Visual Studio 2012 drops on Leap-Day, Feb 29

I haven't blogged much in the past several years about my chosen profession as a software developer.  Today, I will.

I am a Microsoft .NET developer.  As such, it was big news for me {this past week} when Microsoft announced they would drop the newest revision of Visual Studio (2012 aka 11) On Wednesday, Feb 29 2012.  This going to come replete with the .NET 4.5 Framework, and the Entity Framework 5.0 built in.  The beta of ASP.NET MVC 4 was released several days ago, and it is also supposed to be built into .NET 4.5 framework.

For me, the .NET 4 framework was a snoozer.  The performance hit this version of the framework foisted upon us nullified any of the benefits it purportedly gave us.  Nothing about .NET 4 was compelling enough to make me want to accept the big slow-down in performance .  For the most part, I continued using the .NET 3.51 client framework in 64 bit mode.  This was the sweet-spot for high-performance data processing in an highly-automated environment like the one I work in.  A multi-threaded console application written in the .NET 3.51 framework, NGEN'ed for x64 processors, can process and transform millions of rows of financial records in very little time.

Most programmers just don't care about performance hits.  We just want to use the latest thing, so we can say we are state-of-the-art.  We are often content to throw away processing power for no good reason.  Most programmers don't think in financial terms about their code.  We are not good about evaluating the cost implications of the slow-downs we gladly accept.

Consider the following example.  A Microsoft blogger recently bragged on the performance improvements Entity Framework 5.0 would bring to the table.  He published performance test-data that indicated that UPON SECOND EXECUTION, EF5 would execute a transaction 400% slower than ADO.NET, whereas EF4.3 would execute it 2,300% slower than ADO.NET.  On first execution, EF5 is also 2,300% slower than ADO.NET.

These findings were advertised as a magnificent 600% speed up.  We were supposed to applaud.  We were supposed to smile as we learned that we would get this marvelous speedup for free when we upgraded to .NET 4.5.

So, I am to applaud when I discover that my transactional operations will performance a mere 400% slower under EF5 than they would if I wrote some better code.  It is better code, just to make sure you understand that.  It's not worse.  It's 400% better.  Better is as better does.

The real take home story of this blog post is that I will cut the carrying capacity of my enterprise servers by 75% if I accept the 400% slow-down that Entity Framework brings to the table.  Stated more precisely, I will need to buy 400% more servers (or virtual cloud capacity) in order to meet my needs if I fuck around with the Entity Framework.  This should come at something like a 400% increase in cost right?

Let's see... that would make me a fucking stupid bastard wouldn't it?  Waaahhhh...?  I am a stupid goddamn bastard if I fuck around with the Entity Framework, aren't I?  If I throw away 75% of my server's capacity and increase my costs 400% just so I can say I use the latest wiz-bang crap from Microsoft, I am a stupid bastard, aren't I?

There are a few non-lemmings like me around out there in the world.  We have been banging on Microsoft about these logical and financial problems.  When confronted with the facts found in their own publications, Microsoft ambassadors quickly fold over, admit that they have performance issues, and say that they aren't done tuning their code yet.  They promise us that big performance gains are still in the offing.  They are working on it.

They say we will be pleasantly surprised when we test the performance of the final goods.

What does this mean?  Perhaps they can get the performance hit down to 2:1?  Perhaps we will only throw away 50% of our server capacity and double our costs when the final edition is shipped?  Probably too good to be true.  I doubt the performance/cost picture will be that good when the final facts are published.

2012 is the year when I get serious about launching my own smart-phone web-enterprise.  You know I am working on a Synastry Engine right now, and I will need web-services to deliver the info to both phone-clients, web-customers, and potential partners.

If the objective is to make money, if the objective is to make a living, if the objective is to stay alive, I will need to think in economic terms about my code.  The entire structure and nature of my software project has to engineered in such a way as to maximize carrying capacity and minimize costs.  When writing code, I do so according to the same motto StackOverflow.com uses:  Be fast at any cost.  I don't care how hard the code is to write, if it performs faster, it is better code.  If it increases my carrying capacity, and reduces my costs, it is better code.

Such differentials will make the difference between life and death, if I am not doing well financially.  It will also make the difference between life and death if my project takes-off, and becomes the next big thing in the web world.  People don't understand the immediate survival problems over-night sensations experience when hundreds of thousands of new users begin to hit your web-apps every single day.  In this situation, carrying capacity is stretched to the utter limit.  You'll wish you had written leaner and meaner code if this ever happens to you.

It could make the difference between being able to self-finance and being forced to sell my asshole to investors.

Visual Studio 11 drops on Wednesday Feb 29, one day after I have surgery on my left hand.  I am going to have a bit of time-off for recovery.  I intend to play with this new system whilst I recover.  I won't be able to write new code, but I will be able to click the mouse and recompile old-projects under the new framework.  I will be able to benchmark how fast the new system works.

I suspect it will be a lot slower.  I hope it will be a lot faster.  I won't use it unless it is faster and more efficient.  You won't get my vote unless you improve my performance/cost profile.

The absolutely worthless astrology apps that are about to die a pigs death

Well, I lost my cell phone this past week, I put in an insurance claim, and was shipped a replacement.  The recovery of my account information was extremely smooth.  Gmail and Facebook reloaded all my contacts.   My Amazon cloud player kept my music for me.

I lost nothing but a series of worthless apps (like Zoosk) that I would liked to have uninstalled anyhow.  This allowed me to start fresh and download a bunch of new apps.  For the first time, I decided to take a look at some of the apps that will be my competitors in the future.

I tested several of them with some well-known, and well understood birthdays.  These are birthdays of women I am extremely attracted to and who have outstanding chart-for-chart compatibility with me.  The results were hysterical.  The results were disgusting.  I laughed until I puked.

I'll tell you what bucko, I were one of you fools selling these applets, I would be shitting my pants with fear right about now.  A 200 ton gorilla is getting ready to jump down on your head and beat you to death.  You'll never know what hit you.  One-shot, one kill.  It's going to be like taking candy from a baby.  You can't cover me in a million years.  You got no chance of survival.  Dead meat.

So just what is wrong with these little astrology applets that say they can compute your compatibility?

1. They don't calculate a natal chart
2. They don't exhaustively compare planetary angles.
3. They don't compute houses
4. They don't arrange you planets in her houses, or her planets in your houses
5. There is no scoring system for aspects
6. There is no scoring system for houses.
7. What they do is an ultra-crass comparison of Sun signs, disregarding all else.
8. Some drag an arcane an unexplained version of numerology into the mix
9. Some drag a very limited Chinese Astrology into the mix.  If it were a full version, this would not be a bad thing.

The results of these piss-poor methods are hilarious.  I'll give you just one example:  I am told that I will certainly have a love at first sight experience with all Taurus females and males.  I can assure you, this is not correct.  I do like my share of Taurus females, but not all of them set my heart a flutter.  I tried 100+ Taurus dates and got the same "Love at first sight" boiler plate text every time.  I can go further still.  Of all the signs who should love me the most, Taurus loves me the least.  I get less interest from these women than any other sign.  If they like me, they like me faintly.  I have to say, I feel mighty damn rejected by the Taurus clan.

Much of the information is also flat-wrong according to the doctrines of Astrology.  For instance, I tried about 20 Pisces dates versus my own B-Day.  In every case, I got the same identical boiler-plate text.  This text claimed the relationship would fail, as the sexually conservative Virgo would not be able to fulfill the unlimited sexual desires of the Pisces.  We all know that Virgo is one of the top two mates for Pisces.  There are millions of Pisces-Virgo marriages out there doing just fine.  My brother doesn't seem to think his Virgo woman is particularly conservative.

Another hilarious boiler-plate text declared that in business relations, Virgos should not work with Capricorns.  A Capricorn boss brings out the rebellious nature in a Virgo.  {That's not true unless an evil Scorpion bitch gets into the mix.}  The fact is that these are legendary business partners.  Even when the relationship is somewhat afflicted, such as Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw, you still wind up winning.  Don Shula and Dan Marino didn't have problems.  I realize coach Coughlin is the Virgo and Eli is the Capricorn, but this only proves it works in the other direction as well. 

Even Jim Fassel and Kerry Colins made it to one Super Bowl together.

Stoooooppppoddddd!

No folks, the project I am brewing is cut from a totally different material.  I am working on a product entirely different from these crap-hounds.  I am orders and orders of magnitude over and above what they are doing.  It is my objective to put a Synastry applet on your phone that will exceed everything Sirius 1.1 and Janus 4.3 can do.  I intend to do the full job of a Jyotish Match-Maker.

We're going to grind out the most accurate birth-charts anybody every saw.  We're going to do exhaustive aspect comparisons with a numerical scoring system.  The focus will be on the personal five planets, with higher scores for these aspects.  All the planets will be arranged in the houses, and scores will be assigned for these arrangements.

I will even provide a Davison chart and a Composite chart even though I do not endorse these methods.

Further, I intend to leap well beyond that.  I intend to compare your chart to 200 years worth of charts ranging from 1900 to 2100.  We're going to find your top prospects.  We're going to show you how you line up versus historical figures.

Further, I intend to do some nice 3d renders in Modo to make my graphics beautiful.

You guys are going to get ripped to shreds.  Death awaits you all with nasty big, pointy teeth.

Sometimes I think I really am a Jyotish Leo.  I am way too ferocious to be a Virgo.  

I gotta get serious about MySynastryEngine

Since football season ended for me 2 weeks early this year, it is now officially the off-season.  This means I need to find something else to do with my weekends and spare time besides working out, washing, cooking, eating, and sleeping.

Might be a good time for a date, right?  Sure, but I doubt that will be an every-night, or even every-weekend event this off-season.  Who knows... perhaps I speak too soon.  Since I have now officially been knighted THE sexiest bastard on God's Earth, I just might have a date every weekend this year.  After-all, dudes such as Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and George Clooney are unworthy to lick the sweat of my jockstrap now. I am far better than any of those three gentlemen, although I have to admit that in his younger days, Clooney was close.

All the more reason to chose wisely, which brings me to the subject of MySynastryEngine.  Every single day for the past year or so, I have visited sites such as Wikipedia, IMDB and IAFD looking up the birthdays of people I love and hate, feel attracted too, or am repulsed by.  My little black book has grown to well over 1,200 names and birthdays.   All of them have charts and records stashed in my Sirius 1.1 database.  Most of these folks can also be found in my Janus 4.3 database.

I have learned a lot about how the Sirius engine does things, and I am absolutely convinced that there are some serious mistakes in emphasis here.  Most of the points of emphasis do not match well with the sorts of things I read about classical synastry analysis.  I have learned a lot about the people in my black book, and just how and when Sirius 1.1 takes a left turn at Albuquerque.

To be precise, Sirius 1.1 places a heavy stress on the composite chart, or the relationship chart.  What is a composite chart?  A composite chart takes the position of your Sun and her Sun and averages them together.  If your sun is located at 1 degrees Taurus, and her sun is located at 28 degrees Virgo, you composite sun is located at (178 + 31) / 2 = 104.5 degrees, which is equal to 14.5 degrees Cancer.  You do this for every planet position in the chart.

So what the hell does this mean?  If you take a Taurus guy and average him with Virgo girl, you get an average Cancer tranny?  What the hell is that suppose to signify?  This point is a mathematical fact of quite dubious value.  I am skeptical that this tells us anything important.

Complicating the issue is the fact this tactic is a new innovation, just as is the Davison Relationship Chart.  This technique of averaging positions has not been used for even 100 years now.  I have serious doubts about any innovation that new.

Somehow, India has managed to have a very long and successful history of arranged marriages via a type of synastry analysis without either of these two techniques.  We're talking about 3,000 years of arranged marriages that actually work, and that were set-up on the basis of consequential synastry analysis.

Would we not be better served if we studied the way these match-makers work, and use their techniques?

I am convinced that the composite chart and the Davison Relationship charts introduce error, rather than clarifying facts about romance, sexual attraction, basic agreement levels, pleasantness and peace, etc.  Based on these two tools, the Sirius engine has generated a sizable number of false positives and false negatives.  A straight-elemental comparison of the first five (or personal) planets yields a far more accurate results... most of the time.

The rest comes from the House positioning of planets, just as the Janus 4.3 engine correctly emphasizes.  If Janus only had a numerical scoring system, it would be a better engine (today) than the one offered in Sirius.

My approach to writing a synastry engine WILL NOT be based on the composite chart or the Davison Relationship Chart.  I will do a straight elemental analysis of the first five (personal) planets.  My synastry engine will be based on sweet old-fashioned notions about soft aspects generating the best levels of over-all compatibility.  My engine will be loved in India, where the match-makers have a 3,000 year history of arranging actual marriages that are usually successful.

I could write and finish this engine in one week, if it were not for one little impediment:  I need to calculate the correct position of all the astronomical bodies.  Don't you use an ephemeris for that?  You can.  You can even find one here.  Translate that into you software DB if you can.

However, I have read many interesting cases made against the accuracy of these ephemera.  Many NASA-like folks say that the positions specified by these tables are inaccurate.  A precise location can only be obtained by grinding out the solution using the best current formulas.

Would it were that I only knew what those formulas were.  I really need to take a class in astronomy.  I need to find a sympathetic prof who can show me the formulas I need.  He or she can critique my implementation of these formulae in code.

Once this is done, I can grind out the rest of my solution in fairly short order.  The road-block is the accurate calculation of planetary position.  More than two years ago, my obsession with this project began with a simple and fun project to write some code that could calculate the position of the planets.  Now it looks like the project is coming around full-circle.  Where it all began is where it all comes back to right now.  I need to resume my original project.