Tugrul Yilmazer

SNES Classic Mega Man X Gets An Extra Life On iOS

2011-12-22T16:19:00.002+02:00

SNES Classic Mega Man X Gets An Extra Life On iOS:

Ready for some more SNES-flavored nostalgia on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Capcom has recently released Mega Man X for iOS, which should brighten the day of just about anyone who spent their formative years slaying robotic octopi.

Unlike the other versions of Mega Man that have found their way to iOS, Mega Man X ditches the classic pixelated look for smoother visuals — I think it’s a novel touch, though some gamers disagree with me.

Classic MegaMan games always required precision and some nimble fingers, and some tweaks had to be made to make it work with with a 3.7-inch touchscreen. The normal difficulty level has X constantly charging his X-Buster, while holding down the fire button turns on auto-fire mode. After a few minutes with the game, my only real concern is that the jump and fire buttons seem just far enough apart that they’re easy to miss when things start to get hairy.

If those thumbs of yours don’t move quite like they used to, there’s also an easy mode baked into the game. It may just be me, but the the thrill of clearing a particularly tough section is part of MegaMan’s appeal — considering how easy the normal mode can be, I imagine most people would skip easy mode altogether.

The end result is a version of Mega Man X that manages to strike a good-but-not-great balance between difficulty and playability. Purists may scoff at the changes, but taking a game that just begs for a controller and adapting it for a device without buttons is no small feat, and the nostalgia factor may be enough to sway gamers into forgiving its quirks and odd design choices.

Mega Man X is live in the App Store, and it can be yours for $4.99.

2012 Predictions, Cloud Edition: Joe Brockmeier

2011-12-22T16:19:00.001+02:00

2012 Predictions, Cloud Edition: Joe Brockmeier:

One of the nice things about following cloud technologies and virtualization? It's never boring, especially given how new cloud technologies are. That means that there's plenty of room for change, and ample speculation about where the industry is going. While we usually spend time reporting on what's just happened and the impact it will have in the near future, the end of the year gives us an opportunity to pull out the crystal ball and think about what's coming in the year ahead. In short, my forecast for 2012 calls for consolidation, continued domination of Amazon Web Services and scattered patent suits.

Sponsor

Patent Nastiness

One of the biggest disappointments for me in the 12-plus years that I've been writing about technology is the increasing amount of time and attention that one has to devote to patent lawsuits. Unfortunately, that trend doesn't seem to be reversing itself.

A quick, cursory search for "cloud" in just the title of patent claims shows more than 181 hits. (Though, to be fair, some of them are unrelated to cloud services – like this one.)

The "good" news is that the major players may have little to gain from suing each other, since they all have major patent portfolios. The bad news is that patent trolls have nothing to lose from suing Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, Rackspace or any of the other companies doing business in the cloud. I expect to start seeing some shakedowns around cloud-related patents in 2012.

Storage Shortage

It's no secret that there's a growing shortage in hard drives, which is driving prices up and causing major problems for suppliers.

What hasn't been discussed much is the effect on providers like Amazon, Rackspace, Google and others that consume a lot of hardware. Expect them to take a slight hit, and look for prices for cloud storage to hold steady if not increase.

It's the APIs, Stupid

While OpenStack has gotten quite a bit of attention since its debut in 2010, it's actually not in widespread use. And if the project doesn't change its position on APIs, it may stay that way. As OpenStack matures, a big part of the real competition between OpenStack and Amazon Web Services will be in getting developer support for the APIs. Going forward, OpenStack is planning to deprecate the API support for EC2 "because it does not help OpenStack long term to maintain Amazon EC2 APIs over its own."

This is an unfortunate and probably foolish move on the part of the OpenStack project. It doesn't serve the industry well, and attempting to force developers to choose may have the unintended effect of slowing OpenStack adoption.

OpenStack supporters have drawn parallels between OpenStack and Linux, and there are several. Like Linux, OpenStack has gotten widespread industry support and could become the commodity operating system for the cloud. (So to speak.) However, unlike Linux, the OpenStack project is trying to "win" by not playing well with others.

One of the reasons that Linux has succeeded so wildly is that it was a drop-in replacement for other operating systems, or very nearly so. It was UNIX-like enough that it won over UNIX admins and developers, because it had the additional advantage of being open. The OpenStack project is throwing away a potential advantage by refusing to be AWS compatible, and I suspect that's going to bite them in the posterior in 2012.

Mark Shuttleworth had a post worth reading in September, comparing cloud APIs to HTTP. Says Shuttleworth, "cloud infrastructure is looking for its HTTP. I think that standard already exists in de facto form today at AWS, with EC2, S3 and some of the credential mechanisms being essentially the core primitives of cloud infrastructure management." There's room for innovation in implementation (just as there has been with Apache, IIS and Nginx to name a few) innovation at the protocol/API layer? Not so much. "I'm of the view that any projects which try to do so will fail and are not worth spending your or my time on. They are going to be about as successful as projects that try to reinvent HTTP to make it better/faster/cleaner/whatever."

"All the proprietary and ad-hoc things that preceded HTTP have died, and good riddance," says Shuttleworth. "Similarly, cloud infrastructure will converge around a standard API which will be imperfect but real. Innovation is all about how that API is implemented, not which API it is."

I doubt that not adopting AWS APIs will be fatal for OpenStack, but it's going to be painful in terms of adoption. The Eucalyptus folks get that AWS is the standard and that they can co-exist with AWS because Amazon doesn't seem at all likely to get into the business of on-premise software, so I'd look for that company to have a pretty good 2012.

Acquisition Targets

It's not hard to predict that some companies in the cloud space will be picked up in 2012, but it's a little harder to guess which ones. Here's my list of companies that I think are likely to be picked up in 2012.

Nginx

Cloudera

Hortonworks

Joyent

Note that this isn't all-inclusive, so when we look back at the end of 2012 and all of these companies remain independent, I'll take my lumps. But I'm not saying I've predicted all the companies that might be acquired, because my crystal ball just isn't that finely tuned. If it was, I'd be too busy winning the lottery every week to make any technology predictions.

WATCH: Republican Wives Face Off In Dueling Christmas Ads

2011-12-22T16:19:00.000+02:00

WATCH: Republican Wives Face Off In Dueling Christmas Ads:

With the Iowa caucuses still very much up for grabs, Republican presidential hopefuls are loathe to miss out a campaign opportunity, even as conservatives cozy up for Christmas with their families and their faith.

Recognizing that attacks and elbow jabs don't really ring in the Christmas spirit, GOP candidates are putting their families front and center, launching four new television ads to highlight their conservative family values and general likability.

The results were mixed, and kind of weird. (Videos below)

Ann Romney goes solo in this 30-second campaign ad. She gives an eloquent defense of her husband's "character," and argument against flip-flopping allegations, Still, without Romney in the video, it seems more than likely that the average, half-interested Iowa voter won't have any idea who she is. (There are, however, some great photos of Romney with long hair.)

The Perry ad is definitely our favorite of the three, although Anita Perry is clearly less experienced in front of the camera. And there's a surprise ending.

As per usual, the Gingrichs are together in this Christmas campaign ad, which was obviously a generic greeting card commercial in a past life.

Ron Paul went an unconventional route, bypassing his media-shy wife Carol for his decidedly unshy son, Sen. Rand Paul, who pumps up his dad's Tea Party street cred.

New Evidence Suggests China's Hacking Into US Drones Using Adobe Reader And Internet Explorer

2011-12-22T16:18:00.002+02:00

New Evidence Suggests China's Hacking Into US Drones Using Adobe Reader And Internet Explorer:

A rash of new clues surrounding the Sykipot computer virus having its way with the U.S. drone fleet suggests the malware originated in China, and explains how it has been used.

Mathew J. Schwartz of Information Week reports the virus appears to have been designed with the sole purpose of stealing UAV data using a "zero-day" vulnerability in Adobe Reader.

A zero-day attack is launched using a vulnerability unknown to a software's developer and shared among attackers who exploit the fault before a patch is put in place.

The virus was inserted into the military's network using infected PDF files and specifically targeted to look for information on the Boeing X-45 unmanned combat air system and the Boeing X-37 orbital vehicle.

The X-37 recently had its classified mission extended nine months leading to speculation about its orbital activities. China, too, seems to have questions regarding its mission.

This most recent attack seems to have begun in August 2011, but another variant of the Sykipot virus goes back to 2006. The older version used clouded script files, taking advantage of an Internet Explorer vulnerability.

Finally, both versions used servers known as Netbox, 80 percent of which are located in China — this explains why its documentation and error messages — both come up in Mandarin.

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Steve Jobs Just Won A Grammy

2011-12-22T16:18:00.001+02:00

Steve Jobs Just Won A Grammy:

The Recording Academy, the firm behind the Grammy music awards, is posthumously awarding a Grammy to Steve Jobs.

It makes sense: Jobs pretty much re-invented the way the world listens to music with the iPod, iTunes and eventually the iPhone.

His award falls under the "trustee" category with New Orleans music aficionado Dave Bartholomew and jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder.

Jobs died in October earlier this year.

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How To Turn $667 Million Into $0 – The AOL Way (AOL)

2011-12-22T16:18:00.000+02:00

How To Turn $667 Million Into $0 – The AOL Way (AOL):

Tim Armstrong has spent $667 million on AOL acquisitions since 2009.

And yet, right now, the company's market cap is $1.4 billion. This market cap is made up of a 1.1X multiple on AOL's Internet Access business revenues plus AOL's $400 million in cash.

What this means is that, in the market's opinion, the companies acquired by AOL are no longer worth $667 million on the aggregate. In the market's opinion, they are worth $0.

This is the main observation – and complaint – of the letter from 4.5% AOL shareholder Starboard, which we published on the site yesterday. Starboard believes Tim Armstrong isn't doing enough with those acquired companies to prove to the market that they are worth more than $0.

Here is a list of those acquisitions from the letter.

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Google Currents is hot off the press

2011-12-22T16:17:00.000+02:00

Google Currents is hot off the press:

We strive to give you beautiful and simple ways to experience all the content the web has to offer, such as sharing photos on Google+, watching YouTube videos and discovering books, movies and music from Android Market. Today we’re expanding our content offering with the introduction of Google Currents, a new application for Android devices, iPads and iPhones that lets you explore online magazines and other content with the swipe of a finger.

Ready for consumers
We’ve worked with more than 150 publishing partners to offer full-length articles from more than 180 editions including CNET, AllThingsD, Forbes, Saveur, PBS, Huffington Post, Fast Company and more. Content is optimized for smartphones and tablets, allowing you to intuitively navigate between words, pictures and video on large and small screens alike, even if you’re offline.

To get started, simply download the app and choose the publications you want to subscribe to for free. You can also add RSS, video and photo feeds, public Google+ streams and Google Reader subscriptions you’re already following. In addition to consuming your favorite media, you can also use the trending tab to discover related content that matches your tastes.

Ready for publishers
Alongside Google Currents, we’re also launching a self-service platform that gives publishers the flexibility to design, brand and customize their web content. For example, if you’re a small regional news outlet, a non-profit organization without access to a mobile development team, or a national TV network with web content, you can effortlessly create hands-on digital publications for Google Currents. 

Great content needs a great audience, which is why Google Currents is integrated with Google+ so users can share articles or videos they’ve enjoyed with their circles. Publishers can also associate their account with Google Analytics in order to increase their awareness of consumers’ content preferences, device use and geographic distribution. 

Google Currents is now available for download in Android Market and the Apple App Store for US users. Whether you’re a reader or a publisher, we hope that Google Currents helps you easily experience the best content on the web. Try it here now and stay tuned for more to come. 

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager, and Sami Shalabi, Technical Lead

Now playing: Faster movie search on Android and iPhone

2011-12-22T11:19:00.000+02:00

Now playing: Faster movie search on Android and iPhone: (Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog)

With the December movie season in full swing, we’ve just made it even faster and easier to discover movies, showtimes and theaters, all from your smartphone. Now when you search for [movies] or your favorite theater like [century san francisco] on Google.com from your phone, you’ll see interactive results for movies in a new swipeable ribbon, with the most relevant information displayed at the top of the page.

For each movie, you’ll see the movie poster, a short summary, ratings and the nearest theaters and showtimes. Designed to help you quickly browse what’s playing in theaters now, this information instantly updates as you slide through the movie posters -- no need to wait for a page to load or to use the back button.

To learn more about a movie, tap the movie title to find details like the cast and a full summary. And if you see a play button on the movie poster, you can tap to view the official trailer. You can even buy tickets directly from your smartphone by tapping on underlined showtimes -- and skip past those long holiday box office lines!

So the next time you head out to see sagas of vampires, the world’s biggest Muppets fan, dancing penguins or nearly impossible heists, try the new interactive results for movies by visiting Google.com on your iOS or Android phone’s browser and searching for [movies], [theaters] or a movie title. This feature is available in English, in the US.

Posted by Toshi Tajima, Software Engineer

Androidify yourself with new winter gear

2011-12-22T11:18:00.001+02:00

Androidify yourself with new winter gear: Celebrate the most wonderful time of the year and Androidify yourself with a bunch of new winter gear. Dress up your Android with candy canes, mittens, skis, antlers, sweaters and more! (Did someone say 2012 party glasses?) Head over to Android Market to get the latest Androidify update and make your Android ready for the season!

Posted by Thomas Gayno, Marketing Manager, Creative Lab

Galaxy Nexus now available in the U.S.

2011-12-22T11:18:00.000+02:00

Galaxy Nexus now available in the U.S.: Starting today, Galaxy Nexus by Samsung will be available in the U.S. on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Network. Visit google.com/nexus to buy it online, or go to your nearest Verizon Wireless, Best Buy, Costco or Radio Shack store. Galaxy Nexus is also available through our carrier partners in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Korea and Japan. Soon, it will be available in Australia, France, Russia, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere!

Galaxy Nexus is the first phone with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and combines the latest Google software with cutting-edge Samsung hardware. With a super slim profile, Galaxy Nexus features a 4.65” Contour Display with a true high definition (720p) resolution HD Super AMOLED screen. Galaxy Nexus also features a lightning-fast dual-core 1.2GHz processor combined with 4G LTE or HSPA+ technology. To see Galaxy Nexus in action, check out this video:

Paired with Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest Android software, Galaxy Nexus is simple and beautiful. WIth innovations like Android Beam, a camera with fun Live Effects and zero-shutter lag for instant photo capturing, a deeply integrated Google+ experience, and a new People app, Galaxy Nexus is beyond smart. Galaxy Nexus is also the first device to feature Face Unlock, which uses state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to unlock your phone. For a look at how powerful your smile can be, check out the video below.

The Definitive Guide To HTML5: 14 Predictions For 2012

2011-12-22T09:44:00.001+02:00

The Definitive Guide To HTML5: 14 Predictions For 2012:

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Ben Savage is the founder of Spaceport.io, a native Javascript and HTML5 platform for mobile game developers.

From tech titans like Zynga, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple, to startups just launching, the battle lines of 2012 will be drawn across the landscape of HTML5. Below are 14 bold predictions for how HTML5 will evolve in 2012.

Welcome to a more interconnected web:

In 2012, HTML5 will be adding support for some really useful and cool APIs that allow one

website to connect to another.

For example, Zynga games on Facebook run inside of iframes. Using the new postMessage API these games will be able to communicate within the containing Facebook frame directly. Before HTML5, inter-window communication had to rely on a remote server – or use unreliable hacks.

Another exciting addition is CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing). This will make it much easier for different websites to share information with one another. For example, CORS will enable startups to create photo-editing services that download your photos from Facebook, let you modify them, and then re-upload them – again without having to resort to ugly hacks.

With all of the new semantic information (see Semantics and Microdata) available with HTML5, it will become much easier to create web tools that extract information from web pages. As a result, you can expect to see a plethora of new mashup services, as well as better browser modes (like readers and translators).

Web browsers will look more like iPhones

Everyone loves Apple’s iOS. Now it’s coming to the HTML5 web. In 2012 your browsers will start

sporting push notifications, geolocation, and offline capable applications. Some browsers will likely adopt a more iOS-like user interface that will make the comparison all the more apt.

More and more applications will just be built in HTML5 instead of downloadable apps

If you’re like me, you already use web apps for email, calendars, and photo-sharing, but in 2012 more classes of applications will be HTML5 enabled. Next up, you can expect to see content creation apps like Inkscape and Illustrator emerge for HTML5 and start to catch on.

Internet Explorer & Microsoft will dramatically improve in coolness.

Internet explorer’s reputation will stop being “the browser where nothing works right” and start being “the fast browser”. Microsoft has made major investments into improving HTML5 performance that will give IE 10 a huge performance lead over competing browsers. Its hardware accelerated “canvas” will blow away all the other browsers in any speed test. Microsoft is also adding interesting ways for the HTML5 web and the desktop to work together that will really spice up its operating system. Having good support from IE will be the impetus that will really turn the tide in favor of authoring HTML5 applications.

Browser manufacturers will get into the App Store business

Taking a cue from Apple, browser manufacturers will start to realize that they are missing out by not being in the app store business. Google Chrome already has an integrated app-store as its splash page. Expect many other browsers to follow. This is actually a good thing for HTML5 application developers – it means more distribution opportunities for apps, although platform specific payment systems and platform revenue-shares will follow later on.

At least one major console game released or re-released using WebGL

In 2012, at least one AAA console game company is going to make the leap and decide to launch a 3D title on the web using WebGL instead of (or in addition to) creating a downloadable client. It might be a re-release of a well-known title (Like “Team Fortress 2″ or “Assassins Creed”), or another way to play a popular MMO (like “Eve Online” or “World of Warcraft”), or it may be an entirely new title launching for the first time.

Many more applications will use offline cache and will work offline

The offline application cache will dramatically improve the usability and speed of HTML5 apps. Querying a local database will allow applications to avoid a round-trip to the server, eliminating that laggy web-app feel that makes us all prefer native apps today.

In 2012, expect to see a few issues arise from this extended usage. You’ll lose your work by clearing your cache at least once or twice. Also expect security vulnerabilities to keep showing up that allow malicious applications to access private files stored on your computer by another

website.

HTML5 ads will become prevalent and overtake Flash ads

Website owners keen to monetize the increasingly large amount of traffic coming from iOS devices will demand HTML5 ads (rather than Flash ads). Startups will emerge to serve this market. These startups will solve the sand boxing, security, and authoring tools issues that this new market will face. Now that HTML5 is capable of doing everything that flash ads commonly do, it’s just a matter of time before they take over.

JavaScript will get a lot faster with better memory management and typed arrays

JavaScript has gotten really, really fast – it’s already among the world’s fastest scripting languages – but there is room for improvement. Google Chrome has started pushing the envelope on better memory management and garbage collection algorithms. This, combined with typed arrays, will bring JavaScript performance closer to more mature languages like Java.

Canvas will get hardware acceleration in more browsers (but no major mobile browsers)

Other browser makers will follow Internet Explorer’s lead and add hardware acceleration to their canvas implementations. Those that don’t will suffer a severe loss in mind-share. Firefox is most at-risk in this regard. If Mozilla fails to accelerate their canvas it risks being portrayed as the new IE — slow and bloated and burdened down with legacy code.

However, in 2012, no major mobile browsers will successfully roll out a hardware-accelerated canvas. We will have to wait until 2013 to start seeing that catch on.

People will play popular HTML5 games on their mobile devices from Zynga and others, but they will be very simple games

You can expect to see your friends playing games like Zynga Poker, Words with Friends, and Mafia Wars on their mobile phones, running purely in HTML5. These games will be played on both destination websites and within native applications (like the Facebook app).

However, successful HTML5 games on mobile devices will be limited to menu-based games, card games, board games, turn-based multiplayer games, and avatar customizer games. More complex and visually intensive Zynga “Ville” style games with isometric worlds or hundreds of animating sprites will not yet strike gold in 2012.

Facebook will release improved HTML5-based APIs that allow for more seamless integration with external websites

In its continued quest to be the de facto social-graph of the web, Facebook Connect will grow and expand to take advantage of new HTML5 features. This will allow even deeper and richer integration of Facebook connect with external websites and services.

Facebook will get a lot more seamlessly integrated with your desktop

Think drag-and-drop, file system access, photo synching, and widgets on your desktop. All of these features (and more) will start to blur the line between desktop and browser, bringing your social graph more closely into contact with your traditional desktop experience.

Apple will NOT fix HTML5 sound in mobile Safari

HTML5 sound used to work well in mobile Safari, back in the days iOS3. However, Apple disabled most of the API in iOS 4 and 5. It just introduces competition for iTunes — both the music store, and the App Store. In its continued fight to maintain total control over the Apple ecosystem, they will refrain from fixing HTML5 sound in 2012.

Building Social Software for the Anti-Social

2011-12-22T09:44:00.000+02:00

Building Social Software for the Anti-Social:

In November, I delivered the keynote presentation at Øredev 2011. It was the second and probably final presentation in the series I call Building Social Software for the Anti-Social.

I've spent almost four years thinking about the Q&A format, and these two presentations are the culmination of that line of thought. In them I present ten "scary ideas", ideas which are counterintuitive for most folks. These are the building blocks we used to construct Stack Overflow, and by extension, Server Fault, Super User, and the rest of the Stack Exchange network.

Radically lower the bar for participation.
Trusting (some of) your users.
Life is the world’s biggest MMORPG.
Bad stuff happens.
Love trumps money.
Rules can be fun and social.
All modern website design is game design.
Thoughtful game design creates sustainable communities.
The community isn’t always right.
Some moderation required.

It's not the same experience as attending the actual live presentation, of course, but you can certainly get the gist of it by viewing the slides for these two presentations online:

The Øredev organizers hired ImageThink to draw each presentation on a whiteboard live on stage as it was presented. I was skeptical that this would work, but the whiteboard visualizations came out great for all the presentations. Here's the two whiteboard drawings ImageThink created during my presentation. (Yes, they had two artists on stage "live whiteboarding", one on the left side, and one on the right side.)

It's not a bad approximation of what was covered. If you're curious about live whiteboard visualizations, ImageThink posted a great set of links on their blog that I highly recommend.

After four years, we've mostly figured out what works and what doesn't work for our particular brand of low noise, high signal Q&A at Stack Exchange. But the title Social Software for the Anti-Social is only partially tongue in cheek. If you want to learn anything online, you have to design your software to refocus and redirect people's natural social group impulses, and that's what these presentations attempt to explain. I hope you enjoy them!

[advertisement] What's your next career move? Stack Overflow Careers has the best job listings from great companies, whether you're looking for opportunities at a startup or Fortune 500. You can search our job listings or create a profile and let employers find you.

Is Android the Future of Mobile

2011-04-07T23:24:00.001+03:00

Is Android the future of mobile computing?

I think that answer is that it certainly could be. Android’s open source. It’s important that makes it possible for hardware developers to use it for whatever new devices they can imagine. Its SDK makes it easy for application developers to create the applications users want and need. Both factors make Android a strong contender for the shape of the future of mobile computing. However, there is a danger that hardware vendors will customize Android to the extent that the platform becomes fragmented. If this happens, it will be harder for application developers to write for Android and this could endanger its lead position as the future of mobile computing.

Xmind ve Mind Map

2008-12-27T17:42:00.003+02:00

Düşüncelerinizi birbirine bağlamak ve bunları bir anahtar kelime veya düşünce etrafında toplamak için bir diyagram mı çizmeniz gerekti? Xmind tam size göre.

Xmind ile aklınızdakileri görselleştirerek ve tasarlayarak problem çözümlerinize daha hızlı varabilirsiniz. Düşünceleriniz arasındaki anlamsal ya da diğer bağlantıları gösteren resimli ve sözcüklerden oluşan diyagramlar çizmek için xmind birebir.

Parallel Programming

2008-10-30T01:08:00.001+02:00

As much as I personally dislike the use of threads for user
code, multi-cores systems are here to stay. They are becoming
increasingly popular (most laptops now ship with dual core
systems, home computers ship with 3 cpus and gaming consoles
ship with multiple general purpose cpus as well).

Developers will need new frameworks for developing software
that is ready to take advantage of multiple CPUs. But most
importantly they will need to learn the traps and pitfalls of
writing parallel/threaded code.

Here are two fantastic articles on MSDN that cover these topics:

Design
Considerations For Parallel Programming by David Callahan.
Solving
11 Likely Problems In Your Multithreaded Code by the
excellent blogger and
hacker Joe Duffy.

UML

2008-10-29T11:58:00.002+02:00

The Unified Modeling Language™ - UML - is OMG's most-used specification,
and the way the world models not only application structure, behavior, and
architecture, but also business process and data structure.

"UML ile yalnız uygulama yapısı (sınıflar vs) değil aynı zamanda iş
süreçleri ve veri yapısı modellenirken de kullanılır." diyor uml.org'daki arkadaşlar.

Kıssadan hisse; uml nesnel tabanlı büyük yazılım projelerinde, işin sistematik bir şekilde ilerleyebilmesi için, kodlama aşamasına geçmeden yapılacakların şemalarla gösterilme işine yarayan standart diagram çizme aracıdır. UML bir programlama dili değildir. Çoğu yerde buna benzer açıklamaları bulabilirsiniz.

Asıl iş ciddiye binince şuna anladım; UML herşeyi sistematiğe bağlamaya çalışan, programcıyı kod yazarken belli kalıplara sokmaya çalışan, kod yazmadaki tüm artistiği alıp götüren, yazılım sürecini araba montajına çevirerek, kod yazma sanatını kütükleri doğru bir şekilde dizmekten öteye getirmeyen, ancak belli kalıplarda standartlaşmış (database configuration vb) veri analizlerinde ve tasarımlarında kolaylık sağlıyabileceğini inandığım düşünce yapısı.

Yaratıcı zekamızı kullanmaktan çekinmeyelim. Projelerimizde elimize pisliğe bulaştırmadan, tecrübe edinmeden, projenin ihtiyaçlarını bulmamamızda en yardımcı olan araç olan deneme-yanılma sürecine gitmeden tam anlamıyla düzgün çalışan projelere imza atamayız.

P.S: Yazılım bir maratona benzer bir 100 metre koşusuna değil...