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• Ideals Resolutions for Images in iPhone/iPad & iPhone(Retina)/iPad(Retina)

  - by Masterminder

  Can someone tell me what the ideal resolution for images are for an iPhone/iPad and iPhone(Retina)/iPad(Retina). I have pulled these measurements off of the Apple Website and Wikipedia. See Below: Regular iPhone 480 x 320 - 163 ppi iPhone Retina Display 960 x 640 - 326 ppi. iPad 2: 1024 x 768 - 132 ppi iPad 3 (retina display): 2048 x 1536 - 264 ppi Thank you would really appreciate for some assistance!

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• Do professional software developers still dream of creating industry/world-changing apps?

  - by Andrew Heath

  I'm a hobby programmer. The absence of real world deadlines, customer feedback, or performance reviews leaves me free to daydream about having and implementing The Next Great Idea That Changes the World. Of course I'm aware I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery, but it's fun to imagine knocking out some fully-homebrewed app that destroys the status quo. I know many professional programmers have side projects, some for profit others not. I was wondering on the way to work this morning (non-IT boring work) if having to code for your food tended to dampen the dreaming? Does greater experience leave you jaded and more focused on the projects at hand? Not trying to be a downer, just interested in the mindset of the real software professional :-)

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• How can I most efficiently communicate my personal code of ethics, and its implications?

  - by blueberryfields

  There is a lot to the definition of a professional. There are many questions here asking how to identify components of what is essentially a professional programmer - how do you identify or communicate expertise, specialization, high quality work, excellent skills in relation to the profession. I am specifically looking for methods to communicate a specific component, and I quote from wikipedia: A high standard of professional ethics, behavior and work activities while carrying out one's profession (as an employee, self-employed person, career, enterprise, business, company, or partnership/associate/colleague, etc.). The professional owes a higher duty to a client, often a privilege of confidentiality, as well as a duty not to abandon the client just because he or she may not be able to pay or remunerate the professional. Often the professional is required to put the interest of the client ahead of his own interests. How can I most efficiently communicate my professionalism, in the spirit of the quote above, to current and potential clients and employers?

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• Agile Manifesto, Revisited

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Again, conversations give me a zillion things to write about.  The recent conversation that has cropped up again is my various viewpoints of the Agile Manifesto.  Not all the processes that came after the manifesto was written, but just the core manifesto itself.  Just for context, here is the manifesto in all the glory. We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. Several of the key signatories at the time went on to write some of the core books that really gave Agile Software Development traction.  If you check out the Agile Manifesto Site and do a search for any of those people, you will find a treasure trove of software development information. My 2 Cents First off, I agree with a few people out there.  Agile is not Scrum for instance.  Do NOT get these things confused when checking out Agile, or pushing forward with Scrum.  As David Starr points out in his blog entry, "About 35 minutes into this discussion, I realized I hadn?t heard a question or comment that wasn?t related to Scrum. I asked the room, ?How many people are on an agile team that is NOT using Scrum?? 5 hands. Seriously, out of about 150 people of so. 5 hands." So know, as this is one of my biggest pet peves these days, that Scrum is not Agile.  Another quote David writes, "I assure you, dear reader, 2 week time boxes does not an agile team make." This is the exact problem.  Take a look at the actual manifesto above.  First ideal, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  There are a couple of meanings in this ideal, just as there are in the other written ideals.  But this one has a lot of contention with a set practice such as Scrum.  There are other formulas, namely XP (eXtreme) and Kanban are two that come to mind often.  But none of these are Agile, but instead a process based on the ideals of Agile. Some of you may be thinking, "that?s the same thing".  Well, no, it is not.  This type of differentiation is vitally important.  Agile is a set of ideals.  Processes are nice, but they can change, they may work for some and not others.  The Agile Manifesto covers the ideals behind what is intended, that intention being to learn and find new ways to build better software. Ideals, not processes.  Definition versus implementation.  Class versus object.  The ideals are of utmost importance, the processes are secondary, the first ideal is what really lays this out for me "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  Yes, we need tools but we need the individuals and their interactions more. For those coming into a development team, I hope you take this to mind.  It is of utmost importance that this differentiation is known and fought for.  The second the process becomes more important than the individuals and interactions, the team will effectively lose the advantages of Agile Ideals. This is just one of my first thoughts on the topic of Agile.  I will be writing more in the near future about each of the ideals.  I will make a point to outline more of my thoughts, my opinions, and experience with the ideals of Agile and the various processes that are out there.  Maybe, I may stumble upon something new with the help of my readers?  It would be a grand overture to the ideals I hold. For the original entry, check out my personal blog with other juicy tech tidbits, rants, raves, and the like. Agilist Mercenary

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• Don't Just Go For Cheap Offers From an SEO Company - Why Choose Quality Over Price?

  Let's face it; anything that requires you to dish out more money for the productivity of your business isn't conducive to one's ideals. Which means, the more money you dish out, the less your profit or revenues will be. This is one reason why many online businesses tend to opt for cheap offers from an SEO Company to curtail their expenses to maximize their profit -- or so they thought.

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• What tools do you have at your disposal as a manager to promote a way of thinking

  - by John Leidegren

  This question goes beoynd just programming, but I'd like to get some input on this, if that's okay with the community. Preferably from people that do a lot of coding themselves but also manage other people coding. My problem is this. We have all these ideas that we know is good for the overall strategy of the company and the problem is not figuring out what to do, it's to come about this change. Just telling someone to do things differently isn't enough and it's hard to promote a mind set that is shared within all of the company, (this will take time). If I could jump forward I'd like it if we could create a very nurturing company culture that promotes these ideals cross all areas but I'm not sure what tools to use. And by tools I mean anything I'm legally permitted to do. e.g. we could talk about, we could arrange traning sessions, we could spend more time in meeting (talk about it more), we could spend more time designing, we could spend more time pair-programming, we could add/remove incentive or we could encurage more play. Ultimately if we did all of these things what will be the recurring theme that ties this together. I'd like to be able to answer the question -- why should we do things like this? -- and come up with an answer that explains how important it is to think about our ideals from begining to end. I've puposly avoided to talk about or specifics of the situtation becuase I believe that it narrows things down too much. But I guess, by know you either know how to answer this question or you're as confused as I am ;) I'd love to hear from people who had to bring about a change in order to go from chaos to order, or fix something in the organization which wasn't working. And I'd like to hear it from the perspective of the developer and designer. -- or -- You could simply weigh in on what are the most important qualities in an organization encurage or stimulate rigid fun development cycle from start to finish?

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• How to tackle a boss who thinks everybody in this world is wrong except him?

  - by anon

  I mean seriously, how do you tackle a guy who even changes our variable names (even though they are reasonable) and sends back the code (after review) like 4 times? I know for sure I'm not that bad a developer! So many times, he enforces his ideals, which are not even best practices in the industry! I point out to him whatever link I can find on the internet trying to prove my point, but in the end he uses his authority to shut us out. Sick and tired. Frustrated. Do I have any way out other than quitting the job?

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• In the Command pattern what do you call a command that groups together other commands?

  - by Ian Ringrose

  This should be easy, I am trying to come up with the name for a command class that is a collection of other commands. All the sub commands will be run, when the master command is run. Any ideals?

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• How to get xslReportBuildPlugin to work on CruiseControl.net

  - by work3much

  Hi All, I'm using CC 1.5.6804.1 and i created and custom xslt file generate a custome report. I added the file to the xsl directory. I have also updated the dashboard.config file with the following: [my additions] I see no link on the web dashboard after saving and restarting the server. Has anyone seen this and/or have any ideals?? Thanks.

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• where is the best place to find resources about user interface design topics

  - by think

  it might be a forum discussion about 3D & 2D Combined User Interface ideals, prototypes, resources. i haven't find one suitable till now, any recommend? thanks in advance

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• #altnetseattle – Collaboration, Why is it so hard!

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  The session convened and we began a discussion about why collaboration is so hard. To work together in software better us engineers have to overcome traditional software approaches (silos of work) and the human element of tending to go off in a corner to work through an issue. It was agreed upon that software engineers are jack asses of jack assery. Breaking down the stoic & silent types by presenting a continuous enthusiasm until the stoic and silent types break down and open up to the group.  Knowing it is ok to ask the dumb question or work through basic things once in a while. Non-work interactions are pivotal to work related collaboration. Collaboration is mostly autonomous of process (i.e. Agile or Waterfall) Latency time should be minimal in the feedback loop for software development. Collaboration is enhanced by Agile Ideals, and things like Scrum or Lean Process. Agile is not a process, Lean and Scrum are process.  Agile is an ideal. Lean, Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, Six Sigma, CMMI, oh dear. . . Great session.  Off to the next session and more brain crunching. . . weeeeeeee!

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• UIImagePicker and Memory Warning Level 1

  - by user262829

  Hello, Whenever I use a UIImagePicker to take a picker in my app, I get the following message in the debug console: Receive memory warning. Level=1 I am using the following code: imagePickerController = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init]; imagePickerController.delegate = self; imagePickerController.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera; [window addSubview:imagePickerController.view]; imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:[window bounds]]; imageView.hidden = YES; [window addSubview:imageView]; [window makeKeyAndVisible]; Does anybody have any ideals? I did not notice this error until I started using the GM Seed for SDK4.

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• c# passing something from child form to parent

  - by Alan Bennett

  hi guys. so i have this form and on it is a combo box populated from a database via a SQL method. and i have another form which allows us to maintain the database table etc. so i make a new instance of the second form doing: Form1 frm = new Form2; frm.show(); once i have done what ever i wanted to do on the second form and i close it, i need to somehow trigger an event or something which will refresh the combo box and the code behind it. i was thinking of some onchange or focus event for the whole form, the problem is i have 5 of these combo boxes and running all the SQL again. i also thought of passing somesort of variable thro but then i would still need an event for that. any ideals would be awesome

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• passing something from child form to parent

  - by Alan Bennett

  so i have this form and on it is a combo box populated from a database via a SQL method. and i have another form which allows us to maintain the database table etc. so i make a new instance of the second form doing: Form1 frm = new Form2; frm.show(); once i have done what ever i wanted to do on the second form and i close it, i need to somehow trigger an event or something which will refresh the combo box and the code behind it. i was thinking of some onchange or focus event for the whole form, the problem is i have 5 of these combo boxes and running all the SQL again. i also thought of passing somesort of variable thro but then i would still need an event for that. any ideals would be awesome

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• SQL SERVER – Weekend Project – Visiting Friend’s Company – Koenig Solutions

  - by pinaldave

  I have decided to do some interesting experiments every weekend and share it next week as a weekend project on the blog. Many times our business lives and personal lives are very separate, however this post will talk about one instance where my two lives connect. This weekend I visited my friend’s company. My friend owns Koenig, so of course I am very interested so see that they are doing well.  I have been very impressed this year, as they have expanded into multiple cities and are offering more and more classes about Business Intelligence, Project Management, networking, and much more. Koenig Solutions originally were a company that focused on training IT professionals – from topics like databases and even English language courses.  As the company grew more popular, Koenig began their blog to keep fans updated, and gradually have added more and more courses. I am very happy for my friend’s success, but as a technology enthusiast I am also pleased with Koenig Solutions’ success.  Whenever anyone in our field improves, the field as a whole does better.  Koenig offers high quality classes on a variety of topics at a variety of levels, so anyone can benefit from browsing this blog. I am a big fan of technology (obviously), and I feel blessed to have gotten in on the “ground floor,” even though there are some people out there who think technology has advanced as far as possible – I believe they will be proven wrong.  And that is why I think companies like Koenig Solutions are so important – they are providing training and support in a quickly growing field, and providing job skills in this tough economy. I believe this particular post really highlights how I, and Koenig, feel about the IT industry.  It is quickly expanding, and job opportunities are sure to abound – but how can the average person get started in this exciting field?  This post emphasizes that knowledge is power – know what interests you in the IT field, get an education, and continue your training even after you’ve gotten your foot in the door. Koenig Solutions provides what I feel is one of the most important services in the modern world – in person training.  They obviously offer many online courses, but you can also set up physical, face-to-face training through their website.  As I mentioned before, they offer a wide variety of classes that cater to nearly every IT skill you can think of.  If you have more specific needs, they also offer one of the best English language training courses.  English is turning into the language of technology, so these courses can ensure that you are keeping up the pace. Koenig Solutions and I agree about how important training can be, and even better – they provide some of the best training around.  We share ideals and I am very happy see the success of my friend. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Developer Training

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• best way to "introduce" OOP/OOD to team of experienced C++ engineers

  - by DXM

  I am looking for an efficient way, that also doesn't come off as an insult, to introduce OOP concepts to existing team members? My teammates are not new to OO languages. We've been doing C++/C# for a long time so technology itself is familiar. However, I look around and without major infusion of effort (mostly in the form of code reviews), it seems what we are producing is C code that happens to be inside classes. There's almost no use of single responsibility principle, abstractions or attempts to minimize coupling, just to name a few. I've seen classes that don't have a constructor but get memset to 0 every time they are instantiated. But every time I bring up OOP, everyone always nods and makes it seem like they know exactly what I'm talking about. Knowing the concepts is good, but we (some more than others) seem to have very hard time applying them when it comes to delivering actual work. Code reviews have been very helpful but the problem with code reviews is that they only occur after the fact so to some it seems we end up rewriting (it's mostly refactoring, but still takes lots of time) code that was just written. Also code reviews only give feedback to an individual engineer, not the entire team. I am toying with the idea of doing a presentation (or a series) and try to bring up OOP again along with some examples of existing code that could've been written better and could be refactored. I could use some really old projects that no one owns anymore so at least that part shouldn't be a sensitive issue. However, will this work? As I said most people have done C++ for a long time so my guess is that a) they'll sit there thinking why I'm telling them stuff they already know or b) they might actually take it as an insult because I'm telling them they don't know how to do the job they've been doing for years if not decades. Is there another approach which would reach broader audience than a code review would, but at the same time wouldn't feel like a punishment lecture? I'm not a fresh kid out of college who has utopian ideals of perfectly designed code and I don't expect that from anyone. The reason I'm writing this is because I just did a review of a person who actually had decent high-level design on paper. However if you picture classes: A - B - C - D, in the code B, C and D all implement almost the same public interface and B/C have one liner functions so that top-most class A is doing absolutely all the work (down to memory management, string parsing, setup negotiations...) primarily in 4 mongo methods and, for all intents and purposes, calls almost directly into D. Update: I'm a tech lead(6 months in this role) and do have full support of the group manager. We are working on a very mature product and maintenance costs are definitely letting themselves be known.

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• Do We Indeed Have a Future? George Takei on Star Wars.

  - by Bil Simser

  George Takei (rhymes with Okay), probably best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek, has always had deep concerns for the present and the future. Whether on Earth or among the stars, he has the welfare of humanity very much at heart. I was digging through my old copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a great publication on monster and films that I grew up with, and came across this. This was his reaction to STAR WARS from issue 139 of Famous Monsters of Filmland and was written June 6, 1977. It is reprinted here without permission but I hope since the message is still valid to this day and has never been reprinted anywhere, nobody will mind me sharing it. STAR WARS is the most pre-posterously diverting galactic escape and at the same time the most hideously credible portent of the future yet.While I thrilled to the exploits that reminded me of the heroics of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Burt Lancaster as the Crimson Pirate and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I was at the same time aghast at the phantasmagoric violence technology can place at our disposal. STAR WARS raised in my mind the question - do we indeed have a future?It seems to me what George Lucas has done is to masterfully guide us on a journey through space and time and bring us back face to face with today's reality. STAR WARS is more than science fiction, I think it is science fictitious reality.Just yesterday, June 7, 1977, I read that the United States will embark on the production of a neutron bomb - a bomb that will kill people on a gigantic scale but will not destroy buildings. A few days before that, I read that the Pentagon is fearful that the Soviets may have developed a warhead that could neutralize ours that have a capacity for that irrational concept overkill to the nth power. Already, it seems we have the technology to realize the awesome special effects simulations that we saw in the film.The political scene of STAR WARS is that of government by force and power, of revolutions based on some unfathomable grievance, survival through a combination of cunning and luck and success by the harnessing of technology -  a picture not very much at variance from the political headlines that we read today.And most of all, look at the people; both the heroes in the film and the reaction of the audience. First, the heroes; Luke Skywalker is a pretty but easily led youth. Without any real philosophy to guide him, he easily falls under the influence of a mystical old man believed previously to be an eccentric hermit. Recognize a 1960's hippie or a 1970's moonie? Han Solo has a philosophy coupled with courage and skill. His philosophy is money. His proficiency comes for a price - the highest. Solo is a thoroughly avaricious mercenary. And the Princess, a decisive, strong, self-confident and chilly woman. The audience cheered when she wielded a gun. In all three, I missed qualities that could be called humane - love, kindness, yes, I missed sensuality. I also missed a sense of ideals and faith. In this regard the machines seemed more human. They demonstrated real affection for each other and an occasional poutiness. They exhibited a sense of fidelity and constancy. The machines were humanized and the humans conversely seemed mechanical.As a member of the audience, I was swept up by the sheer romantic escapsim of it all. The deering-dos, the rope swing escape across the pit, the ray gun battles and especially the swash buckle with the ray swords. Great fun!But I just hope that we weren't too intoxicated by the escapism to be able to focus on the recognizable. I hope the beauty of the effects didn't narcotize our sensitivity to violence. I hope the people see through the fantastically well done futuristic mirrors to the disquieting reflection of our own society. I hope they enjoy STAR WARS without being "purely entertained".

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• St. Louis ALT.NET

  - by Brian Schroer

  I’m a huge fan of the St. Louis .NET User Group and a regular attendee of their meetings, but always wished there was a local group that discussed more advanced .NET topics. (That’s not a criticism of the group - I appreciate that they want to server developers with a broad range of skill levels). That’s why I was thrilled when Nicholas Cloud started a St. Louis ALT.NET group in 2010. Here’s the “about us” statement from the group’s web site: The ALT.NET community is a loosely coupled, highly cohesive group of like-minded individuals who believe that the best developers do not align themselves with platforms and languages, but with principles and ideas. In 2007, David Laribee created the term "ALT.NET" to explain this "alternative" view of the Microsoft development universe--a view that challenged the "Microsoft-only" approach to software development. He distilled his thoughts into four key developer characteristics which form the basis of the ALT.NET philosophy: You're the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc. You're not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It's the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.) The St. Louis ALT.NET meetup group is a place where .NET developers can learn, share, and critique approaches to software development on the .NET stack. We cater to the highest common denominator, not the lowest, and want to help all St. Louis .NET developers achieve a superior level of software craftsmanship. I don’t see a lot of ALT.NET talk in blogs these days. The movement was harmed early on by the negative attitudes of some of its early leaders, including jerk moves like the Entity Framework “vote of no confidence”, but I do see occasional mentions of local groups like the St. Louis one. I think ALT.NET has been successful at bringing some of its ideas into the .NET world, including heavily influencing ASP.NET MVC and raising the general level of software craftsmanship for developers working on the Microsoft stack. The ideas and ideals live on, they’re just not branded as “this is ALT.NET!” In the past 18 months, St. Louis ALT.NET meetups have discussed topics like: NHibernate F# and other functional languages AOP CoffeeScript “How Ruby Is Making Me a Stronger C# Developer” Using rake for builds CQRS .NET dynamic programming micro web frameworks – Nancy & Jessica Git ALT.NET doesn’t mean (to me, anyway) “alternatives to .NET”, but “alternatives for .NET”. We look at how things are done in Ruby and other languages/platforms, but always with the idea “What can I learn from this to take back to my “day job” with .NET?”. Meetings are held at 7PM on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the offices of Professional Employment Group. PEG is located at 999 Executive Parkway (Suite 100 – lower level) in Creve Coeur (South of Olive off of Mason Road - Here's a map). Food is not supplied (sorry if you’re a big fan of the Papa John’s Crust-Lovers’ Pizza that’s a staple of user group meetings), but attendees are encouraged to come early and bring/share beer, so that’s cool. Thanks to Nick for organizing, and to Professional Employment Group for lending their offices. Please visit the meetup site for more information.

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• Should programmers do Pro Bono work? where are the code public defenders?

  - by Tj Kellie

  How many projects are people doing based on the Bro Bono publico ideals versus working for the highest wage or potential for a cash-in-buy-out payday? For years lawyers have been called out for excessive gathering of wealth from high bill rates and huge settlement deals, hiring out their knowledge and skills to the highest bidders. People call for them to do more for free, use the laws and their time to defend or further some cause thats in the public's best interest. Is professional software development that different? So many bright people and so much knowledge of complex systems. Do you think that there is enough of a "Pro Bono" movement to solve the social and public problems in the industry right now? If so what are the examples to point to? OLPC? NOTE: Saying that open source software is the same as pro bono misses the point completely. I was looking for specific projects with a social context, not just group-sourcing for free software. Just because your not making anyone pay for your software does not mean its doing anyone any good. I'm not calling out manual enforcement of pro bono work for programmers, really just want some objective opinions and concrete examples of social-minded software/tech development projects like the One Laptop Per Child project. I'm sure open source would be a natural tie-in for some.

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• Usage of static analysis tools - with Clear Case/Quest

  - by boyd4715

  We are in the process of defining our software development process and wanted to get some feed back from the group about this topic. Our team is spread out - US, Canada and India - and I would like to put into place some simple standard rules that all teams will apply to their code. We make use of Clear Case/Quest and RAD I have been looking at PMD, CPP, checkstyle and FindBugs as a start. My thought is to just put these into ANT and have the developers run these manually. I realize doing this you have to have some trust in that each developer will do this. The other thought is to add in some builders in to the IDE which would run a subset of the rules (keep the build process light) and then add another set (heavy) when they check in the code. Some other ideals is to make use of something like Cruse Control and have it set up to run these static analysis tools along with the unit test when ever Clear Case/Quest is idle. Wondering if others have done this and if it was successfully or can provide lessons learned.

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• My First Weeks at Red Gate

  - by Jess Nickson

  Hi, my name’s Jess and early September 2012 I started working at Red Gate as a Software Engineer down in The Agency (the Publishing team). This was a bit of a shock, as I didn’t think this team would have any developers! I admit, I was a little worried when it was mentioned that my role was going to be different from normal dev. roles within the company. However, as luck would have it, I was placed within a team that was responsible for the development and maintenance of Simple-Talk and SQL Server Central (SSC). I felt rather unprepared for this role. I hadn’t used many of the technologies involved and of those that I had, I hadn’t looked at them for quite a while. I was, nevertheless, quite excited about this turn of events. As I had predicted, the role has been quite challenging so far. I expected that I would struggle to get my head round the large codebase already in place, having never used anything so much as a fraction of the size of this before. However, I was perhaps a bit naive when it came to how quickly things would move. I was required to start learning/remembering a number of different languages and technologies within time frames I would never have tried to set myself previously. Having said that, my first week was pretty easy. It was filled with meetings that were designed to get the new starters up to speed with the different departments, ideals and rules within the company. I also attended some lightning talks being presented by other employees, which were pretty useful. These occur once a fortnight and normally consist of around four speakers. In my spare time, we set up the Simple-Talk codebase on my computer and I started exploring it and worked on my first feature – redirecting requests for URLs that used incorrect casing! It was also during this time that I was given my first introduction to test-driven development (TDD) with Michael via a code kata. Although I had heard of the general ideas behind TDD, I had definitely never tried it before. Indeed, I hadn’t really done any automated testing of code before, either. The session was therefore very useful and gave me insights as to some of the coding practices used in my team. Although I now understand the importance of TDD, it still seems odd in my head and I’ve yet to master how to sensibly step up the functionality of the code a bit at a time. The second week was both easier and more difficult than the first. I was given a new project to work on, meaning I was no longer using the codebase already in place. My job was to take some designs, a WordPress theme, and some initial content and build a page that allowed users of the site to read provided resources and give feedback. This feedback could include their thoughts about the resource, the topics covered and the page design itself. Although it didn’t sound the most challenging of projects when compared to fixing bugs in our current codebase, it nevertheless provided a few sneaky problems that had me stumped. I really enjoyed working on this project as it allowed me to play around with HTML, CSS and JavaScript; all things that I like working with but rarely have a chance to use. I completed the aims for the project on time and was happy with the final outcome – though it still needs a good designer to take a look at it! I am now into my third week at Red Gate and I have temporarily been pulled off the website from week 2. I am again back to figuring out the Simple-Talk codebase. Monday provided me with the chance to learn a bunch of new things: system level testing, Selenium and Python. I was set the challenge of testing a bug fix dealing with the search bars in Simple-Talk. The exercise was pretty fun, although Mike did have to point me in the right direction when I started making the tests a bit too complex. The rest of the week looks set to be focussed on pair programming with Mike as we work together on a new feature. I look forward to the challenges that still face me and hope that I will be able to get up to speed quickly. *fingers crossed*

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• The Incremental Architect´s Napkin - #1 - It´s about the money, stupid

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/05/24/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---1---itacutes-about-the.aspx Software development is an economic endeavor. A customer is only willing to pay for value. What makes a software valuable is required to become a trait of the software. We as software developers thus need to understand and then find a way to implement requirements. Whether or in how far a customer really can know beforehand what´s going to be valuable for him/her in the end is a topic of constant debate. Some aspects of the requirements might be less foggy than others. Sometimes the customer does not know what he/she wants. Sometimes he/she´s certain to want something - but then is not happy when that´s delivered. Nevertheless requirements exist. And developers will only be paid if they deliver value. So we better focus on doing that. Although is might sound trivial I think it´s important to state the corollary: We need to be able to trace anything we do as developers back to some requirement. You decide to use Go as the implementation language? Well, what´s the customer´s requirement this decision is linked to? You decide to use WPF as the GUI technology? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide in favor of a layered architecture? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide to put code in three classes instead of just one? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? You decide to use MongoDB over MySql? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? etc. I´m not saying any of these decisions are wrong. I´m just saying whatever you decide be clear about the requirement that´s driving your decision. You have to be able to answer the question: Why do you think will X deliver more value to the customer than the alternatives? Customers are not interested in romantic ideals of hard working, good willing, quality focused craftsmen. They don´t care how and why you work - as long as what you deliver fulfills their needs. They want to trust you to recognize this as your top priority - and then deliver. That´s all. Fundamental aspects of requirements If you´re like me you´re probably not used to such scrutinization. You want to be trusted as a professional developer - and decide quite a few things following your gut feeling. Or by relying on “established practices”. That´s ok in general and most of the time - but still… I think we should be more conscious about our decisions. Which would make us more responsible, even more professional. But without further guidance it´s hard to reason about many of the myriad decisions we´ve to make over the course of a software project. What I found helpful in this situation is structuring requirements into fundamental aspects. Instead of one large heap of requirements then there are smaller blobs. With them it´s easier to check if a decisions falls in their scope. Sure, every project has it´s very own requirements. But all of them belong to just three different major categories, I think. Any requirement either pertains to functionality, non-functional aspects or sustainability. For short I call those aspects: Functionality, because such requirements describe which transformations a software should offer. For example: A calculator software should be able to add and multiply real numbers. An auction website should enable you to set up an auction anytime or to find auctions to bid for. Quality, because such requirements describe how functionality is supposed to work, e.g. fast or secure. For example: A calculator should be able to calculate the sinus of a value much faster than you could in your head. An auction website should accept bids from millions of users. Security of Investment, because functionality and quality need not just be delivered in any way. It´s important to the customer to get them quickly - and not only today but over the course of several years. This aspect introduces time into the “requrements equation”. Security of Investments (SoI) sure is a non-functional requirement. But I think it´s important to not subsume it under the Quality (Q) aspect. That´s because SoI has quite special properties. For one, SoI for software means something completely different from what it means for hardware. If you buy hardware (a car, a hair blower) you find that a worthwhile investment, if the hardware does not change it´s functionality or quality over time. A car still running smoothly with hardly any rust spots after 10 years of daily usage would be a very secure investment. So for hardware (or material products, if you like) “unchangeability” (in the face of usage) is desirable. With software you want the contrary. Software that cannot be changed is a waste. SoI for software means “changeability”. You want to be sure that the software you buy/order today can be changed, adapted, improved over an unforseeable number of years so as fit changes in its usage environment. But that´s not the only reason why the SoI aspect is special. On top of changeability[1] (or evolvability) comes immeasurability. Evolvability cannot readily be measured by counting something. Whether the changeability is as high as the customer wants it, cannot be determined by looking at metrics like Lines of Code or Cyclomatic Complexity or Afferent Coupling. They may give a hint… but they are far, far from precise. That´s because of the nature of changeability. It´s different from performance or scalability. Also it´s because a customer cannot tell upfront, “how much” evolvability he/she wants. Whether requirements regarding Functionality (F) and Q have been met, a customer can tell you very quickly and very precisely. A calculation is missing, the calculation takes too long, the calculation time degrades with increased load, the calculation is accessible to the wrong users etc. That´s all very or at least comparatively easy to determine. But changeability… That´s a whole different thing. Nevertheless over time the customer will develop a feedling if changeability is good enough or degrading. He/she just has to check the development of the frequency of “WTF”s from developers ;-) F and Q are “timeless” requirement categories. Customers want us to deliver on them now. Just focusing on the now, though, is rarely beneficial in the long run. So SoI adds a counterweight to the requirements picture. Customers want SoI - whether they know it or not, whether they state if explicitly or not. In closing A customer´s requirements are not monolithic. They are not all made the same. Rather they fall into different categories. We as developers need to recognize these categories when confronted with some requirement - and take them into account. Only then can we make true professional decisions, i.e. conscious and responsible ones. I call this fundamental trait of software “changeability” and not “flexibility” to distinguish to whom it´s a concern. “Flexibility” to me means, software as is can easily be adapted to a change in its environment, e.g. by tweaking some config data or adding a library which gets picked up by a plug-in engine. “Flexibiltiy” thus is a matter of some user. “Changeability”, on the other hand, to me means, software can easily be changed in its structure to adapt it to new requirements. That´s a matter of the software developer. ?

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