Alex Lowe on Software and Startups

A mental strategy for marketing and presentation. This article will focus on how you develop software, web sites, press releases, pamphlets, or marketing copy. Basically, anything you present to the world and want to draw users into.
When offering a new application, a new web site, a new service offering, or anything else you want to […]

When attempting to run Microsoft .Net based applications, like many of those available from http://www.lowesoftware.com, you may get the following error on startup:
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135)
The cause of this error is that the Microsoft .Net framework is not installed or is damaged in some way. Therefore applications will fail to launch.
To […]

Across industries, across platforms, across technologies, and across users there are three fundamental priorities that should always take the number one, two, and three positions in any software development effort. The three priorities being security, reliability, and maintainability.
These three notions are at the top of my list with every project I begin. They are […]

You use computers and digital devices all the time. Maybe you even write software for these devices. Software is complex and provides a myriad of features to users. While featureset and data increases, device sizes are shrinking. With scarcity of input and output methods, an increase in software features and information, and construction done by […]

What kind of software developer are you? There are many types of developers out there, they serve different functions in the development lifecycle, have different skillsets, and have different job titles. Here’s a list of non-job-title types of software developers. What are you and where do you want to be? 
Architects – Architects have a difficult job, they […]

The goals of your development team is centralized around producing a feature-rich, secure, scalable, robust suite of software that can be sold out of the box to customers.
In order to accomplish that task development teams need to restructure how they look at projects. I’m proposing a new term called Code Longevity. Code Longevity means thinking […]

This is a philosophical discussion. In fact, switching barriers are one of the points that are argued during the open vs. closed information debate. Open-ness encourages trial of products and services while closed-ness encourages brand loyalty. As developers and entrepreneurs we have to look at out our philosophical view on information (our software, products, and […]

A developer, no matter how skilled, is dependent on the tools at his disposal. There are numerous free tools to aid in .Net development; from source control to debugging to documentation and profiling. Here, I’ve compiled a complete list of tools that I’ve used for years that cover the entire development lifecycle.
C# and .Net are a powerful […]

First, let me give some context for when and why I wrote this article. This is an article I wrote in early 2001 as I began to take over executive responsibilities in a small software company. The startup was comprised of three developers where there was much turnover of contractors and employees within software development […]

I’ve started a new project… in fact I’m coming back to an old project in a new way. Computing intelligence… whether its’ artificial, business, or minimal intelligence.
Early in my self education the concept of AI and passing the Turing test were high in my mind. I prototyped an application called Lisa which would perform basic […]