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• Adaptive Case Management – Exposing the API – part 1 by Roger Goossens

  - by JuergenKress

  One of the most important building blocks of Adaptive Case Management is the ACM API. At one point or another you’re gonna need a way to get information (think about a list of stakeholders, available activities, milestones reached, etc.) out of the case. Since there’s no webservice available yet that exposes the internals of the case, your only option right now is the ACM API. ACM evangelist Niall Commiskey has put some samples online to give you a good feeling of the power of the ACM API. The examples show how you can access the API by means of RMI. You first need to obtain a BPMServiceClientFactory that gives access to the important services you’ll mostly be needing, i.e. the IBPMUserAuthenticationService (needed for obtaining a valid user context) and the ICaseService (the service that exposes all important case information). Now, obtaining an instance of the BPMServiceClientFactory involves some boilerplate coding in which you’ll need the RMI url and user credentials: Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: ACM,API,Adaptive Case Management,Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Advantages of using pure JavaScript over JQuery

  - by Shivan Dragon

  What are the advantages of using Javascript-only versus using JQuery-only? I have limited experience with JavaScript and JQuery coding. I've added bits and snippets of each to HTML pages but I've mostly coded server-side stuff in other languages. I've noticed that while you can theoretically do the same things using either of the two approaches (and of course you can even mix 'em up in the same project) there seems to be a tendency to always start using JQuery from the very beginning no-matter what the project demands are. So I'm simply wondering, are there any punctual benefits to not use JQuery-only but instead to just use plain old JavaScript? I know this looks like a non-question because it can be said about it that "there's no definite answer" or "it can be debated for ever", but I'm actually hoping for punctual answers such as "You can do this in one approach and you cannot do it with the other". ==EDIT== As per scrwtp's comment, I'm not referring just to the DOM Handling part. My question is rather: JQuery is a library. For Javascript. What I find strange about this library as opposed to other libraries for other languages is that in JQyery's case it seems to be designed to be able to use it exclusively and not need to touch Javascript directly. This is as opposed to let's say Hibernate and SQL, where even though the library (or rather framework in this case, but I think the analogy still applies) takes the handle on A LOT of aspects, you still get to use SQL when using it, at least for some fringe cases. However in JQuery & Javascript case, you could do anything you do with Javascript using only JQuery (or at least that's how it seems to me).

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• Evil DRY

  - by StefanSteinegger

  DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) is a basic software design and coding principle. But there is just no silver bullet. While DRY should increase maintainability by avoiding common design mistakes, it could lead to huge maintenance problems when misunderstood. The root of the problem is most probably that many developers believe that DRY means that any piece of code that is written more then once should be made reusable. But the principle is stated as "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system." So the important thing here is "knowledge". Nobody ever said "every piece of code". I try to give some examples of misusing the DRY principle. Code Repetitions by Coincidence There is code that is repeated by pure coincidence. It is not the same code because it is based on the same piece of knowledge, it is just the same by coincidence. It's hard to give an example of such a case. Just think about some lines of code the developer thinks "I already wrote something similar". Then he takes the original code, puts it into a public method, even worse into a base class where none had been there before, puts some weird arguments and some if or switch statements into it to support all special cases and calls this "increasing maintainability based on the DRY principle". The resulting "reusable method" is usually something the developer not even can give a meaningful name, because its contents isn't anything specific, it is just a bunch of code. For the same reason, nobody will really understand this piece of code. Typically this method only makes sense to call after some other method had been called. All the symptoms of really bad design is evident. Fact is, writing this kind of "reusable methods" is worse then copy pasting! Believe me. What will happen when you change this weird piece of code? You can't say what'll happen, because you can't understand what the code is actually doing. So better don't touch it anymore. Maintainability just died. Of course this problem is with any badly designed code. But because the developer tried to make this method as reusable as possible, large parts of the system get dependent on it. Completely independent parts get tightly coupled by this common piece of code. Changing on the single common place will have effects anywhere in the system, a typical symptom of too tight coupling. Without trying to dogmatically (and wrongly) apply the DRY principle, you just had a system with a weak design. Now you get a system which just can't be maintained anymore. So what can you do against it? When making code reusable, always identify the generally reusable parts of it. Find the reason why the code is repeated, find the common "piece of knowledge". If you have to search too far, it's probably not really there. Explain it to a colleague, if you can't explain or the explanation is to complicated, it's probably not worth to reuse. If you identify the piece of knowledge, don't forget to carefully find the place where it should be implemented. Reusing code is never worth giving up a clean design. Methods always need to do something specific. If you can't give it a simple and explanatory name, you did probably something weird. If you can't find the common piece of knowledge, try to make the code simpler. For instance, if you have some complicated string or collection operations within this code, write some general-purpose operations into a helper class. If your code gets simple enough, its not so bad if it can't be reused. If you are not able to find anything simple and reasonable, copy paste it. Put a comment into the code to reference the other copies. You may find a solution later. Requirements Repetitions by Coincidence Let's assume that you need to implement complex tax calculations for many countries. It's possible that some countries have very similar tax rules. These rules are still completely independent from each other, since every country can change it of its own. (Assumed that this similarity is actually by coincidence and not by political membership. There might be basic rules applying to all European countries. etc.) Let's assume that there are similarities between an Asian country and an African country. Moving the common part to a central place will cause problems. What happens if one of the countries changes its rules? Or - more likely - what happens if users of one country complain about an error in the calculation? If there is shared code, it is very risky to change it, even for a bugfix. It is hard to find requirements to be repeated by coincidence. Then there is not much you can do against the repetition of the code. What you really should consider is to make coding of the rules as simple as possible. So this independent knowledge "Tax Rules in Timbuktu" or wherever should be as pure as possible, without much overhead and stuff that does not belong to it. So you can write every independent requirement short and clean. DRYing try-catch and using Blocks This is a technical issue. Blocks like try-catch or using (e.g. in C#) are very hard to DRY. Imagine a complex exception handling, including several catch blocks. When the contents of the try block as well as the contents of the individual catch block are trivial, but the whole structure is repeated on many places in the code, there is almost no reasonable way to DRY it. try { // trivial code here using (Thingy thing = new thingy) { //trivial, but always different line of code } } catch(FooException foo) { // trivial foo handling } catch (BarException bar) { // trivial bar handling } catch { // trivial common handling } finally { // trivial finally block } The key here is that every block is trivial, so there is nothing to just move into a separate method. The only part that differs from case to case is the line of code in the body of the using block (or any other block). The situation is especially interesting if the many occurrences of this structure are completely independent: they appear in classes with no common base class, they don't aggregate each other and so on. Let's assume that this is a common pattern in service methods within the whole system. Examples of Evil DRYing in this situation: Put a if or switch statement into the method to choose the line of code to execute. There are several reasons why this is not a good idea: The close coupling of the formerly independent implementation is the strongest. Also the readability of the code and the use of a parameter to control the logic. Put everything into a method which takes a delegate as argument to call. The caller just passes his "specific line of code" to this method. The code will be very unreadable. The same maintainability problems apply as for any "Code Repetition by Coincidence" situations. Enforce a base class to all the classes where this pattern appears and use the template method pattern. It's the same readability and maintainability problem as above, but additionally complex and tightly coupled because of the base class. I would call this "Inheritance by Coincidence" which will not lead to great software design. What can you do against it: Ideally, the individual line of code is a call to a class or interface, which could be made individual by inheritance. If this would be the case, it wouldn't be a problem at all. I assume that it is no such a trivial case. Consider to refactor the error concept to make error handling easier. The last but not worst option is to keep the replications. Some pattern of code must be maintained in consistency, there is nothing we can do against it. And no reason to make it unreadable. Conclusion The DRY-principle is an important and basic principle every software developer should master. The key is to identify the "pieces of knowledge". There is code which can't be reused easily because of technical reasons. This requires quite a bit flexibility and creativity to make code simple and maintainable. It's not the problem of the principle, it is the problem of blindly applying a principle without understanding the problem it should solve. The result is mostly much worse then ignoring the principle.

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• Best of OTN - Week of August 10th

  - by CassandraClark-OTN

  Brief pubic service announcement before we get into the OTN community best of content for the week.... Four Bands. Three Epic Nights. Join Oracle for three evenings of entertainment and fun, all during Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne, September 28-October 2, San Francisco. Learn More Architect Community Any discussion of the best of OTN must include the OTN ArchBeat Podcast. Consistently among the top 3 most popular Oracle podcasts, Archbeat focuses on real conversations with community members. Normally I pick the topics and the guest panelists for each program, but now you have a chance to take over that role and become a Guest Producer. In that role you'll pick the discussion topic and the panelists, while I do the all of the grunt work, allowing you to bask in the glory Want to know how to become an OTN ArchBeat Podcast Guest Producer? You'll find the details here: Yes, you can take over the OTN ArchBeat Podcast! And here are two examples of OTN ArchBeat Podcasts produced by community members: Data Warehousing and Oracle Data Integrator, from July 2013, was produced by Oracle ACE Director Gurcan Orhan, and features panelists Uli Bethke , Cameron Lackpour , and Michael Rainey . DevOps, Cloud, and Role Creep, from June 2013, was produced by Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra and features panelists Basheer Khan and Cary Millsap -- OTN Architect Community Manager Bob Rhubart Database Community OTN DBA/DEV Watercooler Blog - Did You Say "JSON Support" in Oracle 12.1.0.2?. -- OTN Database Community Manager Laura Ramsey Java Community The Java Source Blog - walkmod : A Tool to Apply Coding Conventions . Friday Funny: I was worried the #NSA might be spying on me Thanks, @pacohope. -- OTN Java Community Manager Tori Weildt Systems Community The OTN Systems Community HomePage- Find Great Resources for System Admins and Developers. -- OTN Systems Community Manager Rick Ramsey

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• ASP.NET developers turning to Visual WebGui for rich management system

  - by Webgui

  When The Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE) decided they needed a web application to allow easy access to the expenses management system they initially went to ASP.NET web forms combined with CSS. The outcome, however, was not satisfying enough as it appeared bland and lacked in richness. So in order to enrich the UI and give the web application some glitz, Visual WebGui was selected. Visual WebGui provided the needed richness and the familiar Windows look and feel also made the transition for the desktop users very easy. The richer GUI of Visual WebGui compared to ASP.NET conveyed some initial concerns about performance. But the Visual WebGui performance turned out to be a surprising advantage as the website maintained good response times. Working with Visual WebGui required a paradigm shift for the development process as some of the usual methods of coding with ASP.NET did not apply. However, the transition was fairly easy due to the simplicity and intuitiveness of Visual WebGui as well as the good support and documentation. “The shift into a different development paradigm was eased by the Visual WebGui web forums which are very active thanks to a large, involved community. There are also several video and web pages dedicated to answering the most commonly asked questions and pitfalls" Dave Bhatia, Systems Engineer who added "A couple of issues such as deploying on IIS7 seemed to be show stoppers at first, however the solution was readily available in a white paper on the Gizmox website.” The full story is found on the Visual WebGui website: http://www.visualwebgui.com/Gizmox/Resources/CaseStudies/tabid/358/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/964/The-Center-for-Organ-Recovery-Education-gets-a-web-based-expenses-management-system.aspx

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• Coders For Charities

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Last weekend I had the opportunity to give back to the community doing what I love. As geeks we don’t usually have this opportunity. The event is called Coders 4 Charities (C4C) and it’s a grueling weekend of coding for nearly 30 hours over the weekend. When you finish you get to present to the charity and all of the other groups what you have completed. From the site: Coders For Charities is a 3-day charity event that pairs charities and local software developers. Charities often do not have the funds to implement a new website or intranet or database solution. Software developers often do not volunteer for charities because their skills do not apply. This event is the perfect marriage of these two needs; software developers volunteering their time to help charities better serve their community though the latest technology! The actual event was lined with multiple charities and about 50 developers, designers, business analysts, etc, each working with a different charity to come up with a solution that they could implement in less than 3 days. C4C provided a place and food for us so that we wouldn’t have to leave much during the time we had to implement our solution. They also provided games like Rock Band so we could get away and clear our minds for a few moments if necessary. I don’t think we made it down there to play, but the food and drinks were a huge help for us. The charity we we picked was Harvest Home. They had a need for an online intranet site where they could track membership and gardening. Over the next few days we worked on a site we could give them. Below is a screen shot with private data marked out. It was an awesome and humbling experience to be able to give back to a charity and I’m happy I was a part of it. I would definitely do it again. How often do we get to use our abilities to volunteer our time to a charity?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 10, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, January 10, 2011Popular ReleasesSense/Net Enterprise Portal & ECMS: SenseNet 6.0.1 Community Edition for .NET 4: SenseNet 6.0.1 Community Edition for .NET 4 with SQL CE 4.0 This half year we have been working quite fiercely to bring you the long-awaited release of Sense/Net 6.0. Download this Community Edition for .NET 4 Platform to see what we have been up to. These months we have worked on getting the WebCMS capabilities of Sense/Net 6.0 up to par. New features include: New, powerful page and portlet editing experience. HTML and CSS cleanup, new, powerful site skinning system. Upgraded, light...Agile Personal Body Of Knowledge: ????－????，???? v0.2.pdf: ????【????－????，????.pdf】???，?????????????????????????????，???????????，???????。 ??????????，??????????，????????，?????????！ ????sina??：http://q.t.sina.com.cn/135484VSSpeedster - Parallel Builds for VS: VSSpeedster 1.1: - Parallel Builds with MSBuild integrated in Visual StudioBernie's Trackviewer: Bernie's Trackviewer Version 1.2: Redesigned user interface of main form Also displays waypoints which are not part of a track Can convert a route int a track Maximum age of cached maps can be setPeople's Note: People's Note 0.21: Replaced note viewer buttons with a menu bar to improve scrolling performance. Fixed database relocation on low-resolution devices; thanks to compaNet for reporting. Improved signin error messages. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.mytrip.mvc (CMS & e-Commerce): mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 beta2: WEB.mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 Web for install hosting System Requirements: NET 4.0, MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) SRC.mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 System Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 or Web Deweloper 2010 MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) Connector/Net 6.3.5, MVC3 RC WARNING For run and debug SRC.mytrip.mvc 1.0.51.0 download and install MVC3 RC...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.0: 2.3.0This release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Changed how flame shoc...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.3: A message will be displayed when there's an update available Shows a list of recent mastery files in the Editor Tab (requested by quite a few people) Updater: Update information is now scrollable Added a buton to launch AutoLoL after updating is finished Updated the UI to match that of AutoLoL Fix: Detects and resolves 'Read Only' state on Version.xmlHawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor: Hawkeye 1.2.4: [EDIT: 2010/01/10] In the case you are running an x86 Windows; please wait until Release 1.2.5 is made available: Hawkeye is broken on these OS. This is a maintenance release providing bug fixes. It comes in two flavors: Hawkeye.124.N2 is the standard .NET 2 build, was compiled with Visual Studio 2005 and can only inspect .NET 2 applications. Hawkeye.124.N4 is a .NET4 2 build, was compiled with Visual Studio 2010 and can only inspect .NET 4 applications. Please be patient until Release 1.3...Extended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...sNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9d: added elementclient coordinate catcher to catch coordinates select a target (ingame) i.e. your char, npc or monster than click the button and coordinates+direction will be transfered to the selected row in the table corrected labels from Rot to Direction (because it is a vector)Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance..NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...EFMVC - ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: EFMVC 0.5- ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: Demo web app ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code FirstVidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffJson.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...New ProjectsAssimpXna: AssimpXna is a custom model importer for Xna 4.0 using the Open Asset Import Library (Assimp).ATCSim: This is an atc sim for a school projectAzure Role-Based Deployment: Azure Role-Based Deployment demonstrates how to use the CreateDeployment Windows Azure Service Management API to deploy an app from within a web role. This code can easily be ported to a worker role and thus included in the managment pack for a hosted service.CodeKata AltNet Hispano: Ejemplos de Code Kata usados por la comunidad AltNet Hispano.DataStoreCleaner: DataStoreCleaner clears "DataStore" folder which manages Windows Update History. It is useful for fixing WU error, or tune up Windows start-up. It's developed in C#.DS_HW2: dshw2EFT Calculator: EFT Calculator is an application that performs common cryptographic operations used in electronic funds transfer applications.Entity Visualizers: This project has debugger visualizers for several objects in the Entity Framework: EntityObject, EntityCollection, ObjectQuery and ObjectContext. Some of the source code is based on code from Julie Lerman's book "Programming Entity Framework".EzyCMS - Easy and Simple CMS made by ASP.Net MVC: EzyCMS makes both of end user and developer enjoy CMS benefit and extendability to perform requirements. The design principles: EASY TO USE, EASY TO EXTEND, FLEXIBLE AND PWOERFUL TECHNOLOGY: ASP.Net MVC2, NHibernate, StructureMap, JQueryFlatStore: Simple library to simplify storage of application data when a bulky dedicated database is cumbersome and unnecessaryGigantornis: Gigantornis is a tool for benchmarking your Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server. It is designed to give you an impression of how your current server installation performs. This especially shows you how many requests per second your server installation is capable of serving.Gonte.Dal: Data access layer for NETLezatrus: Lezatrus is the open source project to help people find places to eat in Jakarta. It's developed in ASP.NET MVC using Razor and C#. It's the sample app for Pro ASP.NET MVC Coding Ninja facebook group.Moo: Moo is an object-to-object multi-mapper. It is able to use multiple different strategies (in a mix of convention, configuration, attributes and fluent calls) when mapping from one object to another.MvcXaml: A custom View Engine for ASP.NET MVC that allows Controller Action Methods to return dynamically generated images based on XAML markup.Perfect World Bot Development FrameWork: <empty yet>Silverlight motion detection: Motion detection using Silverlight 4 camera support and a simple motion detection algorithm.Small IT Business Manager: Small IT Business Manager is a tool being created keeping small-midsize IT companies in mind to allow them manage their day to day chores. Management Features planned: * Workers * Timesheets * Financial * HR * Basic Project Management * Invoicingsomething for testing: mot do an mau de test cac van de lien quan toi codeStructure Copier: This small program is supposed to copy tree structure of directory.TogNet: A small utility program to toggle between windows network adapters. Needed a program like this to switch between an external Wireless network and the corporate Lan network adapter.

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• Seattle GiveCamp this Weekend

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Seattle GiveCamp is this weekend (October 19, 2012) on the Microsoft Campus. Donate your time and your programming skills to build software applications (mainly websites) for charities. We need you! Go to the following address and sign up to participate right now: http://seattlegivecamp.com/ We have more than 20 charities participating in this year’s GiveCamp and over 100 volunteers. We need people with all sorts of skills including WordPress, design, ASP.NET, SEO, Mobile, and Project Management skills. If you know how to tweak a WordPress theme or you know how to use Adobe Photoshop or you know Salesforce or Microsoft Access then we really, really need you this weekend. This is a great event to network with other developers, show off your ninja programming skills, and help some great charities. Be prepared to show up at Friday night and start working in a team to write some great code. You can stay until Sunday night for the full event or you can leave early (in previous events, some developers did marathon coding sessions for multiple days straight – but those guys are insane). My wife, Ruth Walther, is the director of this year’s GiveCamp. She’ll be there and I’ll be there. I hope to see you at GiveCamp!

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• Dealing With Table Borders In OOXML

  - by Tim Murphy

  Note: Cross posted from Coding The Document. Permalink Formatting tables in a document programmatically can be a very complex task.  This is the major reason which we start our document generation projects with templates instead of building components in a document by hand. Borders are on aspect of a table that you may want to fomat.  Borders are used to make certain content in a table stand out.  If you need to conditionally set and remove borders there is something that you need to be aware of.  Even in OOXML you have the concepts of styles, inheriting styles and overriding styles. When Word defines a table it will reference a global style such as “TableGrid”.  This style will include the borders for the table.  Specifically the InsideHorizontalBorder and InsideVerticalBorder define the borders for the cells.  These can be overridden by the TableCellBorders collection of a particular cell.  Adding a double right border on a cell is as easy as the couple of lines of code below. wordprocessing.TableCellBorders borders = new wordprocessing.TableCellBorders(); borders.RightBorder = new RightBorder(){Val = BorderValues.Double, Color = "000000", ThemeColor = ThemeColorValues.Text1, Size = (UInt32Value)4U, Space = (UInt32Value)0U }; cell.TableCellProperties.Append(borders); If I want to revert back to the table’s style for cell borders I simply need to remove all children from the TableCellBorders collection.  It is like removing a class identifier from a TD tag in HTML.  The style in the parent object takes back over. With the knowledge of how the borders work you can take the concept and apply it to other effects of styles. del.icio.us Tags: OOXML,Office Open XML,Microsoft Office 2007,Microsoft Word 2007,table,style,border

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• Project Manager that wants to lock in time estimate with a signed contract

  - by sunpech

  At a previous employment, a project manager (PM) wasn't satisfied with the delivery time of the code on a project I was on. I was told by my project lead that that the PM was considering having me sign a contract to lock-in my time estimates I gave for tasks and delivery dates. The situation on the project was that we were working with new technologies, codebase, coding standards, and very prone-to-change requirements. I was learning new things and applying them the best I could on requirements that kept on changing. The requirements throughout the iterations grew by 2-3 times, with my estimate-to-complete growing by roughly 5-8 times. The only things that didn't change were the estimates and delivery dates. Yes, I did end up missing most deadlines. And I was working on some very new technologies that no one else on the entire development team could really help out on because they wouldn't be familiar with it. At least not easily. It seemed to me then, that the PM wanted his numbers to add up-- and thus wanted me to sign a contract to "ensure" that I would always deliver working code on time. I suppose with a signed contract the PM could use it against me if I couldn't deliver on time. I believe what happened next was that other project managers and/or project leads defended me, and didn't let this happen. My question is, should this raise a red flag about the manager? Is it common practice for a manager to lock-in time estimates of a software developer with a signed contract? Or in this case, try to. Please note, I was a full time employee, not an independent consultant. Update: I want to add that I did give new estimates weekly, but it seems the original estimates and delivery dates were what the PM was fixated on.

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• Documenting and enforcing programming standards and guidelines for shared library

  - by dreza

  Myself and another developer with the go ahead from our IT director have started a general purpose library in .NET with the intention that it will provide many common purpose classes that we use in our day to day development. During discussions and design of the library we have come up with a set of standards that we want the library to follow to ensure it is maintained and expanded on in a consistent manner. What is the best way to ensure these decisions we made for the library get feed to the other developers who might be using and adding to this library in the future. One of our decisions was to ensure we review all checked in code so we expect initially there to be some differences in coding styles of individuals not fitting in with the project standards. Some ideas I had were: Add a Read-me.txt to the project that outline the guidelines and standards Send an email out to everyone in the team to let them know about the project etc Call a team meeting to go through this new project and our expectations and standards we were aiming to follow Try and enforce the standards via Visual Studio (not sure if this would be possible or how just an idea) At the moment there is no general company programming standards so this would be a first really insofar as we are creating a standard that different project teams would need to adhere to.

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• Adding dynamic business logic/business process checks to a system

  - by Jordan Reiter

  I'm wondering if there is a good extant pattern (language here is Python/Django but also interested on the more abstract level) for creating a business logic layer that can be created without coding. For example, suppose that a house rental should only be available during a specific time. A coder might create the following class: from bizlogic import rules, LogicRule from orders.models import Order class BeachHouseAvailable(LogicRule): def check(self, reservation): house = reservation.house_reserved if not (house.earliest_available < reservation.starts < house.latest_available ) raise RuleViolationWhen("Beach house is available only between %s and %s" % (house.earliest_available, house.latest_available)) return True rules.add(Order, BeachHouseAvailable, name="BeachHouse Available") This is fine, but I don't want to have to code something like this each time a new rule is needed. I'd like to create something dynamic, ideally something that can be stored in a database. The thing is, it would have to be flexible enough to encompass a wide variety of rules: avoiding duplicates/overlaps (to continue the example "You already have a reservation for this time/location") logic rules ("You can't rent a house to yourself", "This house is in a different place from your chosen destination") sanity tests ("You've set a rental price that's 10x the normal rate. Are you sure this is the right price?" Things like that. Before I recreate the wheel, I'm wondering if there are already methods out there for doing something like this.

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• How do I classify using GLCM and SVM Classifier in Matlab?

  - by Gomathi

  I'm on a project of liver tumor segmentation and classification. I used Region Growing and FCM for liver and tumor segmentation respectively. Then, I used Gray Level Co-occurence matrix for texture feature extraction. I have to use Support Vector Machine for Classification. But I don't know how to normalize the feature vectors. Can anyone tell how to program it in Matlab? To the GLCM program, I gave the tumor segmented image as input. Was I correct? If so, I think, then, my output will also be correct. My glcm coding, as far as I have tried is, I = imread('fzliver3.jpg'); GLCM = graycomatrix(I,'Offset',[2 0;0 2]); stats = graycoprops(GLCM,'all') t1= struct2array(stats) I2 = imread('fzliver4.jpg'); GLCM2 = graycomatrix(I2,'Offset',[2 0;0 2]); stats2 = graycoprops(GLCM2,'all') t2= struct2array(stats2) I3 = imread('fzliver5.jpg'); GLCM3 = graycomatrix(I3,'Offset',[2 0;0 2]); stats3 = graycoprops(GLCM3,'all') t3= struct2array(stats3) t=[t1;t2;t3] xmin = min(t); xmax = max(t); scale = xmax-xmin; tf=(x-xmin)/scale Was this a correct implementation? Also, I get an error at the last line. My output is: stats = Contrast: [0.0510 0.0503] Correlation: [0.9513 0.9519] Energy: [0.8988 0.8988] Homogeneity: [0.9930 0.9935] t1 = Columns 1 through 6 0.0510 0.0503 0.9513 0.9519 0.8988 0.8988 Columns 7 through 8 0.9930 0.9935 stats2 = Contrast: [0.0345 0.0339] Correlation: [0.8223 0.8255] Energy: [0.9616 0.9617] Homogeneity: [0.9957 0.9957] t2 = Columns 1 through 6 0.0345 0.0339 0.8223 0.8255 0.9616 0.9617 Columns 7 through 8 0.9957 0.9957 stats3 = Contrast: [0.0230 0.0246] Correlation: [0.7450 0.7270] Energy: [0.9815 0.9813] Homogeneity: [0.9971 0.9970] t3 = Columns 1 through 6 0.0230 0.0246 0.7450 0.7270 0.9815 0.9813 Columns 7 through 8 0.9971 0.9970 t = Columns 1 through 6 0.0510 0.0503 0.9513 0.9519 0.8988 0.8988 0.0345 0.0339 0.8223 0.8255 0.9616 0.9617 0.0230 0.0246 0.7450 0.7270 0.9815 0.9813 Columns 7 through 8 0.9930 0.9935 0.9957 0.9957 0.9971 0.9970 ??? Error using ==> minus Matrix dimensions must agree. The images are:

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• Tools for modelling data and workflows using structured text files

  - by Alexey

  Consider a case when I want to try some idea of an application. But I want to avoid investing a lot of effort in coding UI/work flows/database schema etc before I see that it's going to be useful to me (as example of potential user). My idea is stay lightweight and put all the data in text files. So the components could be following: Domain objects are represented by text files or their fragments Domain objects are grouped by their type using directories Structure the files using some both human- and machine-friendly format, e.g. YAML Use some smart text editor (e.g. vim, emacs, rubymine) to edit and navigate those files Use color schemes and macros/custom commands of the text editor to effectively manipulate those files Use scripts (or a lightweight web framework like Sinatra) to try some business logic ideas on top of the data model The question is: Are there tools or toolkits that support or can be adopted to this approach? Also any ideas, links to articles/other knowledge sources are very welcome. And more specific question: What is the simplest way to index and update index of files with YAML files?

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• Red Gate and the Community

  - by RedAndTheCommunity

  I was lucky enough to join the Communities team in April 2011, having worked in the equally awesome (but more number-crunchy), Finance team at Red Gate for about four years before that. Being totally passionate about Red Gate, and easily excitable, it seems like the perfect place to be. Not only do I get to talk to people who love Red Gate every day, I get to think up new ways to make them love us even more. Red Gate sponsored 178 SQL Server and .NET events and user group meetings in 2011. They ranged from SQL Saturdays and Code Camps to 10 person user group meetings, from California to Krakow. We've given away cash, software, Kindles, and of course swag. The Marketing Cupboard is like a wonderland of Red Gate goodies; it is guarded day and night to make sure the greedy Red Gaters don't pilfer the treasure inside. There are Red Gate yo-yos, books, pens, ice scrapers and, over the Holidays, there were some special bears. We had to double the patrols guarding the cupboard to protect them. You can see why: Over the Holidays, we gave funding and special Holiday swag (including the adorable bears), to 10 lucky user groups, who held Christmas parties - doing everything from theatre trips to going to shooting ranges. What next? So, what about this year? In 2012 our main aim is to be out there meeting more of you. So get ready to see an army of geeks in red t-shirts at your next event! We also want to do more fun things like our Christmas party giveaway. What cool ideas do you have for sponsorship in 2012? An Easter Egg hunt with SQL server clues? A coding competition? A duelling contest with a license of SQL Toolbelt for the winner? Let me know.

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• From .psd to working HTML and CSS - help me suck less

  - by kevinmajor1

  I am not much of a designer. My strength lies in coding. That said, I'm often forced into the role of "The Man," responsible for all aspects of site creation. So, that said I'm wondering if the pros can give me tips/solutions/links to tutorials to my main questions. Resolution. What should I aim for? What are the lower and upper edges I should be aware of? I know that systems like 960 Grid were popular recently. Is that the number I should still aim for? Slicing up a .psd - are there any tricks I should know? I've always found it difficult to get my slices pixel perfect. I'm also really slow at it. I must be looking at it wrong, or missing something fundamental. The same goes for text. Layouts are always filled with the classic "Lorem...", but I can never seem to get real content to fit quite as well on the screen. The advanced (to me, anyway) looking things, like a part of a logo/image overlaying what looks like a content area. How does one do that? How do layouts change/are informed by the decision to go fixed or liquid? Again, any tips/tricks/suggestions/tutorials you can share would be greatly appreciated.

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• Great Debugging skills weak problem solving

  - by Mahmoud

  For the 5 years I worked for various companies, I worked in large software like computer vision kits, embedded, games. I found myself very good at debuggins skills, I've even found and fixed bugs in frameworks and I solved them. The problem is that I'm very weak at problem solving. I got interview with Qualcomm, and they said you're fine at software, but you have a limited problem solving, I also had the same results with Google. I'm very bad at solving puzzles and brain teasers. During the interviews I solve all of the software related problems on the blackboard, but when I went to the GM and face math problems and probabilities, I struggle. How can I improve my problem solving skills? Edit Some of the problems: A cake that is cut from anywhere and needs just one cut to halved in equal. I told him cut it horizontally, he said No, consider it as a 2D Problem!. Consider a concenteric 3 circles, each one can get a color, but not matched with the other circle, how many blobs you can make out of those circles ? this was with the GM ( Augmented Reality SDK) Consider a train, an infinite one, and you looked at the window, and there are two cars, one big, and one small, what is the probability of having only a big car, I said 50%, he said, what if that two cars you dont know their length, and you want to get the probability of getting the biggest one, I struggled, didn't solve it... I was really exahusted after long day of interviews prob of having a number divisible by 5 in numbers from 1 to 100.. struggled!! All coding questions I solved them like reverse a string, detect a cycle in a linked list,..etc.

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• Working with Legacy code #5: The blackhole.

  - by andrewstopford

  Someone creates a class or series of classes for something, the classes are big in size with large complicated methods. The effort is a sea of technical debt for the entire team but in the thick of the daily chaos it is lost. With out the coder talking to the team, with no team code policy and no code reviews (and action points) it remains. Pretty soon the team forget about that code. A few weeks\months\years goes by, some of the team may have left, some may remain but business asks for the team to add to that code. The team is now looking at a black hole, no one knows how it works, what it does, what it is for, it is a smelly hell hole and the deadline is fast approaching. The team now tries to change the code, with no approach at unit tests or refactoring in fear of breaking the black hole the team do just that and the business have just lost money. If you are faced with a black hole you need to look back over my series, even a black hole in what might seem like a clean unit tested application. Don't be fooled into thinking that legacy code does not apply to your code base.  The next stage is don't let blackholes in your codebase. Effective code reviews, team communication and good overal team coding policies will really help. Even if you are faced with a deadline do not let them appear, stop, take stock, what can be done and who can help. If you allow them through they will grow and grow and grow and the technical debt will hit you like a tidal wave soon enough,.  

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• Multithreading in Windows Phone 7 emulator: A bug

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Multithreading is supported in Windows Phone 7 Silverlight applications, however the emulator has a bug (which I discovered and was confirmed to me by the dev lead of the emulator team): If you attempt to start a background thread in the MainPage constructor, the thread never starts. The reason is a problem with the emulator UI thread which doesn’t leave any time to the background thread to start. Thankfully there is a workaround (see code below). Also, the bug should be corrected in a future release, so it’s not a big deal, even though it is really confusing when you try to understand why the *%&^$£% thread is not &$%&%$£ starting (that was me in the plane the other day ;) This code does not work: public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage { public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait | SupportedPageOrientation.Landscape; var counter = 0; ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(o => { while (true) { Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { textBlockListTitle.Text = (counter++).ToString(); }); } }); } } This code does work: public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait | SupportedPageOrientation.Landscape; var counter = 0; ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(o => { while (true) { Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { textBlockListTitle.Text = (counter++).ToString(); }); // NOTICE THIS LINE!!! Thread.Sleep(0); } }); } Note that even if the thread is started in a later event (for example Click of a Button), the behavior without the Thread.Sleep(0) is not good in the emulator. As of now, i would recommend always sleeping when starting a new thread. Happy coding: Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• What ways are there to determine if an idea for change is viable or not?

  - by Kenneth

  A recent discussion on here about whether or not program windows should still be called screens or if we should have improved terminology got me thinking... Dangerous I know! People as a whole tend to be fairly resistant to change. We get comfortable in our niches and used to the way things are. While some changes lead to good results and improve our lives or the way things are done, others are clearly not enough of a change or overall bad and not even worth attempting. What guides can we use as we program to determine if an improvement (whether it be to coding style, terminology, user interface, language use, etc) is really an improvement or not? I'm sure to some extent nothing will replace the try-it-out approach but are there any tests or guides that can be used to eliminate certain ideas that would eventually turn out to be worthless or a waste of time to pursue? EDIT: For anyone who is wondering the discussion that brought this question up in my mind is found here: Does your organization still use the term "screens" to describe a user interface?

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• ADIOS Weblogs

  - by kashyapa

  I have been blogging on Weblogs.asp.net for a while now. I don't remember when actually i got a berth on to Weblogs. I think it was MS Joe – Joe Stagner way back somewhere in 2005 or sometime around that time frame (i don't remember the exact dates) that he had opened up weblogs.asp.net blog space. I remember sending an email to him and i had got a space for myself. So far weblogs has been a great starting platform for me. After close to a decade in the industry (this is my 9 year in the industry) i finally realized that i too can write and i have been lately passionate about writing. So far i just have 15 posts under my belt and close to 5 community speaking sessions. I have been lately enjoying writing and community things that i decided to have my own identity on the web. Yes i have purchased my own domain and i have taken up a hosting for my own blog. My new web identity would be 2 domains under my name – www.kashyapas.com and www.lohithgn.com. I will be discontinuing writing on weblogs.asp.net and will be fulltime at www.kashyapas.com. My RSS feed at weblogs.asp.net has been redirected to point to my new site. So whoever had subscribed to my RSS will still be getting the updated content from my new site. So do drop into my new home and let me know your feedback. As i say always – Happy coding and Code with passion !

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• How To Attach Visual Studio 2010 To IIS Process Running On Windows 7

  - by Gopinath

  Debugging ASP.NET application hosted on IIS 7 running of Windows 7 using Visual Studio 2010 is a bit different from debugging applications hosted on IIS running on Windows XP. The key differences are Visual Studio 2010 demands for administrator mode and IIS runs under the process name w3wp.exe instead of aspnet_wp.exe. Here are the detailed steps to attach Visual Studio 2010 debugger to IIS 7 on Windows 7. 1. Launch Visual Studio 2010 in Administrator mode(right click on Visual Studio Icon and choose the option Run as Administrator) 2. Open source code the site you want to debug 3. Go to Tools -> Attach to Process.; Opens up Attach to Process.  4.  In Attach to Process dialog box, check the option Show process in all sessions. 5. Search for the process w3wp.exe, and click on Attach button. 6. Accept the warning messages. That’s is you are done. Visual Studio is now attached with IIS for debugging. Happy coding. This article titled,How To Attach Visual Studio 2010 To IIS Process Running On Windows 7, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Designing javascript chart library

  - by coolscitist

  I started coding a chart library on top of d3js: My chart library. I read Javascript API reusability and Towards reusable charts. However, I am NOT really following the suggestions because I am not really convinced about them. This is how my library can be used to create a bubble chart: var chart = new XYBubbleChart(); chart.data = [{"xValue":200,"yValue":300},{"xValue":400,"yValue":200},{"xValue":100,"yValue":310}]; //set data chart.dataKey.x = "xValue"; chart.dataKey.y = "yValue"; chart.elementId = "#chart"; chart.createChart(); Here are my questions: It does not use chaining. Is it a big issue? Every property and function is exposed publicly. (Example: width, height are exposed in Chart.js). OOP is all about abstraction and hiding, but I don't really see the point right now. I think exposing everything gives flexibility to change property and functionality inside subclasses and objects without writing a lot of code. What could be pitfalls of such exposure? I have implemented functions like: zooming, "showing info boxes when data point is clicked" as "abilities". (example: XYZoomingAbility.js). Basically, such "abilities" accept "chart" object, play around with public variables of "chart" to add functionality. What this allows me to do is to add an ability by writing: activateZoomAbility(chartObject); My goal is to separate "visualization" from "interactivity". I want "interactivity" like: zooming to be plugged into the chart rather than built inside the chart. Like, I don't want my bubble chart to know anything about "zooming". However, I do want zoomable bubble chart. What is the best way to do this? How to test and what to test? I have written mixed tests: jasmine and actual html files so that I can test manually on browser.

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• How would you refactor nested IF Statements?

  - by saunderl

  I was cruising around the programming blogosphere when I happened upon this post about GOTO's: http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2010/12/programmers-tabu.html Here the writer talks about how "one must come to the conclusion that there are situations where GOTOs make for more readable and more maintainable code" and then goes on to show an example similar to this: if (Check#1) { CodeBlock#1 if (Check#2) { CodeBlock#2 if (Check#3) { CodeBlock#3 if (Check#4) { CodeBlock#4 if (Check#5) { CodeBlock#5 if (Check#6) { CodeBlock#6 if (Check#7) { CodeBlock#7 } else { rest - of - the - program } } } } } } } The writer then proposes that using GOTO's would make this code much easier to read and maintain. I personally can think of at least 3 different ways to flatten it out and make this code more readable without resorting to flow-breaking GOTO's. Here are my two favorites. 1 - Nested Small Functions. Take each if and its code block and turn it into a function. If the boolean check fails, just return. If it passes, then call the next function in the chain. (Boy, that sounds a lot like recursion, could you do it in a single loop with function pointers?) 2 - Sentinal Variable. To me this is the easyest. Just use a blnContinueProcessing variable and check to see if it is still true in your if check. Then if the check fails, set the variable to false. How many different ways can this type of coding problem be refactored to reduce nesting and increase maintainability?

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• Clean Code Developer & Certification in IT - MSCC 21.09.2013

  It was a very busy weekend this time, and quite some hectic to organise the second meetup on a Saturday for the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) but it was absolutely fun. Following, I'm writing a brief summary about the topics we spoke about and the new impulses I got. "What a meetup... I was positively impressed. At the beginning I thought that noone would actually show up but then by the time the room got filled. Lots of conversation, great dialogues and fantastic networking between fresh students, experienced students, experienced employees, and self-employed attendees. That's what community is all about!" Above quote was my first reaction shortly after the gathering. And despite being busy during the weekend and yesterday, I took my time to reflect a little bit on things happened and statements made before writing it here on my blog. Additionally, I was also very curious about possible reactions and blogs from other attendees. Reactions from other craftsmen Let me quickly give you some links and quotes from others first... "Like Jochen posted on facebook, that was indeed a 5+ hours marathon (maybe 4 hours for me but still) … Wohoo! We’re indeed a bunch of crazy geeks who did not realise how time flew as we dived into the myriad discussions that sprouted. Yet in the end everyone was happy (:" -- Ish on MSCC meetup - The marathon (: "And the 4hours spent @ Talking drums bore its fruit..I was doing something I never did before....reading the borrowed book while walking....and though I was not that familiar with things mentionned in the book...I was skimming,scanning & flipping...reading titles...short paragraphs...and I skipped pages till I reached home." -- Yannick on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship 1st Meet-up "Hi Developers, Just wanted to share with you the meetups i attended last Saturday - [...] - The second meetup is the one hosted by Jochen Kirstätter, the MSCC, where the attendees were Craftsman, no woman, this time - all sharing the same passion of being a developer - even though it is on different platforms(Windows - Windows Phone - Linux - Adobe(yes a designer) - .Net) - but we manage to sit at the same table - sharing developer views and experience in the corporate world - also talking about good practice when coding( where Jochen initiated a discussion on Clean Coding ) i could not stay till the end - but from what i have heard - the longer you stay the more fun you have till 1600. Developers in the Facebook grouping i invite you to stay tuned about the various developer communities popping up - where you can come to share and learn good practices, develop the entrepreneurial spirit, and learn and share your passion about technologies" -- Arnaud on Facebook More feedback has been posted on the event directly. So, should I really write more? Wouldn't that spoil the impressions? Starting the day with a surprise Indeed, I was very pleased to stumble over the existence of Mobile Monday Mauritius on LinkedIn, an association about any kind of mobile app development, mobile gadgets and latest smartphones on the market. Despite the Monday in their name they had scheduled their recent meeting on Saturday between 10:00 and 12:00hrs. Wow, what a coincidence! Let's grap the bull by its horns and pay them an introductory visit. As they chose the Ebene Accelerator at the Orange Tower in Ebene it was a no-brainer to leave home a bit earlier and stop by. It was quite an experience and fun to talk to the geeks over there. Really looking forward to organise something together.... Arriving at the venue As the children got a bit uneasy at the MoMo gathering and I didn't want to disturb them too much, we arrived early at Bagatelle. Well, no problems as we went for a decent breakfast at Food Lover's Market. Shortly afterwards we went to our venue location, Talking Drums, and prepared the room for the meeting. We only had to take off a repro-painting of the wall in order to have a decent area for the projector. All went very smooth and my two little ones were of great help. Just in time, our first craftsman Avinash arrived on the spot. And then the waiting started... Luckily, not too long. Bit by bit more and more IT people came to join our meeting. Meanwhile, I used the time to give a brief introduction about the MSCC in general, what we are (hm, maybe I am) trying to achieve and that the recent phase is completely focused on creating more awareness that a community like the MSCC is active here in Mauritius. As soon as we reached some 'critical mass' of about ten people I asked everyone for a short introduction and bio, just in case... Conversation between participants started to kick in and we were actually more networking than having a focus on our topics of the day. Quick updates on latest news and development around the MSCC Finally, Clean Code Developer No matter how the position is actually called, whether it is Software Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Architect, or Craftsman, anyone working in IT is facing almost the same obstacles. As for the process of writing software applications there are re-occurring patterns and principles combined with some common exercise and best practices on how to resolve them. Initiated by the must-read book 'Clean Code' by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) the concept of the Clean Code Developer (CCD) was born already some years ago. CCD is much likely to traditional martial arts where you create awareness of certain principles and learn how to apply practices to improve your style. The CCD initiative recommends to indicate your level of knowledge and experience with coloured wrist bands - equivalent to the belt colours - for various reasons. Frankly speaking, I think that the biggest advantage here is provided by the obvious recognition of conceptual understanding. For example, take the situation of a team meeting... A member with a higher grade in CCD, say Green grade, sees that there are mainly Red grades to talk to, and adjusts her way of communication to their level of understanding. The choice of words might change as certain elements of CCD are not yet familiar to all team members. So instead of talking in an abstract way which only Green grades could follow the whole scenario comes down to Red grade level. Different story, better results... Similar to learning martial arts, we only covered two grades during this occasion - black and red. Most interestingly, there was quite some positive feedback and lots of questions about the principles and practices of the red grade. And we gathered real-world examples from various craftsman and discussed them. Following the Clean Code Developer Red Grade and some annotations from our meetup: CCD Red Grade - Principles Don't Repeat Yourself - DRY Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Short) - KISS Beware of Optimisations! Favour Composition over Inheritance - FCoI Interestingly most of the attendees already heard about those key words but couldn't really classify or categorize them. It's very similar to a situation in which you do not the particular for a thing and have to describe it to others... until someone tells you the actual name and suddenly all is very simple. CCD Red Grade - Practices Follow the Boy Scouts Rule Root Cause Analysis - RCA Use a Version Control System Apply Simple Refactoring Pattern Reflect Daily Introduction to the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - here: Red Grade As for the various ToDo's we commonly agreed that the Boy Scout Rule clearly is not limited to software development or IT administration but applies to daily life in general. Same for the root cause analysis, btw. We really had good stories with surprisingly endings and conclusions. A quick check about who is using a version control system brought more drive into the conversation. Not only that we had people that aren't using any VCS at all, we also had the 'classic' approach of backup folders and naming conventions as well as the VCS 'junkie' that has to use multiple systems at a time. Just for the records: Git and GitHub seem to be in favour of some of the attendees. Regarding the daily reflection at the end of the day we came up with an easy solution: Wrap it up as a blog entry! Certifications in IT This is kind of a controversy in IT in general. Is it interesting to go for certifications or are they completely obsolete? What are the possibilities to get certified? What are the options we have in Mauritius? How would certificates stand compared to other educational tracks like Computer Science or Web Design. The ratio between craftsmen with certifications like MCP, MSTS, CCNA or LPI versus the ones without wasn't in favour for the first group but there was a high interest in the topic itself and some were really surprised to hear that exam preparations are completely free available online including temporarily voucher codes for either discounts or completely free exams. Furthermore, we discussed possible options on forming so-called study groups on a specific certificates and organising more frequent meetups in order to learn together. Taking into consideration that we have sponsored access to the video course material of Pluralsight (and now PeepCode as well as TrainSignal), we might give it a try by the end of the year. Current favourites are LPIC Level 1 and one of the Microsoft exams 40-78x. Feedback and ideas for the MSCC The closing conversations and discussions about how the MSCC is recently doing, what are the possibilities and what's (hopefully) going to happen in the future were really fertile and I made a couple of mental bullet points which I'm looking forward to tackle down together with orher craftsmen. Eventually, it might be a good option to elaborate on some issues during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions one Wednesday morning. Active discussion on various IT topics like certifications (LPI, MCP, CCNA, etc) and sharing experience Finally, we made it till the end of the planned time. Well, actually the talk was still on and we continued even after 16:00hrs. Unfortunately, we (the children and I) had to leave for evening activities. My resume of the day... It was great to have 15 craftsmen in one room. There are hundreds of IT geeks out there in Mauritius, and as Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community we still have a lot of work to do to pass on the message to some more key players and companies. Currently, it seems that we are able to attract a good number of students in Computer Science... but we have a lot more to offer, even or especially for IT people on the job. I'm already looking forward to our next Saturday meetup in the near future. PS: Meetup pictures are courtesy of Nirvan Pagooah. Thanks for sharing...

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