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Seattle Magic Users Group Newsletter
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 | Next Meeting: Nov 8 |
| Last Meeting |
| Conversion to Magic 6.0 Class |
| Digital Magic |
| Modems+Windows |
| Local Author Makes Good |
| Droege Competition |
| Map To Aero Controls |
Next Meeting will be hosted by Aero Controls, in Auburn (for all you lucky Renton and Tacoma people!). See the map later in this newsletter.
John Cole is bringing Aqua Viva, a Magic demo program written by long-time Magic programmer David Webber. Aqua Viva truly shows off Magic 6.0's multi-media capacity, with some beautiful pictures, sound, and video.
We will be having a special lunch (which is a surprise, but it's not pizza!).
Our last meeting was also hosted by Aero Controls, and had more demos than any meeting to date. John Cole demonstrated some DDE calls in Magic 6.0, and Thomas Titus demonstrated some of his Novell print queue logic and other nifty routines..
By Heidi Schuppenhauer
Most of you probably got a mailing from Magic for a combination Level 3 and conversion to 6.0 class. We at Trillium received several phone calls from people saying that they wanted to take the conversion to 6.0 class, but not level 3.
The conversion to 6.0 class shows you how to change your 5.7 programs and change parameters in 6.0 so the programs import very quickly into Magic 6.0. The concept works very well: it was used by the top GUI entry at the Droege Competition, which was actually written in 5.7 and ported to 6.0 in the last 40 minutes with virtually no changes. The class also covers GUI design techniques.
Magic encourages the training centers to schedule private classes besides the official one, so we would like to offer, for those interested, a conversion to 6.0 class. We can keep costs low and split the charge between the students, so the more students, the less it costs: the maximum cost would be $300 per person, but it would probably be less.
If you are interested, let us know!
By Mark Bullock
Here are some digital methods for getting information on Magic. They're all useful, but of course they pale in comparison to our user group!
World Wide Web: Point your browser to http://www.magic.org to see an overview of Magic's table-driven approach, advantages, sales information, etc. They've been updating it regularly and it should become more and more useful.
Tech Support: Send e-mail to msetech@earthlink.net and receive an e-mail reply if you're tired of playing phone tag with the Magic support folks.
Sales: you can also get sales information via e-mail. Send your message to sales@mse.mhs.compuserve.com
E-mailing List: Get on an electronic mailing list of Magic users. Send a message to magic-users@zeus.lnk.com and say you want to subscribe to the list. Right new you'll get about 10-20 messages per week which you may be able to answer or may get you thinking about new approaches with Magic. You can also send mail to the list asking questions or making suggestions. One person wrote a prioritized list of enhancements to Magic v6 which hes submitting to Magic.
Magic BBS User your modem communication software to call (714) 250-8945. You can download nice utilities and sample programs, several of which our own Thomas Titus has posted.
FAX on Demand: Call (800) 697-1414 and get a list of documents available. Then call back and get the sales, seminar, trade shows, press releases, Magic University, User Group, or Tech Support documents you need. The list of technical support documents includes RMS, VAX server, Btrieve errors, data view problems, trapping the ESCAPE key, and speed improvements.
By Heidi Schuppenhauer
I don't know about the rest of you, but we have been using PCAnywhere for all our modem needs for several years now. Problem is, even the windows version is very, very slow when working with Windows, and with Magic 6.0 it looks like we will be doing a lot more Windows.
Lately I've heard about a product called CoSession. It is cheaper than PCAnywhere ($79 at the Programmers Shop, with volume discounts for the client module) and is supposed to be very good at windows. Anyone have any experience with it? We are going to try it out, at any rate, and will keep you posted.
By Heidi Schuppenhauer
Keep an eye out for an article by yours truly in MagiCom. I figure, since Dale had his picture published, I had to do something ...
Actually I wrote two articles, one of which graphs the scores by language in several different ways: that one is scheduled to be published. The other one tells more of what was going on from a personal level. Some people enjoyed that and thought I should share it: so it follows.
By Heidi Schuppenhauer
People have strange hobbies. Some people collect dolls. Some people race boats. Some of the more masochistic of us enter programming competitions. Why do we do this? I really can't tell you: certainly not for fame and glory or money (all told I spent about $2000 in costs plus a week of lost work: top prize would have been half of $5,000). But for those of you who weren't there at the Droege competition this year, I can tell you what it was like.
Oct. 4, 1995
7:00 am: We meet on the airplane. I partnered with another programmer from the Seattle area, Denise Schillaci, of the Resource Group, who writes Great Plains add-on programs and has lots of report experience. We partnered last year also, and came in 10th place, not bad for the first time out. During the 6-hour journey we practice and strategize, and tell each other we are just doing this for fun, mostly to calm our nerves. Last year we spent too much time doing things we really didn't need, like making hidden indexes so people could change the key, such as Customer ID, on the fly, something that was asked for but never actually used in the judging. I hadn't used Magic 6.0 much, so on the flight I studied the new forms tools and got used to my new laptop, an IBM Thinkpad we bought largely for this contest. Last year my PC was so slow that it cost us a good 2 hours out of a 6 hour competition.
8:00 pm: Between plane delays and time zone changes, we get into Durham, North Carolina, pretty late. We discover the hotel doesn't have our room reserved, but they have a room we can stay in until Friday. We decide we are in no shape to go to the Magic Hospitality party that is happening every night.
We see the team from Ultimade, who has flown in from Belgium. They are wearing matching team workout suits in blue: there are four programmers and two or three support people. Last year, they won first and second place, Progress won third, and Magic won fourth, fifth, and sixth (but got first place in RAD). They are a very strong team, obviously motivated and practiced, sponsored by their company to promote their product. They sat next to us last year, and we are watching them as the ones to beat.
Oct. 5
7:30 am: We carry our laptops down to the huge ballroom. Last year, we brought a CRT, keyboard, books, and had to find a cart to wheel it all down. Carts were in short supply. So this year, we just brought the two little notebooks. The ballroom is filled with rows and rows of tables, each with a little flag showing the team number: 53 teams in all. Each table has a couple of people setting up computers of every shape and size: some just a couple of little laptops, others with 20" monitors and large tower desktop systems. There was little talking. My stomach (and probably everyone elses) is so tied up in knots it was hard to even think about breakfast. On our table is a stick with a flag on top that says Team 11. On the table is a white envelope that says Do not open until 8:00 or you will be disqualified.
The team from Ultimade is sitting next to us again, and they are there in their matching blue suits. Their photographer is taking their pictures and running for coffee for them.
7:45 am: Tom Droege appears, to thank us all for coming and explain the rules. At 8:00, he said, we could open the envelopes, read the specs, and start coding. Lunch and dinner would be served, and at 10:00 everyone would have to stand up, leave everything on the tables, and leave the room. Coding would start again the next day at 8:00, and continue until noon.
8:00 am: We open the envelope and read the specification. It is for a nonprofit recycling company called SunShares, and the application was to track collections from recycling trucks and sales of the recycled materials.
We spend the next hour or so creating our Type and File definitions, then building routines (Ctrl-G Import routines, mainly) to read in the comma-delimited data files. Then Denise starts writing reports, and I start writing screens.
I had decided to develop in Magic 6.0, even though I have very little experience with it. I first used it in a previous contest in Seattle, and while the keystrokes were unfamiliar it seemed to save me some time because it was easier to fit more things on the screen. My strategy is to Ctrl-G most screens in Screen mode, then add a table to the screen so it could double as a Query/Range/Sort screen. The accepted knowledge is that people tend to waste time lining things up on GUI screens: I avoid that by using the automatic lining up tools in Magic and using easy field names so I didn't have to re-type them.
The one GUI problem I do keep having is that be default, fields get cleared if you type a character when the cursor lands on them. I keep deleting fields. I learn how to use ALT-Backspace real well. The Thinkpad works like a charm, and it is quite fast. Magic 6.0 works like a charm too: no aborts, lockups, or CTL-file corruptions.
5:00 pm: I have most of the screens done, and start working on a posting routine. Denise was still working on reports, which turned out to be harder than they were last year.
6:00 pm: dinner arrives. Most people keep working, a few ate.
10:00 pm: We all stood up and marched out the door, went back to our rooms or to the bar for a well-earned drink. I can't sleep well at all.
Magic hosts another hospitality party. We both went, but there weren't many people there.
Probably no one feels much like socializing after a day like that.
Oct. 6
Oct. 68:00 am: It all starts again. Only this time, the judging script was on our tables. The judging script is a step-by-step walkthrough of your program. It says things like: Look for a client Sunshine Dairy. Delete the record. Show it was deleted. Enter a new client, Fast food Freds. Enter client number 12. Show the system won't accept a duplicate record. Looking through the judging script, it was immediately obvious I need to re-code many of my screens and add a new table. So I did. But our posting routine doesn't work well at all, and I don't get it working in time.
12:00 noon: Everyone stops and turns in a diskette of the current work. A practice judging session is held, where we run through the script to see if we can show all the points in 20 minutes. We are given our time for the real judging: ours is 2:00. So we go wander around the block, enjoying the first sunshine we've seen in two days. We keep telling each other it's just for fun again, but we feel more relaxed. Whatever happens, it's over.
2:00 pm: We get judged. Sitting at our PCs with three judges standing behind us, Denise narrates while I try to work the keyboard (hard when you are nervous!). We get through the script, and even have a little time left over to show off some extra.
5:00 pm: The Gold medal finalists are picked. That means the general results have been figured out: now the top 5 people in each category get to compete in a separate competition in a that category: RAD, Client-Server, GUI. We are informed we are finalists in RAD. So, it's not over yet: we go through another judging, this time showing we did things like picklists, help prompts, zooms to add records on the fly.
6:30 pm: Dinner. After a speech, the finalists are announced. We are in the finals for the general category, and for RAD. That means we have to demo our application in the theater (a small movie theater) before an audience. Now we start to get nervous.
An amazing thing has happened: in the General category, 5 of the 6 top finalists are Magicians, the 6th is the Ultimade team. In the RAD category (the one entered by most people), all five of the finalists are Magicians. In GUI, 3 of the finalists are Magicians. Whatever the results, Magic is celebrating!
We are marched out of the dining room, under supervision, to put our computers under lock and key for the night, to prevent us from working on the application during the night.
9:00 pm: We visit the Magic hospitality room. This time the room is full, and not just with Magic folks. Some of the other competitors are coming around out of curiosity. Two lawyers/programmers using Data Perfect start asking me questions about how Magic works. One of them turns out to be a stage magician, and he and Bruce Lamasky do dueling magicians: cards and coins start appearing and disappearing for the entertainment of all.
Oct. 7
7:15 am: We get our computers, again under supervision, and bring them to the theater. We are the first team to be judged, so we hang around and start testing the PC with the LCD projector. It turns out the fonts we chose don't project well, and the PC screen won't synchronize with the LCD projector, so the judges won't be able to see the application well. It doesn't occur to me to just change the font to bold.
8:30 am: The judging starts. Denise stands up and points to the screen, walking through the script, while I work the keyboard. We are both nervous at first, but it goes pretty smoothly. We forget to show the judges some of the neater things about Magic 6.0, like the Windows Help capability.
9:00 am: We sit and watch the other finalists. Each finalist can watch the finalists after themselves, but not anyone previous (to keep from getting ideas). Since we were first, we get to watch everyone else. First came the Ultimade team. Ultimade has changed a lot since the year before, and it's inherited some of Magics functionality. We decide we like our application better, though. Third comes Bruce Lamasky, who has finished more than we did. Fourth is Keith Caniffs team, who have done a fine job in DOS. Fifth is another all-female team, who has also coded in Magic 5.7. Finally comes James Holcombs team, who have written a beautiful, finished application running in Magic 6.0.
What is amazing about all the Magic applications is that all 5 look completely different. What is also amazing is that everyone besides ourselves coded in DOS first and ported to Windows. James, who had the best-looking application, actually only ported it to Windows in the last 40 minutes of the competition!
12:00 noon: The awards lunch. We all try to eat and listen to a speech by the editor of Data Base Advisor magazine, one of the major sponsors. He believes the wave of the future is objects.
Then the winners are announced. For RAD, they announce the bronze and silver medalists, and we start to relax: we don't have to go on stage! Then the gold medallist is announced, and it's us! With a mixture of fear and pride, we go up to accept our medal and get our picture taken.
For GUI, the gold medal is won be James, which seemed especially ironic for someone who developed mostly in DOS. And here we didn't enter the GUI category at all, just because we didn't use many of the GUI features of Magic 6.0.
Then the top 6 rankings are announced. Ultimade came in 6th. That meant that all 5 top teams were Magicians! James team came in first, then Keiths, then Bruce, then Cindy and Meeta, then us. Naturally we would have preferred to have been first, but the scores were close and they all seemed well-deserved. When James was called to receive a gold medal and give a short speech, he arrived with a broom: A clean sweep for Magic! he announced with a big, broad grin.
Besides the obvious win for Magic, there were only 3 or so all-woman teams. Of those, 2 teams made it to the finals, a good win for woman hood. (Also, 3 of the top 6 teams used IBM Thinkpads, which maybe would be a good plug for IBM!).
2:30 pm: We go to pick up our prizes. Earlier, we had filled out a prize sheet, selecting which of many donated software prizes we would like. The better you score, the more you get your first choices. We walk out with two very heavy shopping bags of software.
3:00 pm: After the lunch, the finalists were to join the rest of the people already in the display booth. The top 10 teams, plus all the medal top 5 teams, were to be on display. Some did, some didn't. I went to wander around and view the other applications. Soon I am cornered by some people I had talked to earlier, and I view the other entries in Clarion, Data Perfect, and others. Then I show them how we code in Magic. Several people are more than impressed. The Lawyer/stage magician from the night before turns out to be named Tom, and he was very interested in Magic, saying Think, what are the chances that I would come to this convention to look for a new language, and find one so perfect, and have it be called Magic!.
Unlike the year before, when many of the people I talk to were quite defensive of their own languages, most of the people I talked to seem to be on the lookout for something better. Magic impresses them because of it's winning all top 5 slots, but they become more impressed when I showed them how programs were linked to types and files got created and re-formatted automatically. The only negative seems to be that some people like to code their business rules at the database level.
Denise takes an early flight out. I spend the rest of the evening demo-ing Magic.
Oct. 8
8:00 am: I fly home. It's been a good trip, I decide. And I start writing notes, for next time ...
{Original map not included in WWW version}
For information about the Seattle Magic Users Group, please send snail
mail requests to:
Conjurings C/O Trillium Custom Software, Inc.
PO BOX 609
Lake Stevens, WA 98258
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