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• Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner's Guide

  Build enterprise-ready business applications with Silverlight An introduction to building enterprise-ready business applications with Silverlight quickly. Get hold of the basic tools and skills needed to get started in Silverlight application development. Integrate different media types, taking the RIA experience further with Silverlight, and much more! Rapidly manage business focused controls, data, and business logic connectivity. A suite of business applications will be built over the course of the book and all examples will be geared around real-world useful application developments, enabling .NET developers to focus on getting started in business application development using Silverlight. In Detail Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plug-in that enables features including animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback--features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight makes possible the development of RIA applications in familiar .NET languages such as C# and VB.NET. Silverlight is a great (and growing) Line of Business platform and is increasingly being used to build business applications. Silverlight 3 made a big step in LOB; Silverlight 4 builds upon this further. This book will enable .NET developers to feel the pulse of business application development with Silverlight quickly. This book is not a general Silverlight 3/4 overview book. It is uniquely aimed at developers who require an introduction to building business applications with Silverlight. This book will focus on building a suite of real-world, useful business applications in a practical hands-on approach. This book is for .Net developers, providing the answers to many questions that are encountered when creating business applications in Silverlight, ultimately enabling rapid development with ease! This book teaches you how to build business applications with Silverlight 3 and 4. Building a suite of applications, it begins by introducing you to the basic tools and skills needed to get started in Silverlight development. It then dives deeply into the world of business application development, covering all the required concepts needed to build sophisticated business applications and provide a rich user experience. Chapters include: building a public website, adding rich media to the website, incorporating RIA into your website, and among others. By following the practical steps in this book, you will learn what's needed to create rich business applications--from the creation of a Silverlight application, to enhancing your application with rich media and connecting your Silverlight application to various Data Sources. What you will learn from this book Learn the basic tools and skills needed to get started in Silverlight 4 business application development. Discover how to enhance your Silverlight business applications with rich data such as sound and video. Know when and how to customize your data in Silverlight using important data controls. Understand how your Silverlight business applications can connect to various Data Sources. Deliver your Silverlight business application in a variety of forms.   Interesting? Read the chapter 1 Getting Started for free!! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• A Reusable Builder Class for .NET testing

  - by Liam McLennan

  When writing tests, other than end-to-end integration tests, we often need to construct test data objects. Of course this can be done using the class’s constructor and manually configuring the object, but to get many objects into a valid state soon becomes a large percentage of the testing effort. After many years of painstakingly creating builders for each of my domain objects I have finally become lazy enough to bother to write a generic, reusable builder class for .NET. To use it you instantiate a instance of the builder and configuring it with a builder method for each class you wish it to be able to build. The builder method should require no parameters and should return a new instance of the type in a default, valid state. In other words the builder method should be a Func<TypeToBeBuilt>. The best way to make this clear is with an example. In my application I have the following domain classes that I want to be able to use in my tests: public class Person { public string Name { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } public bool IsAndroid { get; set; } } public class Building { public string Street { get; set; } public Person Manager { get; set; } } The builder for this domain is created like so: build = new Builder(); build.Configure(new Dictionary<Type, Func<object>> { {typeof(Building), () => new Building {Street = "Queen St", Manager = build.A<Person>()}}, {typeof(Person), () => new Person {Name = "Eugene", Age = 21}} }); Note how Building depends on Person, even though the person builder method is not defined yet. Now in a test I can retrieve a valid object from the builder: var person = build.A<Person>(); If I need a class in a customised state I can supply an Action<TypeToBeBuilt> to mutate the object post construction: var person = build.A<Person>(p => p.Age = 99); The power and efficiency of this approach becomes apparent when your tests require larger and more complex objects than Person and Building. When I get some time I intend to implement the same functionality in Javascript and Ruby. Here is the full source of the Builder class: public class Builder { private Dictionary<Type, Func<object>> defaults; public void Configure(Dictionary<Type, Func<object>> defaults) { this.defaults = defaults; } public T A<T>() { if (!defaults.ContainsKey(typeof(T))) throw new ArgumentException("No object of type " + typeof(T).Name + " has been configured with the builder."); T o = (T)defaults[typeof(T)](); return o; } public T A<T>(Action<T> customisation) { T o = A<T>(); customisation(o); return o; } }

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• How to introduce a computer illiterate 50-year old to programming [closed]

  - by sunday

  The other day my dad asked me a question that I would have never expected from him. "How can I learn C++?" My dad is turning 56 this year and computers are a distant concept for him. He doesn't know how to use a phone very well besides calling numbers (no speed dial or contacts); though he has started to learn computers a little better - to the point that he knows how to open the internet (in Windows) and browse around (and has successfully completed several job applications entirely on his own online, of which he was offered positions too). But still, these are too narrow-windowed experiences to mean much, really. While he may not have the background, my dad knows how to read. And I mean reading as a skill, not just an ability. He has little to no college education (financial problems, family, etc.) and was fortunate enough to finish high school, but still taught himself to become a master electrician and has been one for almost 30 years now. He did the same with guitar, learning to play at a very professional level and has been praised for his skill. In high school, he picked up a weight lifting book - and was the only person in his high school at the time to qualify officially as an "athlete" by national standards. In all cases, he just needed something to read. Something to teach him. He absorbs information like a sponge. I have no doubt in my dad's motivation or capability of doing this, so my general goal is simply: Get my dad into the world of computers, and get him on the road to programming. I strongly believe that once I get him through the fundamentals, his drive and reading skill will keep him going on this own. So I'm asking you all: where should I start with all this? And what are the best resources out there? Should I get him to start Linux instead of Windows? Is C++ a bad idea? Remember, he needs to (IMO) learn computers first, and then get that first grasp (the "Hello world" experience) of programming. For money's sake and at top preference, I'd like free online resources that he can read, but by all means any good suggestions in print or paid-for-online are welcome (that I could possibly look into later to purchase). And also, I intend to start him off with C++ (no Python, Java, etc.), because I know it the best and will be able to help him along the way with code. (I have minimal knowledge right now in other languages). Edit: I'm getting a lot of persistent suggestions to use Python. The only reason I wanted to do C++ is that I KNOW it and can be THERE when my dad needs help. My VERY FIRST exposure to programming ever was Java. I learned Java, and I got good at it. I open to other suggestions, but please provide an effective application of your suggestions. EDIT #2: I understand my approach/thinking/knowledge could be lacking here. I'm a sophomore level undergraduate CS major. If you don't agree with anything in my post, tell me why - give me ideas, information - that's why I'm asking in the first place. To narrow down my general goal to specific reachable goals.

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• Text mining on large database (data mining)

  - by yox

  Hello, I have a large database of resumes (CV), and a certain table skills grouping all users skills. inside that table there's a field skill_text that describes the skill in full text. I'm looking for an algorithm/software/method to extract significant terms/phrases from that table in order to build a new table with standarized skills.. Here are some examples skills extracted from the DB : Sectoral and competitive analysis Business Development (incl. in international settings) Specific structure and road design software - Microstation, Macao, AutoCAD (basic knowledge) Creative work (Photoshop, In-Design, Illustrator) checking and reporting back on campaign progress organising and attending events and exhibitions Development : Aptana Studio, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, AJAX Discipline: One to one marketing, E-marketing (SEO & SEA, display, emailing, affiliate program) Mix marketing, Viral Marketing, Social network marketing. The output shoud be something like : Sectoral and competitive analysis Business Development Specific structure and road design software - Macao AutoCAD Photoshop In-Design Illustrator organising events Development Aptana Studio PHP HTML CSS JavaScript SQL AJAX Mix marketing Viral Marketing Social network marketing emailing SEO One to one marketing As you see only skills remains no other representation text. I know this is possible using text mining technics but how to do it ? the database is realy large.. it's a good thing because we can calculate text frequency and decide if it's a real skill or just meaningless text... The big problem is .. how to determin that "blablabla" is a skill ? thanks

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• how to build xml schema

  - by aman

  is there any tool that support xml schema building

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• Any alternative or other option for anchor point in cocos2d ?

  - by Srinivas

  I have game application (cocos2d) in which, a ball is to be shooted from a cannon, this ball travels through a trajectory path and land on a building. Now the problem is that according to the requirement I have to increase the size of the background image due to which I have to set the Building image with anchor point now I have to put fire image on the building dynamically on different window locations, for this should I use same anchor point option or there are some alternative options to accomplish this task.

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• custom Sync Provider and webservices

  - by Bee gud

  Hi any tip about building a custom sync provider that works through webservices (no WCF)

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• Website url whitelists

  - by buggedcom

  I'm building a user content parser and am adding an automatic link parser. I'm adding a dialogue, that confirms that the user wants to go to the particular site being linked to. This is for two reasons. Anti phishing and spam combating. However I want to be able to disable both the dialogue and nofollow additions with commonly used websites, so I'm building a whitelist. Are there any common whitelists about or should I start building one from scratch?

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• Need simple advice for graph solving problem

  - by sap

  Hi there, a collegue of mine proposed to me an exercise from an online judge website, which is basically a graph solving problem of an evacuation plan on a small town. i dont need the answer (nor do i want it) i just need an advice on which is the best approach to solving it since im kinda new to these kind of problems. the problem consists of town buildings with workers and fallout shelters in case of a nuclear attack. i have to build an algorithm that will assign the workers of each building to one or more fallout shelters but in a way that some shelters wont became too overcrowded while others remain almost empty (else i would just make the workers go to the nearest one). the problem is this: http://acm.timus.ru/problem.aspx?space=1&num=1237 in case its offline heres the google cached version of it: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t2EPCzezs7AJ:acm.timus.ru/problem.aspx%3Fspace%3D1%26num%3D1237+vladimir+kotov+evacuation+problem&cd=1&hl=pt-PT&ct=clnk&gl=pt what i've done so far is for each building get the nearest shelter and move the number of workers from that build equal to the shelter capacity. then move to the next building. but sometimes the number of workers is greater than the shelter capacity, in that case after i iterate through every building, ill just iterate then again apllying the same algorithm until every building has 0 workers in it, problem is this is hardly the best way to solve it. any tip is welcome, please dont feel like im asking for the answer, i just want an advice in the right direction of solving it. thanks in advance.

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• SQL Server 2005 Create Table with Column Default value range

  - by Matt

  Trying to finish up some homework and ran into a issue for creating tables. How do you declare a column default for a range of numbers. Its reads: "Column Building (default to 1 but can be 1-10)" I can't seem to find ...or know where to look for this information. CREATE TABLE tblDepartment ( Department_ID int NOT NULL IDENTITY, Department_Name varchar(255) NOT NULL, Division_Name varchar(255) NOT NULL, City varchar(255) default 'spokane' NOT NULL, Building int default 1 NOT NULL, Phone varchar(255) ) I tried Building int default 1 Between 1 AND 10 NOT NULL, that didn't work out I tried Building int default 1-10, the table was created but I don't think its correct.

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• not able to run c/cpp execs in eclipse cdt

  - by user1658323

  i installed eclipse and then cdt on an ubuntu system recently and was trying to make the first runnable c/c++ proj.. i installed g++ also, and then created the first executable cpp 'Hello World' project some files are created... then some issues... 1) even though Build Automatically is selected, I have to goto the project n do a Build Project to build it manually, and this i have to do everytime i make a change 2) After Building manually, there are some new folders created with Binaries and Debug files and i can see g++ commands in the console being executed. The project binary is output both to debug n binaries folder. But i am not able to run these through the Green Play Button or any other way in eclipse. Even Run configuration is not showing any option for c/C++ proj.. though i can goto terminal and run the binary myself through ./ But i want to be able to run n debug this through eclipse. plz help in fixing me this problem as i really love eclipse n have some c/cpp assignments coming soon.. Console info on doing a manual project build - Build of configuration Debug for project qwe ** make all Building file: ../src/qwe.cpp Invoking: GCC C++ Compiler g++ -O0 -g3 -Wall -c -fmessage-length=0 -MMD -MP -MF"src/qwe.d" -MT"src/qwe.d" -o "src/qwe.o" "../src/qwe.cpp" Finished building: ../src/qwe.cpp Building target: qwe Invoking: GCC C++ Linker g++ -o "qwe" ./src/qwe.o Finished building target: qwe Build Finished **

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• Monodroid and CI-Servers

  - by Tobias Schittkowski

  I would like to automate my test and release process of my Monodroid app via Jenkins. I found some infos for using Jenkins with "normal" Android projects: https://jenkins-ci.org/content/getting-started-building-android-apps-hudson http://androiddevresources.com/blog/2012/04/01/building-an-android-app-with-jenkins/ Has anyone experience on building a Monodroid app on Jenkins and running nunit tests? Are there some ready-to-modify scripts?

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• Explanation of output

  - by Anon

  My program class Building { Building() { System.out.print("b "); } Building(String name) { this(); System.out.print("bn " + name); } }; public class House extends Building { House() { System.out.print("h "); // this is line# 1 } House(String name) { this(); // This is line#2 System.out.print("hn " + name); } public static void main(String[] args) { new House("x "); } } We know that compiler will write a call to super() as the first line in the child class's constructor. Therefore should not the output be: b (call from compiler written call to super(), before line#2 b (again from compiler written call to super(),before line#1 ) h hn x But the output is b h hn x Why is that?

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• Making a Case For The Command Line

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty.  In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application  (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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• Does software architect/designer require more skills and intellectual than software engineer (implementation)?

  - by Amumu

  So I heard the positions for designing software and writing spec for developers to implement are higher and getting paid more. I think many companies are using the Software Engineering title to depict the person to implement software, which means using tools and technologies to write the actual code. I know that in order to be a software architecture, one needs to be good at implementation in order to have an architectural overview of a system using a set of specific technologies. This is different than I thought of a Software Engineer. My thinking is similar to the standard of IEEE: A software engineer is an engineer who is capable of going from requirement analysis until the software is deployed, based on the SWEBOK (IEEE). Just look at the table of content. The IEEE even has the certificate for Software Engineering, since ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) seems to not have an official qualification test for Software Engineer (although IEEE is a member of ABET). The two certificates are CSDA and CSDP. I intend to take on these two examination in the future to be qualified as a software engineer, although I am already working as one (Junior position). On a side note on the issues of Software Engineer, you can read the dicussion here: Just a Programmer and Just a Software Engineer. The information of ABET does not accredit Software Engineer is in "Just a Software Engineer". On the other hand, why is Programmer/Softwar Engineer who writes code considered a low level position? Suppose if two people have equal skills after the same years of experience, one becomes a software architect and one keeps focus on implementation aspect of Software Engineering (of course he also has design skill to compose a system, since he's a software engineer as well, but maybe less than the specialized software architect), how comes work from Software Engineer is less complicated than the Software Architect? In order to write great code with turn design into reality, it requires far greater skill than just understanding a particular language and a framework. I don't think the ones who wrote and contributing Linux OS are lower level job and easier than conceptual design and writing spec. Can someone enlighten me?

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• How to evaluate the quality of Rails code?

  - by Fortuity

  In a code review, what do you look for to assess a developer's expertise? Given an opportunity to look at a developer's work on a real-world project, what tell-tale signs are a tip-off to carelessness or lack of experience? Conversely, where do you look in the code to find evidence of a developer's skill or knowledge of best practices? For example, if I'm looking at a typical Rails app, I would be happy to see the developer is using RSpec (showing a commitment to using test-driven development and knowledge that RSpec is currently more popular than the default TestUnit). But in examining the specs for a Rails model, I see that the developer is testing associations, which might indicate a lack of real understanding of Rails testing requirements (since such tests are redundant given that they only test what's already implemented and tested in ActiveRecord). More generally, I might look to see if developers are writing their own implementations versus using widely available gems or if they are cleaning up code versus leaving lots of commented-out "leftovers." What helps you determine the skill of a Rails developer? What's your code quality checklist?

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• MBA versus MSIS

  - by user794684

  I am considering going back to school for my masters and I've been looking at several avenues I can take. I've been considering either an MBA or an MSIS degree. Overall I know that an MBA is going to give me a solid skill set that can help me become an executive. However they seem to be a dime a dozen these days and the University I can get into is good, but it's not exactly in the top 100 anything. My undergrad MINOR was in Business Information Systems. I'm rusty as hell, considering I haven't touched it, but an MSIS would be more in the direction of my past academic experience and seems to touch both on business management and IT. Question... With an MSIS will I just be a middleman? Will I really be an important person with a real skill set or will I merely be someone who isn't quite cut out to be a manager and who is clueless about the tech side? Is an MSIS degree going to give me a real chance to move up the pay scale quickly or am I better off learning programing, networking through another BS degree? What will give me more upward mobility career wise? An MBA or an MSIS?

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• May I know what python is great at [on hold]

  - by user108437

  I am amazed by python on how tidy the code is, so i decided to learn it, and 2 days pass and I am completely in love with python, but I just code it for hobby thing like chatting robot, uploading to file hosting scripts, etc that small tools for my own daily internet life, and not much for work. I can't find a real life usage of python here. I live in Singapore, when I see in the job skill needed, from those companies hiring, only one asking for python. so I begin to be doubtful whether this skill of mine really worth my time investing it? I also heard about django, and don't know how much popular it is comparing to asp.net. So i ask your help to tell me your country and how popular python there and whether you like python or not? I really like python because of the easy scripting language (not complicated like C++) but the usefulness is almost near C++ where many open source library out there that can run both in windows and linux, so the portability is great! i just want to justify my time for learning python, as because my job does not require python, and I don't have much time at home to learn something new.

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• Ruby but not Rails on my Resume

  - by Ken Bloom

  I have listed Ruby as a skill on my resume becuase I've been programming in Ruby for 5 years while I work on my Ph.D. thesis. I've mostly been using it to implement natural language processing algorithms. I'm starting to look for a job, and I posted my resume to a few sites (as an extra bonus when applying to certain on-target jobs). Now I get recruiters calling me to offer me Ruby on Rails jobs. The problem is that I've never learned Rails. It was never relevant to what I'm doing for my Ph.D. How do you recommend handling this situation to avoid wasting my time and theirs? (And learning Rails probably isn't an option until I finish my thesis.) Can my resume be adjusted to make this clearer? Should it be adjusted? Should I just politely tell them on the phone that I don't know Rails? By the way, the relevant part of my resume simply says: Skills: Programming Languages: C, C++, Java, Scala, Ruby, LaTeX Databases: MySQL, XML, XPath and lists a few other skill areas that couldn't possibly be confused with a Rails developer.

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• How to evaluate the quality of Rails code?

  - by Fortuity

  In a code review, what do you look for to assess a developer's expertise? Given an opportunity to look at a developer's work on a real-world project, what tell-tale signs are a tip-off to carelessness or lack of experience? Conversely, where do you look in the code to find evidence of a developer's skill or knowledge of best practices? For example, if I'm looking at a typical Rails app, I would be happy to see the developer is using RSpec (showing a commitment to using test-driven development and knowledge that RSpec is currently more popular than the default TestUnit). But in examining the specs for a Rails model, I see that the developer is testing associations, which might indicate a lack of real understanding of Rails testing requirements (since such tests are redundant given that they only test what's already implemented and tested in ActiveRecord). More generally, I might look to see if developers are writing their own implementations versus using widely available gems or if they are cleaning up code versus leaving lots of commented-out "leftovers." What helps you determine the skill of a Rails developer? What's your code quality checklist?

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• SAF Architecture Evaluation Evaluation in Code

  In I said there are two approaches to evaluating a software architecture. This post talks about the first approach – evaluating an architecture in code.POCsThe first evaluation-by-code tool is theProof of Concept (POC for short). Building a POC is about building a minimal amount of code implementinga focused area of the architecture or the architecture’stechnology [...]...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Forget Page Rank - Readers Are Far More Long Term

  For a blog or website to succeed you need more than just a good Page Rank - you need a loyal following of readers. If you concentrate only on building your Page Rank, you are building your website to fail. Instead, bear in mind ways of increasing your readership.

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• March 2010 Meeting of Israel Dot Net Developers User Group (IDNDUG)

  - by Jackie Goldstein

  Note the special date of this meeting - Wednesday March 24, 2010 For our March 2010 meeting of the Israel Dot Net Developers User Group we have the opportunity for a special meeting with Brad Abrams from Microsoft Corp, who will in Israel for the Developer Academy 4 event. Our user group meeting will be held on Wednesday March 24, 2010 .   This meeting will focus on building Line of Business applications with Silverlight 4, RIA Services and VS2010. Abstract: Building Business Applications...(read more)

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• Java Cloud and Developer Service

  - by JuergenKress

  At our WebLogic Community Workspace (WebLogic Community membership required) you can find the latest Java and Developer Cloud presentations and demos: General+Session-+Building+and+Managing+a+Private+Oracle+Java Experiences-building-JavaEE-based-PaaS-Platform_Compressed.ppt Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Demo.zip WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: Oracle cloud,Cloud,Java Cloud,Oracle developer cloud,Java as a service,Oracle PAAS,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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