Search Results

Search found 64 results on 3 pages for 'heavyweight'.

Page 3/3 | < Previous Page | 1 2 3 

  • Development Environment in a VM against an isolated development/test network

    - by bart
    I currently work in an organization that forces all software development to be done inside a VM. This is for a variety of risk/governance/security/compliance reasons. The standard setup is something like: VMWare image given to devs with tools installed VM is customized to suit project/stream needs VM sits in a network & domain that is isolated from the live/production network SCM connectivity is only possible through dev/test network Email and office tools need to be on live network so this means having two separate desktops going at once Heavyweight dev tools in use on VMs so they are very resource hungry Some problems that people complain about are: Development environment runs slower than normal (host OS is windows XP so memory is limited) Switching between DEV machine and Email/Office machine is a pain, simple things like cut and paste are made harder. This is less efficient from a usability perspective. Mouse in particular doesn't seem to work properly using VMWare player or RDP. Need a separate login to Dev/Test network/domain Has anyone seen or worked in other (hopefully better) setups to this that have similar constraints (as mentioned at the top)? In particular are there viable options that would remove the need for running stuff in a VM altogether?

    Read the article

  • Versioning freindly, extendible binary file format

    - by Bas Bossink
    In the project I'm currently working on there is a need to save a sizeable data structure to disk. Being in optimist I thought their must be a standard solution for such a problem however upto now I haven't found a solution that satisfies the following requirements: .net 2.0 support, preferably with a foss implementation version friendly (this should be interpreted as reading an old version of the format should be relatively simple if the changes in the underlying data structure are simple, say adding/dropping fields) ability to do some form of random access where part of the data can be extended after initial creation (think of this as extending intermediate results) space and time efficient (xml has been excluded as option given this requierement) Options considered so far: Protocol Buffers : was turned down by verdict of the documentation about Large Data Sets since this comment suggest adding another layer on top, this would call for additional complexity which I wish to have handled by the file format itself. HDF5,EXI : do not seem to have .net implementations SQLite : the data structure at hand would result in a pretty complex table structure that seems to heavyweight for the intended use BSON : does not appear to support requirement 3. Fast Infoset : only seems to have buyware .net implementations Any recommendations or pointers are greatly appreciated. Furthermore if you believe any of the information above is not true please provide pointers/examples to proove me wrong.

    Read the article

  • Versioning friendly, extendible binary file format

    - by Bas Bossink
    In the project I'm currently working on there is a need to save a sizable data structure to disk (edit: think dozens of MB's). Being an optimist, I thought that there must be a standard solution for such a problem; however, up to now I haven't found a solution that satisfies the following requirements: .NET 2.0 support, preferably with a FOSS implementation Version friendly (this should be interpreted as: reading an old version of the format should be relatively simple if the changes in the underlying data structure are simple, say adding/dropping fields) Ability to do some form of random access where part of the data can be extended after initial creation (think of this as extending intermediate results) Space and time efficient (XML has been excluded as option given this requirement) Options considered so far: Protocol Buffers: was turned down by verdict of the documentation about Large Data Sets - since this comment suggested adding another layer on top, this would call for additional complexity which I wish to have handled by the file format itself. HDF5,EXI: do not seem to have .net implementations SQLite/SQL Server Compact edition: the data structure at hand would result in a pretty complex table structure that seems too heavyweight for the intended use BSON: does not appear to support requirement 3. Fast Infoset: only seems to have paid .NET implementations. Any recommendations or pointers are greatly appreciated. Furthermore if you believe any of the information above is not true, please provide pointers/examples to prove me wrong.

    Read the article

  • Goal setting/tracking packages

    - by Avi
    I'm a developer working by myself. I'm looking for a computerized tool to manage my goals and activities. I own it Microsoft Project, but I don't like it. I've started many "projects" but could never keep on using it. Too complex and heavyweight for me. I use MS-Outlook tasks. They are not what I need. No planning capability. Tracking is not nice. I'm using the Pomodoro technique and I like it, but I'm looking for something more comprehensive and with better computerized support. Something that would allow me to define goals with dependencies and time estimation, keep daily prioritized lists etc. So, I'm looking for a solution. One I've found is GoalPro, but I don't like the fact I could not find a "top ten comparison". Are you using any goal setting package such as GoalPro? Which? Does it help? Pros and Cons?

    Read the article

  • Refreshing Read-Only (Chained) Property in MVVM

    - by Wonko the Sane
    I'm thinking this should be easy, but I can't seem to figure this out. Take these properties from an example ViewModel (ObservableViewModel implements INotifyPropertyChanged): class NameViewModel : ObservableViewModel { Boolean mShowFullName = false; string mFirstName = "Wonko"; string mLastName = "DeSane"; private readonly DelegateCommand mToggleName; public NameViewModel() { mToggleName = new DelegateCommand(() => ShowFullName = !mShowFullName); } public ICommand ToggleNameCommand { get { return mToggleName; } } public Boolean ShowFullName { get { return mShowFullName; } set { SetPropertyValue("ShowFullName", ref mShowFullName, value); } } public string Name { get { return (mShowFullName ? this.FullName : this.Initials); } } public string FullName { get { return mFirstName + " " + mLastName; } } public string Initials { get { return mFirstName.Substring(0, 1) + "." + mLastName.Substring(0, 1) + "."; } } } The guts of such a [insert your adjective here] View using this ViewModel might look like: <TextBlock x:Name="txtName" Grid.Row="0" Text="{Binding Name}" /> <Button x:Name="btnToggleName" Command="{Binding ToggleNameCommand}" Content="Toggle Name" Grid.Row="1" /> The problem I am seeing is when the ToggleNameCommand is fired. The ShowFullName property is properly updated by the command, but the Name binding is never updated in the View. What am I missing? How can I force the binding to update? Do I need to implement the Name properties as DependencyProperties (and therefore derive from DependencyObject)? Seems a little heavyweight to me, and I'm hoping for a simpler solution. Thanks, wTs

    Read the article

  • C#: at design time, how can I reliably determine the type of a variable that is declared using var?

    - by Cheeso
    I'm working on a completion (intellisense) facility for C# in emacs. The idea is, if a user types a fragment, then asks for completion via a particular keystroke combination, the completion facility will use .NET reflection to determine the possible completions. Doing this requires that the type of the thing being completed, be known. If it's a string, it has a set of known methods; if it's an Int32, it has a separate set of methods, and so on. Using semantic, a code lexer/parser package available in emacs, I can locate the variable declarations, and their types. Given that, it's straightforward to use reflection to get the methods and properties on the type, and then present the list of options to the user. The problem arrives when the code uses var in the declaration. How can I reliably determine the actual type used, when the variable is declared with the var keyword? Just to be clear, I don't need to determine it at runtime. I want to determine it at "Design time". So far the best idea I have is: extract the declaration statement, eg var foo = "a string value"; concatenate a statement foo.GetType(); dynamically compile the resulting C# fragment it into a new assembly load the assembly into a new AppDomain, run the framgment and get the return type. unload and discard the assembly This sounds awfully heavyweight, for each completion request in the editor. Any better ideas out there?

    Read the article

  • Type-safe generic data structures in plain-old C?

    - by Bradford Larsen
    I have done far more C++ programming than "plain old C" programming. One thing I sorely miss when programming in plain C is type-safe generic data structures, which are provided in C++ via templates. For sake of concreteness, consider a generic singly linked list. In C++, it is a simple matter to define your own template class, and then instantiate it for the types you need. In C, I can think of a few ways of implementing a generic singly linked list: Write the linked list type(s) and supporting procedures once, using void pointers to go around the type system. Write preprocessor macros taking the necessary type names, etc, to generate a type-specific version of the data structure and supporting procedures. Use a more sophisticated, stand-alone tool to generate the code for the types you need. I don't like option 1, as it is subverts the type system, and would likely have worse performance than a specialized type-specific implementation. Using a uniform representation of the data structure for all types, and casting to/from void pointers, so far as I can see, necessitates an indirection that would be avoided by an implementation specialized for the element type. Option 2 doesn't require any extra tools, but it feels somewhat clunky, and could give bad compiler errors when used improperly. Option 3 could give better compiler error messages than option 2, as the specialized data structure code would reside in expanded form that could be opened in an editor and inspected by the programmer (as opposed to code generated by preprocessor macros). However, this option is the most heavyweight, a sort of "poor-man's templates". I have used this approach before, using a simple sed script to specialize a "templated" version of some C code. I would like to program my future "low-level" projects in C rather than C++, but have been frightened by the thought of rewriting common data structures for each specific type. What experience do people have with this issue? Are there good libraries of generic data structures and algorithms in C that do not go with Option 1 (i.e. casting to and from void pointers, which sacrifices type safety and adds a level of indirection)?

    Read the article

  • Generating HTML Programmatically in C#, Targeting Printed Reports

    - by John Passaniti
    I've taken over a C# (2.0) code base that has the ability to print information. The code to do this is insanely tedious. Elements are drawn onto each page, with magic constants representing positioning. I imagine the programmer sitting with a ruler, designing each page by measuring and typing in the positions. And yes, one could certainly come up with some nice abstractions to make this approach rational. But I am looking at a different method. The idea is that I'll replace the current code that prints with code that generates static HTML pages, saves them to a file, and then launches the web browser on that file. The most obvious benefit is that I don't have to deal with formatting-- I can let the web browser do that for me with tags and CSS. So what I am looking for is a very lightweight set of classes that I can use to help generate HTML. I don't need anything as heavyweight as HTMLTextWriter. What I'm looking for is something to avoid fragments like this: String.Format("<tr><td>{0}</td><td>{1}</td></tr>", foo, bar); And instead take have this kind of feel: ... table(). tr(). td(foo). td(bar) Or something like that. I've seen lightweight classes like that for other languages but can't find the equivalent (or better) for C#. I can certainly write it myself, but I'm a firm believer in not reinventing wheels. Know anything like this? Know anything better than this?

    Read the article

  • fastest public web app framework for quick DB apps?

    - by Steve Eisner
    I'd like to pick up a new tech for my toolbox - something for rapid prototyping of web apps. Brief requirements: public access (not hosted on my machine) - like Google's appengine, etc no tricky configuration necessary to build a simple web app host DB access (small storage provided) including some kind of SQLish query language easy front end HTML templating ability to access as a JSON service C# or Java,PHP or Python - or a fun new language to learn is OK free! An example app, very simple: render an AJAXy editable (add/delete/edit/drag) list of rich-data list items via some template language, so I can quickly mock up a UI for a client. ie. I can do most of the work client-side, but need convenient back end to handle the permanent storage. (In fact I suppose it doesn't even need HTML templating if I can directly access a DB via AJAX calls.) I realize this is a bit vague but am wondering if anyone has recommendations. A Rails host might be best for this (but probably not free) or maybe App Engine, or some other choice I'm not aware of? I've been doing everything with heavyweight servers (ASP.NET etc) for so long that I'm just not up on the latest... Thanks - I'll follow up on comments if this isn't clear enough :)

    Read the article

  • Is it possible to get a truly unique id for a particular JVM instance?

    - by Uri
    I need a way to uniquely and permanently identify an instance of the JVM from within Java code running in that JVM. That is, if I have two JVMs running at the same time on the same machine, each is distinguishable. It is also distinguishable from running JVMs on other machines and from future executions on the same machine even if the process id is reused. I figure I could implement something like this by identifying the start time, the machine MAC, and the process id, and combining them in some way. I'm wondering if there is some standard way to achieve this. Update: I see that everyone recommended a UUID for the entire session. That seems like a good idea though possibly a little too heavyweight. Here is my problem though: I want to use the JVM id to create multiple unique identifiers in each JVM execution that somehow incorporate the JVM instance. My understanding is that you shouldn't really mix other numbers into a UUID because uniqueness is no longer guaranteed. An alternative is to make the UUID into a string and chain it, but then it becomes too long. Any ideas on overcoming this?

    Read the article

  • Subterranean IL: Constructor constraints

    - by Simon Cooper
    The constructor generic constraint is a slightly wierd one. The ECMA specification simply states that it: constrains [the type] to being a concrete reference type (i.e., not abstract) that has a public constructor taking no arguments (the default constructor), or to being a value type. There seems to be no reference within the spec to how you actually create an instance of a generic type with such a constraint. In non-generic methods, the normal way of creating an instance of a class is quite different to initializing an instance of a value type. For a reference type, you use newobj: newobj instance void IncrementableClass::.ctor() and for value types, you need to use initobj: .locals init ( valuetype IncrementableStruct s1 ) ldloca 0 initobj IncrementableStruct But, for a generic method, we need a consistent method that would work equally well for reference or value types. Activator.CreateInstance<T> To solve this problem the CLR designers could have chosen to create something similar to the constrained. prefix; if T is a value type, call initobj, and if it is a reference type, call newobj instance void !!0::.ctor(). However, this solution is much more heavyweight than constrained callvirt. The newobj call is encoded in the assembly using a simple reference to a row in a metadata table. This encoding is no longer valid for a call to !!0::.ctor(), as different constructor methods occupy different rows in the metadata tables. Furthermore, constructors aren't virtual, so we would have to somehow do a dynamic lookup to the correct method at runtime without using a MethodTable, something which is completely new to the CLR. Trying to do this in IL results in the following verification error: newobj instance void !!0::.ctor() [IL]: Error: Unable to resolve token. This is where Activator.CreateInstance<T> comes in. We can call this method to return us a new T, and make the whole issue Somebody Else's Problem. CreateInstance does all the dynamic method lookup for us, and returns us a new instance of the correct reference or value type (strangely enough, Activator.CreateInstance<T> does not itself have a .ctor constraint on its generic parameter): .method private static !!0 CreateInstance<.ctor T>() { call !!0 [mscorlib]System.Activator::CreateInstance<!!0>() ret } Going further: compiler enhancements Although this method works perfectly well for solving the problem, the C# compiler goes one step further. If you decompile the C# version of the CreateInstance method above: private static T CreateInstance() where T : new() { return new T(); } what you actually get is this (edited slightly for space & clarity): .method private static !!T CreateInstance<.ctor T>() { .locals init ( [0] !!T CS$0$0000, [1] !!T CS$0$0001 ) DetectValueType: ldloca.s 0 initobj !!T ldloc.0 box !!T brfalse.s CreateInstance CreateValueType: ldloca.s 1 initobj !!T ldloc.1 ret CreateInstance: call !!0 [mscorlib]System.Activator::CreateInstance<T>() ret } What on earth is going on here? Looking closer, it's actually quite a clever performance optimization around value types. So, lets dissect this code to see what it does. The CreateValueType and CreateInstance sections should be fairly self-explanatory; using initobj for value types, and Activator.CreateInstance for reference types. How does the DetectValueType section work? First, the stack transition for value types: ldloca.s 0 // &[!!T(uninitialized)] initobj !!T // ldloc.0 // !!T box !!T // O[!!T] brfalse.s // branch not taken When the brfalse.s is hit, the top stack entry is a non-null reference to a boxed !!T, so execution continues to to the CreateValueType section. What about when !!T is a reference type? Remember, the 'default' value of an object reference (type O) is zero, or null. ldloca.s 0 // &[!!T(null)] initobj !!T // ldloc.0 // null box !!T // null brfalse.s // branch taken Because box on a reference type is a no-op, the top of the stack at the brfalse.s is null, and so the branch to CreateInstance is taken. For reference types, Activator.CreateInstance is called which does the full dynamic lookup using reflection. For value types, a simple initobj is called, which is far faster, and also eliminates the unboxing that Activator.CreateInstance has to perform for value types. However, this is strictly a performance optimization; Activator.CreateInstance<T> works for value types as well as reference types. Next... That concludes the initial premise of the Subterranean IL series; to cover the details of generic methods and generic code in IL. I've got a few other ideas about where to go next; however, if anyone has any itching questions, suggestions, or things you've always wondered about IL, do let me know.

    Read the article

  • NHibernate which cache to use for WinForms application

    - by chiccodoro
    I have a C# WinForms application with a database backend (oracle) and use NHibernate for O/R mapping. I would like to reduce communication to the database as much as possible since the network in here is quite slow, so I read about second level caching. I found this quite good introduction, which lists the following available cache implementations. I'm wondering which implementation I should use for my application. The caching should be simple, it should not significantly slow down the first occurrence of a query, and it should not take much memory to load the implementing assemblies. (With NHibernate and Castle, the application already takes up to 80 MB of RAM!) Velocity: uses Microsoft Velocity which is a highly scalable in-memory application cache for all kinds of data. Prevalence: uses Bamboo.Prevalence as the cache provider. Bamboo.Prevalence is a .NET implementation of the object prevalence concept brought to life by Klaus Wuestefeld in Prevayler. Bamboo.Prevalence provides transparent object persistence to deterministic systems targeting the CLR. It offers persistent caching for smart client applications. SysCache: Uses System.Web.Caching.Cache as the cache provider. This means that you can rely on ASP.NET caching feature to understand how it works. SysCache2: Similar to NHibernate.Caches.SysCache, uses ASP.NET cache. This provider also supports SQL dependency-based expiration, meaning that it is possible to configure certain cache regions to automatically expire when the relevant data in the database changes. MemCache: uses memcached; memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. Basically a distributed hash table. SharedCache: high-performance, distributed and replicated memory object caching system. See here and here for more info My considerations so far were: Velocity seems quite heavyweight and overkill (the files totally take 467 KB of disk space, haven't measured the RAM it takes so far because I didn't manage to make it run, see below) Prevalence, at least in my first attempt, slowed down my query from ~0.5 secs to ~5 secs, and caching didn't work (see below) SysCache seems to be for ASP.NET, not for winforms. MemCache and SharedCache seem to be for distributed scenarios. Which one would you suggest me to use? There would also be a built-in implementation, which of course is very lightweight, but the referenced article tells me that I "(...) should never use this cache provider for production code but only for testing." Besides the question which fits best into my situation I also faced problems with applying them: Velocity complained that "dcacheClient" tag not specified in the application configuration file. Specify valid tag in configuration file," although I created an app.config file for the assembly and pasted the example from this article. Prevalence, as mentioned above, heavily slowed down my first query, and the next time the exact same query was executed, another select was sent to the database. Maybe I should "externalize" this topic into another post. I will do that if someone tells me it is absolutely unusual that a query is slowed down so much and he needs further details to help me.

    Read the article

  • Techniques for modeling a dynamic dataflow with Java concurrency API

    - by Maian
    Is there an elegant way to model a dynamic dataflow in Java? By dataflow, I mean there are various types of tasks, and these tasks can be "connected" arbitrarily, such that when a task finishes, successor tasks are executed in parallel using the finished tasks output as input, or when multiple tasks finish, their output is aggregated in a successor task (see flow-based programming). By dynamic, I mean that the type and number of successors tasks when a task finishes depends on the output of that finished task, so for example, task A may spawn task B if it has a certain output, but may spawn task C if has a different output. Another way of putting it is that each task (or set of tasks) is responsible for determining what the next tasks are. Sample dataflow for rendering a webpage: I have as task types: file downloader, HTML/CSS renderer, HTML parser/DOM builder, image renderer, JavaScript parser, JavaScript interpreter. File downloader task for HTML file HTML parser/DOM builder task File downloader task for each embedded file/link If image, image renderer If external JavaScript, JavaScript parser JavaScript interpreter Otherwise, just store in some var/field in HTML parser task JavaScript parser for each embedded script JavaScript interpreter Wait for above tasks to finish, then HTML/CSS renderer (obviously not optimal or perfectly correct, but this is simple) I'm not saying the solution needs to be some comprehensive framework (in fact, the closer to the JDK API, the better), and I absolutely don't want something as heavyweight is say Spring Web Flow or some declarative markup or other DSL. To be more specific, I'm trying to think of a good way to model this in Java with Callables, Executors, ExecutorCompletionServices, and perhaps various synchronizer classes (like Semaphore or CountDownLatch). There are a couple use cases and requirements: Don't make any assumptions on what executor(s) the tasks will run on. In fact, to simplify, just assume there's only one executor. It can be a fixed thread pool executor, so a naive implementation can result in deadlocks (e.g. imagine a task that submits another task and then blocks until that subtask is finished, and now imagine several of these tasks using up all the threads). To simplify, assume that the data is not streamed between tasks (task output-succeeding task input) - the finishing task and succeeding task won't exist together, so the input data to the succeeding task will not be changed by the preceeding task (since it's already done). There are only a couple operations that the dataflow "engine" should be able to handle: A mechanism where a task can queue more tasks A mechanism whereby a successor task is not queued until all the required input tasks are finished A mechanism whereby the main thread (or other threads not managed by the executor) blocks until the flow is finished A mechanism whereby the main thread (or other threads not managed by the executor) blocks until certain tasks have finished Since the dataflow is dynamic (depends on input/state of the task), the activation of these mechanisms should occur within the task code, e.g. the code in a Callable is itself responsible for queueing more Callables. The dataflow "internals" should not be exposed to the tasks (Callables) themselves - only the operations listed above should be available to the task. Note that the type of the data is not necessarily the same for all tasks, e.g. a file download task may accept a File as input but will output a String. If a task throws an uncaught exception (indicating some fatal error requiring all dataflow processing to stop), it must propagate up to the thread that initiated the dataflow as quickly as possible and cancel all tasks (or something fancier like a fatal error handler). Tasks should be launched as soon as possible. This along with the previous requirement should preclude simple Future polling + Thread.sleep(). As a bonus, I would like to dataflow engine itself to perform some action (like logging) every time task is finished or when no has finished in X time since last task has finished. Something like: ExecutorCompletionService<T> ecs; while (hasTasks()) { Future<T> future = ecs.poll(1 minute); some_action_like_logging(); if (future != null) { future.get() ... } ... } Are there straightforward ways to do all this with Java concurrency API? Or if it's going to complex no matter what with what's available in the JDK, is there a lightweight library that satisfies the requirements? I already have a partial solution that fits my particular use case (it cheats in a way, since I'm using two executors, and just so you know, it's not related at all to the web browser example I gave above), but I'd like to see a more general purpose and elegant solution.

    Read the article

  • The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #2 - Balancing the forces

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/02/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---2---balancing-the-forces.aspxCategorizing requirements is the prerequisite for ecconomic architectural decisions. Not all requirements are created equal. However, to truely understand and describe the requirement forces pulling on software development, I think further examination of the requirements aspects is varranted. Aspects of Functionality There are two sides to Functionality requirements. It´s about what a software should do. I call that the Operations it implements. Operations are defined by expressions and control structures or calls to frameworks of some sort, i.e. (business) logic statements. Operations calculate, transform, aggregate, validate, send, receive, load, store etc. Operations are about behavior; they take input and produce output by considering state. I´m not using the term “function” here, because functions - or methods or sub-programs - are not necessary to implement Operations. Functions belong to a different sub-aspect of requirements (see below). Operations alone are not enough, though, to make a customer happy with regard to his/her Functionality requirements. Only correctly implemented Operations provide full value. This should make clear, why testing is so important. And not just manual tests during development of some operational feature, but automated tests. Because only automated tests scale when over time the number of operations increases. Without automated tests there is no guarantee formerly correct operations are still correct after more got added. To retest all previous operations manually is infeasible. So whoever relies just on manual tests is not really balancing the two forces Operations and Correctness. With manual tests more weight is put on the side of the scale of Operations. That might be ok for a short period of time - but in the long run it will bite you. You need to plan for Correctness in the long run from the first day of your project on. Aspects of Quality As important as Functionality is, it´s not the driver for software development. No software has ever been written to just implement some operation in code. We don´t need computers just to do something. All computers can do with software we can do without them. Well, at least given enough time and resources. We could calculate the most complex formulas without computers. We could do auctions with millions of people without computers. The only reason we want computers to help us with this and a million other Operations is… We don´t want to wait for the results very long. Or we want less errors. Or we want easier accessability to complicated solutions. So the main reason for customers to buy/order software is some Quality. They want some Functionality with a higher Quality (e.g. performance, scalability, usability, security…) than without the software. But Qualities come in at least two flavors: Most important are Primary Qualities. That´s the Qualities software truely is written for. Take an online auction website for example. Its Primary Qualities are performance, scalability, and usability, I´d say. Auctions should come within reach of millions of people; setting up an auction should be very easy; finding a suitable auction and bidding on it should be as fast as possible. Only if those Qualities have been implemented does security become relevant. A secure auction website is important - but not as important as a fast auction website. Nobody would want to use the most secure auction website if it was unbearably slow. But there would be people willing to use the fastest auction website even it was lacking security. That´s why security - with regard to online auction software - is not a Primary Quality, but just a Secondary Quality. It´s a supporting quality, so to speak. It does not deliver value by itself. With a password manager software this might be different. There security might be a Primary Quality. Please get me right: I don´t want to denigrate any Quality. There´s a long list of non-functional requirements at Wikipedia. They are all created equal - but that does not mean they are equally important for all software projects. When confronted with Quality requirements check with the customer which are primary and which are secondary. That will help to make good economical decisions when in a crunch. Resources are always limited - but requirements are a bottomless ocean. Aspects of Security of Investment Functionality and Quality are traditionally the requirement aspects cared for most - by customers and developers alike. Even today, when pressure rises in a project, tunnel vision will focus on them. Any measures to create and hold up Security of Investment (SoI) will be out of the window pretty quickly. Resistance to customers and/or management is futile. As long as SoI is not placed on equal footing with Functionality and Quality it´s bound to suffer under pressure. To look closer at what SoI means will help to become more conscious about it and make customers and management aware of the risks of neglecting it. SoI to me has two facets: Production Efficiency (PE) is about speed of delivering value. Customers like short response times. Short response times mean less money spent. So whatever makes software development faster supports this requirement. This must not lead to duct tape programming and banging out features by the dozen, though. Because customers don´t just want Operations and Quality, but also Correctness. So if Correctness gets compromised by focussing too much on Production Efficiency it will fire back. Customers want PE not just today, but over the whole course of a software´s lifecycle. That means, it´s not just about coding speed, but equally about code quality. If code quality leads to rework the PE is on an unsatisfactory level. Also if code production leads to waste it´s unsatisfactory. Because the effort which went into waste could have been used to produce value. Rework and waste cost money. Rework and waste abound, however, as long as PE is not addressed explicitly with management and customers. Thanks to the Agile and Lean movements that´s increasingly the case. Nevertheless more could and should be done in many teams. Each and every developer should keep in mind that Production Efficiency is as important to the customer as Functionality and Quality - whether he/she states it or not. Making software development more efficient is important - but still sooner or later even agile projects are going to hit a glas ceiling. At least as long as they neglect the second SoI facet: Evolvability. Delivering correct high quality functionality in short cycles today is good. But not just any software structure will allow this to happen for an indefinite amount of time.[1] The less explicitly software was designed the sooner it´s going to get stuck. Big ball of mud, monolith, brownfield, legacy code, technical debt… there are many names for software structures that have lost the ability to evolve, to be easily changed to accomodate new requirements. An evolvable code base is the opposite of a brownfield. It´s code which can be easily understood (by developers with sufficient domain expertise) and then easily changed to accomodate new requirements. Ideally the costs of adding feature X to an evolvable code base is independent of when it is requested - or at least the costs should only increase linearly, not exponentially.[2] Clean Code, Agile Architecture, and even traditional Software Engineering are concerned with Evolvability. However, it seems no systematic way of achieving it has been layed out yet. TDD + SOLID help - but still… When I look at the design ability reality in teams I see much room for improvement. As stated previously, SoI - or to be more precise: Evolvability - can hardly be measured. Plus the customer rarely states an explicit expectation with regard to it. That´s why I think, special care must be taken to not neglect it. Postponing it to some large refactorings should not be an option. Rather Evolvability needs to be a core concern for every single developer day. This should not mean Evolvability is more important than any of the other requirement aspects. But neither is it less important. That´s why more effort needs to be invested into it, to bring it on par with the other aspects, which usually are much more in focus. In closing As you see, requirements are of quite different kinds. To not take that into account will make it harder to understand the customer, and to make economic decisions. Those sub-aspects of requirements are forces pulling in different directions. To improve performance might have an impact on Evolvability. To increase Production Efficiency might have an impact on security etc. No requirement aspect should go unchecked when deciding how to allocate resources. Balancing should be explicit. And it should be possible to trace back each decision to a requirement. Why is there a null-check on parameters at the start of the method? Why are there 5000 LOC in this method? Why are there interfaces on those classes? Why is this functionality running on the threadpool? Why is this function defined on that class? Why is this class depending on three other classes? These and a thousand more questions are not to mean anything should be different in a code base. But it´s important to know the reason behind all of these decisions. Because not knowing the reason possibly means waste and having decided suboptimally. And how do we ensure to balance all requirement aspects? That needs practices and transparency. Practices means doing things a certain way and not another, even though that might be possible. We´re dealing with dangerous tools here. Like a knife is a dangerous tool. Harm can be done if we use our tools in just any way at the whim of the moment. Over the centuries rules and practices have been established how to use knifes. You don´t put them in peoples´ legs just because you´re feeling like it. You hand over a knife with the handle towards the receiver. You might not even be allowed to cut round food like potatos or eggs with it. The same should be the case for dangerous tools like object-orientation, remote communication, threads etc. We need practices to use them in a way so requirements are balanced almost automatically. In addition, to be able to work on software as a team we need transparency. We need means to share our thoughts, to work jointly on mental models. So far our tools are focused on working with code. Testing frameworks, build servers, DI containers, intellisense, refactoring support… That´s all nice and well. I don´t want to miss any of that. But I think it´s not enough. We´re missing mental tools, tools for making thinking and talking about software (independently of code) easier. You might think, enough of such tools already exist like all those UML diagram types or Flow Charts. But then, isn´t it strange, hardly any team is using them to design software? Or is that just due to a lack of education? I don´t think so. It´s a matter value/weight ratio: the current mental tools are too heavy weight compared to the value they deliver. So my conclusion is, we need lightweight tools to really be able to balance requirements. Software development is complex. We need guidance not to forget important aspects. That´s like with flying an airplane. Pilots don´t just jump in and take off for their destination. Yes, there are times when they are “flying by the seats of their pants”, when they are just experts doing thing intuitively. But most of the time they are going through honed practices called checklist. See “The Checklist Manifesto” for very enlightening details on this. Maybe then I should say it like this: We need more checklists for the complex businss of software development.[3] But that´s what software development mostly is about: changing software over an unknown period of time. It needs to be corrected in order to finally provide promised operations. It needs to be enhanced to provide ever more operations and qualities. All this without knowing when it´s going to stop. Probably never - until “maintainability” hits a wall when the technical debt is too large, the brownfield too deep. Software development is not a sprint, is not a marathon, not even an ultra marathon. Because to all this there is a foreseeable end. Software development is like continuously and foreever running… ? And sometimes I dare to think that costs could even decrease over time. Think of it: With each feature a software becomes richer in functionality. So with each additional feature the chance of there being already functionality helping its implementation increases. That should lead to less costs of feature X if it´s requested later than sooner. X requested later could stand on the shoulders of previous features. Alas, reality seems to be far from this despite 20+ years of admonishing developers to think in terms of reusability.[1] ? Please don´t get me wrong: I don´t want to bog down the “art” of software development with heavyweight practices and heaps of rules to follow. The framework we need should be lightweight. It should not stand in the way of delivering value to the customer. It´s purpose is even to make that easier by helping us to focus and decreasing waste and rework. ?

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 1 2 3