recently asked which full programming language is “the best.” That is a good question – but impossible to answer, really.

Each language was developed for a specific purpose. What works for one type of application may not work for another. Therefore, you can’t really chose “the best.” It would be better to ask which was the best for what you are trying to DO at any given time.

Everything from WordPress to moveable type uses something different. It’s impossible, therefore, to try and figure out any one language to name as the be-all and end-all of language types. The most useful programming language, ultimately, is the one that will best serve your needs.

No one language will or can do everything. If you want to be a general programmer, you’re going to have to learn many different types. If you want to be specialized, then sure – focus on one or two that you will need in your career or hobby.

What do you think? I’m sure you have your favorite language… but do you truly believe any one is better or more important than everything else out there?

Which Programming Language Do You Prefer?

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Someone recently asked if it was worth spending money on a TechNet subscription from Microsoft. If you’re a developer, the answer is a definite yes. If you’re a student – you can get a pretty hefty discount. In any case, if you’re anyone who uses a lot of Microsoft software, then it’s definitely something you should look into.

Yes, it’s going to cost you money. But do you want to know as much as you can about their software, tools and development? If so, then yes, you totally want a subscription. It’s absolutely worth it. You have to ask yourself how important the knowledge you can gain is to you. How much is it worth to you?

Look at it this way. When you go to a job interview, you’re going to have to discuss what you know and how you know it. Being able to point to having an extreme amount of education when it comes to all of the various Microsoft platforms.

If you’re out of a job, you will definitely hesitate at spending the money for the subscription. But having that knowledge of Azure or .NET could put you head and shoulders above the competition. Even if you’re an Apple fan… you likely will need to use Microsoft software at some point in your life or career.

Weigh your options. How much is a foot in the door worth to you?

What Would You Do With TechNet?

This is a guest post written by Matt Gamboa.

The Zumobi Network is the creator of several free mobile applications across multiple platforms. Because of their creation of rich mobile apps, they’ve been able to partner with brands such as HP, MSNBC, Southwest Airlines, and Mercedes-Benz to acquire premium ad sponsorships.

The idea is simple. Create great consumer mobile apps that draw lots of downloads, and partner with big-named brands to provide guaranteed and exclusive advertisement placement within the app. These ads are often rich in media themselves and Zumobi likes to call the term an “app-within-an-app.” An example of this is Mercedes-Benz having exclusive ad placement in the MOTOR TREND app, created by Zumobi. This proprietary technology is called BrandBlast.

Having 12 apps in the top 10 on iTunes of their respective category, it’s not surprising companies with lot’s of money to spend on advertising flock to the Zumobi Network. The company has proven they can create well-designed mobile applications that draw lots of interest and hits/uses per day. Their app portfolio includes the official apps for MSNBC, the Today Show, MOTOR TREND, Inside Xbox 360, TLC, and REI. Recently, Zumobi was featured in Fast Company magazine to highlight the reasons to choose a premium mobile app network such as them.

If you’re a developer, you should check out Deploy 2010 on Monday, November 08, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM (PT). Deploy 2010 is an all-inclusive conference for technology builders to give you new tools to create the applications of tomorrow. The conference will be held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.

Zumobi Network Brings App Within App Ads

This is a guest post written by Matt Gamboa.

A Seattle Startup located in historic Pioneer Square is looking to change the way you compete for the best price in vacationing. Off & Away is a hotel auctioning site that puts a little twist on things and truly promotes staring at the screen and watching the timer count down to zero.

At this auction site, hotel packages are offered and the bidding begins. Every bid made costs $1 to the bidder, and adds 10 cents and 20 seconds to the current bid price and time. If you’re the lucky one to bid last and have the timer run down to zero, you win! Since most people will bid towards the end of the time limit, the price will usually go up during that time. But, the savings are huge if you work for it! And you must work, since every bid adds 20 seconds and only adds $0.10, it really comes down to who can outlast the other at the computer. Their very first auction was 2 nights in the Tata Suite Pierre in New York… listed for $40,000 and finally sold for $938! Can you say, DEAL? That’s typically what you can expect from the website. Classy hotel stays usually worth a few thousand dollars are able to be sold in for only hundreds.

So what if you lose? What happens to all your one-dollar bills? Don’t worry if you lose an auction and just blew $300 trying to lock in your dream vacation, Off & Away makes sure you get your monies worth. Any money you “lose” from bidding is reusable via the site’s Book Now section. Just like other hotel booking sites, you can book at over 100,000 hotels worldwide using your credit. But pay attention to the rules, the credit is only valid 30 days after the auction.

Off & Away has a good strategy and lots of potential. Madrona Venture Group, who also backed Amazon and Farecast, and have an advisory board that includes top executives from Orbitz.com and Alaska Airlines, backs them.

If you’re a developer, you should check out Deploy 2010 on Monday, November 08, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM (PT). Deploy 2010 is an all-inclusive conference for technology builders to give you new tools to create the applications of tomorrow. The conference will be held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.

Prepare Your Eyedrops for a Travel Bidding War

This is a guest post written by Matt Gamboa.

If you ask most people the question, “Do you get paid enough?” You’ll most certainly always be answered with a NO. Salary is a top concern and there’s always that certain number that will make you a happy worker. Fortunately, there’s a Seattle Startup to let you know what you should be making after all.

PayScale has a service that determines how well you are being paid compared to others who have a similar job. The service is free in a limited fashion, but your scale is determined based on many factors including work environment, education, your professional experience, company size, etc. This is all information you must provide. Some of it is optional, but the more you provide, the more accurate PayScale will be in determining how well you’re being compensated. In the end, you receive a report and graph that shows where you are in relation to other people who’ve reported. The report is anonymous, so don’t worry about your co-worker giving you dirty looks because he found out you’re making much much more than him.

You can also upgrade to their premium service for $19.95. By doing so, you’ll gain insight to a lot more information that you could leverage to get that raise you know you deserve! With the largest online employee salary database according to PayScale, I’m pretty sure you can confident your scale of pay will be compared accurately.

If you’re a developer, you should check out Deploy 2010 on Monday, November 08, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM (PT). Deploy 2010 is an all-inclusive conference for technology builders to give you new tools to create the applications of tomorrow. The conference will be held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.

How Much Are You Worth?

This is a guest post written by Matt Gamboa.

Are you in to scrapbooking? Do you like to make decorative web cards to celebrate the birth of a baby? Does the thought of making a high school prom collage online to share with your Facebook and Twitter friends excite you? Well, don’t worry about taking out the heavy-duty scissors and craft glue. The online service, Smilebox, was created solely for the purpose of creating fancy photo crafts.

The Redmond-based startup has developed an online platform around the popular homemakers craft of scrapbooking. The website offers hundreds of designs to use to create scrapbooks, collages, greetings cards, or photo albums. The tool itself is not web-based, it’s a native application you must download and install onto your Mac or Windows machine. But the unique service itself is worth trying if this craft is your passion.

Smilebox is still a very small startup, but they are growing a fast pace and recently moved to a new, bigger office this year to accommodate the growth. They are gaining lots of traction even though their product is niche, but the fact that they don’t have too many competitors in their market will help them to expand products and make business quick.

Smilebox will be featured at Deploy 2010 on Monday, November 08, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM (PT). Deploy 2010 is an all-inclusive conference for technology builders to give you new tools to create the applications of tomorrow. The conference will be held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.

Smilebox Makes Scrapbooking Easy

I’m launching a new conference with the folks over at Seattle 2.0 called Deploy – Today’s Technology for Tomorrow’s Apps. It will be held Monday, November 8th from 9AM – 5PM at the Bell Harbor Conference Center. Deploy is a conference for technology builders and geeks. New languages, frameworks, storage systems, methodologies and devices are creating entirely new opportunities. Deploy 2010 is a “Show and Tell” conference where speakers will discuss hot new topics and show what can be done – and how. Topics will include NoSQL, Mobile and Tablet, Game Mechanics, Open Source, Location and more.

We have a great lineup of speakers including:

• Doug Cutting, creator of Hadoop, Lucene and Nutch
• Andre Charland, creator of PhoneGap – the open source cross-platform mobile technology
• Brian Fling, founder of Pinch/Zoom and creator of the NY Times iPad app
• Poornima Vijayashanker, first engineering lead at Mint and bizeebee creator
• Bob Walsh, author of “MicroISV: From Vision to Reality and the Web Startup Success Guide

Deploy 2010 will be a technology conference focused on software development. It’s perfect for developers of all backgrounds, whether you are still in college or are an industry veteran . It’s also valuable to managers and executives who have technologists in their organizations.

As an added bonus, we are reserving eight spots for show and tell. For three minutes, up to 8 lucky winners, will be able to get up on stage and either speak about or demonstrate their technology. During the morning session, we’ll collect entries from attendees who want to present their technology during the Tech Demo segment. At 1:30 PM, after the lunch break, we’ll draw the entries from a hat. The lucky winner has three minutes to get up on stage and present his or her technology.

If you are a developer or hard-core tech enthusiast, I hope you will join us for join us for Deploy.

Deploy – A New Seattle Conference for Developers

Project Phoenix understands that the economy isn’t doing so hot right now. They also understand that developers are an integral part of moving technology AND the economy into the future. Even though you may be underemployed – or even completely unemployed – right now, the folks at Project Phoenix wants to help. Over the next five months, 24 of you will be selected to receive a pretty sweet package of software and tools to help you in pursuing your development goals.

Each week, one eligible developer will be selected due to their non-profit proposals submitted. They’ll then receive a package of software, dev tools, training and books.

You are invited to propose a software project for a non-profit agency, school, or church. The idea is that we will provide a package of the latest software, tools, and training resources to help you improve your skills, get up to date with current technologies, gain practical experience, potentially earn a recommendation for your efforts, and in general, enjoy the feeling of accomplishing something useful for others. We are not giving out a ‘free lunch’, just supporting your efforts to personally gain from your own ‘sweat equity’. The award packages are provided with the support and generosity of the Microsoft MVP’s and vendors listed below.

The winners will receive:

• Microsoft: Visual Studio Ultimate with MDSN subscription
• Pluralsight: three (3) month Standard subscription to On-Demand!™ .NET Training Library
• APress: three books(3) of the winner’s choice
• O’Reilly Press: three (3) eBooks of the winner’s choice
• ComponentOne: license for Studio Enterprise components and tools
• Microsoft Learning: Vouchers for two (2) Free Certification Exams
• Quest Software: license for Toad® for SQL Server

You can find full details on the contest page, which will outline criteria that must be met, as well as the types of projects available to work on.

Underemployed Developers to Receive Software and Tools

If you have a passion for coding and will be in Seattle on August 20 – 21st, you will want to attend this event. The Gnomedex10 Open Government Hackathon will be held at the Edgewater Hotel – adjacent to the Bell Harbor Conference Center. The event is slated to begin as our Gnomedex conference winds down, and the cost of attending is absolutely free.

Ruby, Python, PHP, web developers, coders and anyone who has a passion to code, hack or kluge applications that will free (or otherwise enhance) the accessibility and usefulness of government-shared data are encouraged to participate. You can enter as an individual or a team, and don’t have to be attending our conference in order to take part in this amazing opportunity. At the end of the 24 hour period, each app will be evaluated by the Hackathon partners to determine the best apps – which can earn you a prize or two!

The nature of this event will be free-form. Hackathon partners will have organizers on-site to help you get the ball rolling initially. Even though it won’t cost you anything to take part in this day of hacking and fun, you are asked to please register so they know how many people to expect.

I know several of you out there in the Seattle community (and many attending Gnomedex from other far-away places) are hard-core programmers. Let your creativity soar while having a great time winding down your weekend during the Open Government Hackathon.

Gnomedex 2010 Open Government Hackathon

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Justin called from southern California recently to talk about open source projects. He’s doing some research into this for school, and had a few questions. Justin asked my opinion as to the pros and cons of both open source and closed source applications, along with positives and negatives of each. My opinions are not definitive, of course. As a user, I can appreciate either platform. It’s ultimately about what the software has to offer.

From a code perspective, there are some developers who want complete control over their code. They want to control development, and don’t want any input from others. They know every line of code inside and out, and live and breathe their creation alone.

Open source is more like one person sketching out an idea and then collaborating with others in order to come up with better iterations. If something in the closed source realm changes (or something happens to the original developer), you end up with a product that is dead for all intents and purposes.

Software is living. It’s omnipresent. You’re only as good as your latest version. Software is in a perpetual state of evolution. There are merits on both sides of this particular debate.

I’m a big fan of WordPress, and I’m always on the lookout for coding rockstars. I think there is so much more I could be doing if I had good designers and developers at my disposal.

What are YOUR thoughts? Are you a proponent of an open source ecosystem – or a closed one?

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Open Source vs Closed Source

A few weeks ago, the Twitter team announced that we would be seeing a Twitter client coming soon to Android devices. The app has become available sooner than we thought, as announced on the official Twitter blog today. “When apps work well with each other, sharing becomes as second nature on machines as it does in person. The Android platform is really good at that, and we’ve worked with the Android team to make it super easy to share what’s happening.”

The app makes it easy to stay connected. You can access your timeline by using the home screen widget. Check out a friend’s location on a map in seconds. Or, you can see your contacts’ latest messages in your address book, GoogleTalk list or any other app that uses the Android QuickContact bar. You don’t have to click through twelve different screens to find out what’s happening at any given moment.

Likely the best part of this news is the fact that the entire code will be open-sourced in the near future: “We had a great time working with the Android team and are thrilled that Google will be open sourcing the code used in this app in the near future. We look forward to the amazing experiences developers will create using Twitter APIs in their upcoming Android apps.”

This could bring some seriously cool apps from many talented developers. I know we have a few of you in our community already working on creating Android apps. What are your thoughts about the Twitter app? What do you think can be done to make it even better than it already appears to be out of the gate?

Twitter for Android

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The job market is always changing. Computer program majors often find themselves having a tough time after graduation. It may sound insane due to the number of computer-related fields that are are there. Much of it depends on where you live, and what your exact area of focus is.

You cannot possibly try to get a “general” computer degree anymore. Pick a specific area that you are good at or interested and focus on that. If you’re a developer, go develop! If you’re more of a networking whiz, you know what you need to do. There are SO MANY hundreds of possibilities. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face by choosing too broad of a major.

A consulting route isn’t a bad idea, but you honestly have to be REALLY good at what you’re trying to do. However, becoming a developer is where it’s at right now in MY mind. The other areas won’t disappear any time soon, no. But look at all of the dev opportunities out there right now. That’s the hottest and most in-demand area.

Network like crazy every chance you get. I say that about pretty much any type of career, but it holds even more true of us Geeks. Social connections enable you to find the path before the path is eliminated.

Most importantly, love what you do. Don’t choose an area of study just because you think you’ll make good money. Sure, that’s an important consideration. You have to support yourself. But if you hate what you do, you’re not going to do it for long. Know where your passions lie, and choose your path based off of them.

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Do Computer Majors Mean Anything Anymore?

Developers are going to want this app for their iPad. If you weren’t planning to buy an iPad, this app alone could very well change your mind. You already carry around some type of notebook to sketch out your ideas for the next must-have iPhone or iPad app, right? Using this app on your shiny new iPad will make your life easier, methinks.

iMockups is going to make it much easier for you to create wireframes and layouts for the iPad or iPhone – and for web apps. Any project can have multiple sketchbook pages associated with it, and developers can quickly add elements from a pad at the side of the screen. If arms hurt from carrying around a clunky machine, this app (combined with the iPad itself) could be exactly what your chiropractor ordered.

Credit to TUAW for discovering this app first.

iMockups for the iPad

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Kevoc recently attended MacWorld, and was kind enough to record a few videos for us, since I wasn’t able to attend myself. GameSalad is the world’s most advanced game creation tool for non-programmers. With GameSalad, game makers of all levels can bring their ideas to life without programming a single line of code. Build games visually using a drag-and-drop interface along with a robust behavior system. Publish your games quickly and easy to the iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac Desktop, and the Web.

Upon joining the GameSalad Membership Program, a member will be given access to GameSalad Viewer for iPhone, an app that allows testing of their game on the device. Once satisfied with the game, the developer will need to submit it through the GameSalad Membership Program online submission form. After a game is ready for the creator to retrieve, they will receive a link to the Xcode project file to submit according to Apple’s submission process.

You do not need to know how to program, but you may need to know a little logic to be able to make elements of the game interact with the user and each other. GameSalad Creator comes with a variety of templates that you can use to start making your game.

If you have an idea for a new game, there’s nothing standing in your way. You don’t have to be a hard-core programmer in order to make your dream a reality!

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What is GameSalad?

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Anthony saw my call for screencasters, and stepped up to the plate. He has created an amazing tutorial for all of you would-be iPhone devs out there! In this screencast, he will show you how to get started, and walk you through creating a simple iPhone App of your very own! It’s not too late for you to submit a screencast to be uploaded to our channels. Click on the link at the beginning of this description for more information.

First, you’ll need to head over to Apple’s Dev Center and download the SDK. This includes the Xcode IDE, iPhone simulator, and a suite of additional tools for developing applications for iPhone and iPod touch. You do not need to buy a developer account – you can use a free one to start with. If you are interested in submitting something to the App Store at some point, you can then look at the membership options.

To create a new iPhone application, you start by creating a new project in Xcode. A project manages all of the information associated with your application, including the source files, build settings, and rules needed to put all of the pieces together. The Groups and Files list is where you manage the files in your project, including your source files and the build targets that are created from those source files. The toolbar gives you access to commonly used tools and commands while the details pane provides a configurable space for working on your project.

The Interface Builder is the next component you will need. It’s the tool that you’ll use to make your App user interface. Using this tool, you’ll assemble your App’s window by dragging and dropping preconfigured components into it. These include standard things like switches, text fields and buttons. Once you put them on the window’s surface, you can move them around, configure them and establish how these interact with your code.

The iPhone Simulator is used to test your App, so that you don’t have to use an actual iPhone. This will save you a load of time, and is very easy to use.

It’s not as difficult to create an iPhone App as you may have thought. With patience and time, anyone can learn how to do these. Once you create something unique that others may want to have, you’ll be able to start earning money on the App Store.

Thanks to Anthony for the excellent tutorial… and good luck to all of you budding iPhone developers!

[awsbullet:iphone app sdk]

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How to Make an iPhone App