Not to long ago I posted an article on my favorite environment for software development. There was also a survey in that post asking about your favorite environment. The results are below.

Clearly, Linux is a winner. Here are some comments you guys added to a survey.

Can’t believe people are still using text editors to code… Visual studio rocks!

Well, not sure about this comment

Well, Ubuntu. For the package system, for the standard package archives and for the PPAs. And for everything else about it being good enough.

Windows 7, mainly because ive been using windows for, well ever. I find it really intuitive and i just know the tools really well. Windows 7 is really nice too.

Obviously I long for the day that will never come when I can develop my .net applications in intellij, deploy to a cut down windows vm for compilation and testing against iis… Anyway dreaming aside I pick mac osx for reasons you said and also because I have one and nothing beats dev on a native machine…

Mac is quite reasonable. Windows just feels clunky.

I need to be able to navigate to files and find things quickly, let alone use apps. Windows explorer/cmd is crap. Linux and Mac OS both work quickly and the command-line is effective. Mac OS X, however, just requires less of my time to maintain it than Linux. All three work similar from within an app like Eclipse.

Could be interpreted as a fan oy phrase, but for dev there is no better option than Linux…

I prefer Max because when I develop I am not just programming. Sometimes I need to check some screencast and last time that I used Linux (last year) I was not able to check all of them. Also I need a good mail and contact manager, I tried Thunderbird and Evolution. But none of them where satisfying my need.
Also i use my computer to develop and for personal use (creating video, music viewing videos). Linux is poor on that side.

I still have to fall back to Windows when working with clients who insist on using Outlook for calendaring and those horrible built-in surveys. Some aspects of my MacBook are pleasant, but I detest the keyboard layout – no home/end/pgup/pgdown and, worst of all, no visible # key

We all got a favorite environment, but what is the actual one that you use every day at work? I’m using Visual Studio as there is no real aternative to .NET development. Fortunatelly ReSharper makes it usable

Thanks for your answers guys, Greg

After a few months of using Mac as a playground and development machine I took a little step back to remind myself of all different environments/systems/platforms I was using in my short development carrier. I know what you think, that I will say Mac is the best. But it actually it isn’t. At least not for me. Why?

Linux

I used Linux in my early days of development. I was coding on practically knitted together pice of hardware with free operating system. I was using Mandrake and Suse, switching between them constantly . After few years I switched to Ubuntu. Using Linux as development platform was harsh and raw when I started. After few ups and downs I got to grips with it and it server well as platform for PHP, Java and Ruby development. With Ubuntu it was extremely easy to install new software and be up to date. I never managed to crash it (no blue screens of death).

There was one quite big issue with it though, lack of .Net development environment. I have to mention as well problems with file formats in the every day office life.

Windows

The only environment that I could develop on targeting Windows environment as runtime. With .Net and C# Windows became bearable and useful. I didn’t have problems with office documents compatibility anymore. It was possible to set it up with Unix like command line tools and possible to script and automate a lot of build/setup tasks. There was one very big flow in the setup. After few days of usage, somehow Windows manage always to crap itself with plenty of junk and gets very slow. The most common solution for that problem was … reinstall.

Mac

Very shiny and friendly. I love the 4 fingers swam and expose. It has Unix/Linux command line out of the box so I don’t have to install anything for that. Comes with a bunch of tools for development. Unfortunately most of them are for Mac development.

Once you would like to get a latest version of Java, Ruby or Python, it is impossible to simply change or upgrade the version as parts of the system (some OSX applications) depends on specific version. So … I was in a hassle to build it up for what I wanted it to be. Now when it’s ready, it rocks. It would be very cool if some of the task that needs to be done in order to make it work I had to google and spent some time on it.

So … for me the best platform is …. LINUX, TADAAA. Simple and to the point on installing different environments. Huge community with plenty of tips, easy to find. With OpenOffice.org and Google Docs pain of documents incompatibility disappears.

I guess for me the winner is the one that gets me up and running in no time and is very easy and Agile when I want/need the change.

What’s your favorite Platform? What do you like and what dislike. Please take a moment to answer this short survey or just post a comment I will post the results and survey findings in next few weeks.

Survey closed

Greg

Everyone who knows or was close to Agile Software Development knows something about Story Wall. If by any chance you don’t, here goes.

Tell me the Story

Story is software requirement/feature/pice of functionality that is presented in story telling way. For example:
‘Given that I am a new user,
When I arrive at xxx site home page and I click Register button
I will see the registration form so I can register and use the awesome site’

This is just one way of story formating and wording. As many people and teams as there are, wording can take different shape.

For the purpose of the Wall we would normally have stories written on a index card in a bit shorter form with reference to more verbose version. The more verbose version contains acceptance criteria (we are using Mingle most of the time for that purpose).

The Wall

The wall is a physical place where we stick our story cards. Wall is a visual dashboard. It gives every team member current state of an iteration.

Wall is usually split into columns that indicates what is the current state of the story. A wall will usually have columns like:

• In Analysis
• Ready for Development
• In Development
• Ready for QA
• In QA
• Ready for Sign-off
• Finished
• Blocked (the infamous one)

This is a very typical wall setup. I worked with this shape of wall on many projects I was on. It is quite good, gives all important feedback through entire life cycle of a story.

It is very important to point out the fact that story wall maps to a development process. The columns on a wall are direct map to the way we work. As you might already know it is essential to bend and improve the process in order to achieve best results possible.

A very short break through the mentioned story wall. When Story got analyzed it moves into ready for development. Developer picks it up and works on it. When work on it is finished it is ready for being QA. If there are any bugs or hidden “features” it goes back to Development and so on. Once QA is happy with the story it is ready for Sign-Off. In any point in time if something stop story from being Developed/QAed/Analyzed it goes into blocked. Once the story is showcased it officially finished.

In perfect world this sounds good, but … as software development world is one of the most imperfect, it doesn’t. For example, if stories are in development, QAs might have nothing to do. If stories are developed in “high rate” the QA column will pile up. Once story is in QA, devs are picking new story and start their work on it. When bug is discovered on previous one it is raised as bug, or story is moved back to ready for development.

Evolution

In our current project, we have identified some issues and decided to change, improve our way of working from the very beginning. As process changed so did our story wall.

Once all the stories for iteration have been analyzed they are landing in Ready for Development. The team has 6 developers, as we are pairing, we are 3 pairs working on 3 stories at the time. This makes THREE streams of work that could be started at any time. We decided that we will create THREE vertical slots for that THREE pairs. This means that it is impossible to have four stories worked on at any given point in time.

Next, we decided to eliminate QA column. It doesn’t mean that there is no QA, it means that QAs are involved in testing from very beginning. While the story is worked on, every single bit of new functionality is presented to QA to check it out. Developers are getting immediate feedback and very often tips for things that they could miss. In a mean time QAs are testing on their test environment and preparing automated tests.

We have the luxury of heaving one QA per DEV pair. This makes little teams of THREE. When development is finished there is very little for QA to test as it was already done. At the end newly created automated tests are fired up just to confirm that all is done.

As it is a team effort (a DEV pair plus QA) to FINISH the story, DEVS are helping in testing and in development of automated tests when needed. The story goes than into Ready for Sign-Off.

It involved discipline to make sure that only one story is worked on at the time, until entirely finished and being ready for presentation to business sponsor.

The THREE musketeers are responsible for the story to be finished and to improve the process.

Revolution

How did this process change affect our project. Short summary.

• We have completed all the required scope for release, in given time (a little ahead of time)
• Number of recorded bugs: 1 (fixed few minutes after it was reported)
• Team morale, GREAT

We are very happy with this setup. What YOU think about it?

Cheers, Greg and the Team

For some time now I am developing my little hobby project. It is called F1Dashboard and it contains informations related to Formula 1 (my favorite motor-sport).

F1 Dashboard

Since the site is quite stable now I will share with you some technologies and ideas I used.

Platform

F1Dashboard is build and deployed on Google App Engine (GAE). I started this as an experiment and as a toy project just to learn something new.

GAE is not a new idea, it is another platform for cloud computing. Main difference from others is the Database model. GAE is using a thing called Data Store (Big Table), which is not a normal relational database that anyone used to. There is no schema defined, and querying is impossible without indexing it before. It is something like a massive bag that could store stuff in.

GAE is offered as Python and Java. The later was released long time after Python. It has limited version of JVM environment and a whole bunch of Google services to use. Lots of standard JDK types got repackaged by Google just to limit standard Java functionality, like spawning a Threads.

GAE offers standard Java servlets as web technology. This means that you could use some of the well established frameworks out there. I decided to create one myself of course Something simple and not complicated.

Language

I choose Groovy, just because I wonted to learn another dynamic language and I liked the way Groovy did closures.

Patterns

The framework I did follows MVC pattern. It has single servlet entry. Every requested URL is parsed internally and resolved into Controller and Action. I’m using String Template as rendering engine for my views.

All database operations are entirely hidden behind Repositories, and I made it simple to switch from Objectify to Data Nucleus to anything else that comes.

I choose Objectify for its simplicity. If you are starting with GAE I would very much recommend it.

UI

The design is simple and was done by fried of mine Mike from Rosslyn Digital.

I plugged in jQuery Tools for Overlay effect. It also has a nice plugin for picture gallery.

I also added automatic Twitter updates for every message that is updated on a site.

Updates

Site is automatically harvesting for new content from various of Formula 1 related sites. There is also content from Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. It is utilizing GAE cron jobs for that.

I’m trying to gather some ideas for what I can do with the site in near future. If you have an idea, drop me an email. You can also see latest updates on a site at http://blog.f1dashboard.com

Cheers, Greg

I was trying to setup Time Machine on my MacBook to create backup on network storage. It seems that by default it is impossible to do it, if you don’t have Time Capsule.

There is a handy command though that gives you permissions to see all types of storage in Time Machine setup.

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

I am able to see my Network Storage in Time Machine now

I was writing some helpers for OAuth Twitter authorization. One of the problem I got was the encoding. OAuth is using UTF-8 and percent encoding (special style of URL ecoding).

I couldn’t find anything build-in in Java or Groovy so I wrote a very short little method that does it.

def encodeString(def stringToEncode){

def reservedCaracters = [32:1, 33:1, 42:1, 34:1, 39:1, 40:1, 41:1, 59:1, 58:1, 64:1, 38:1, 61:1, 43:1, 36:1, 33:1, 47:1, 63:1, 37:1, 91:1, 93:1, 35:1]

def encoded =  stringToEncode.collect { letter ->
reservedCaracters[(int)letter] ? “%” +Integer.toHexString((int)letter).toString().toUpperCase() : letter
}
return encoded.join(“”)
}

If you ever need something similar, use it

Greg

Coder, programmer or developer

Today I had a conversation with my Wife about the stuff I do at work. I was trying to explain what is my role. After few minutes I got into a pickle. Am I a coder, programmer, developer. Does all those terms mean different things or they all the same?

Taking a step back in my life I tried to analyze all those words according to what I was doing.

Coder

When I left university I was full of theory. Empty words and concepts that I never tried in life. I knew few programming languages and some technics. I had no experience how to deal with people though. Whenever I was in a conversation about next project, feature I was thinking only in technical terms. When I found something impossible to do (as I just never done it before), I said that it is impossible to do. These were old days, and I think I was a coder at that point in my life.

Programmer

When I started my first job, every simple task was a problem. I was asking a million questions all guys that were working there for long time. Needed guidance on everything. After a while I was capable to make some simple technical decisions and not ask anybody. This is when I still was in my little world of code and I didn’t care about reasons behind it.

Developer

This is few years after university. This is the moment when I stopped thinking about programming languages (they are just another tool) and focused on software as a whole. A big role in this was played by people from the company I work for at the moment (ThoughtWorks). As a developer I need to know what is the driver behind the need for feature/software. Why? I need to understand system as a whole, to make proper decisions. It is also possible that the feature or functionality is not really needed or hard (impossible) to implement.

So, coder, programmer, developer. This is how I believe I evolved through my technical life. The labels are still a labels but I find them very useful explaining or just understanding what I was doing.

I believe it is natural for next question to appear, what’s next?

We’ll see

Greg

I just picked up new Development exercise. I decided to learn some programming for Android devices. I’m missing a truly great app for my Android handset that I could get for iPhone or desktop app, TweetDeck. This is my driver and my goal.

I spent some time to get to know the platform and the architecture. Reading some very good documentation that Google Android team put together. I downloaded SDK and some tools. Got it setup (turned out to be a trivial task).

So, what do I do now. I know Java, but that’s only 10% of what I need to know to develop for Android. SDK is the next bit. Plus there are some tips and tricks on how to develop for mobile devices.

I opened one of the tutorials on Android page and after a 10 minutes of reading and following on my computer I got bored. I realized that I enjoy to learn most by pairing on a problem with someone who knows more or at least know some. I don’t really have anyone to pair with me on my new task. I figured there has to be a better way of learning then.

Question is … what it is?

Guys, any help? How should I tackle it, so it is not boring as hell?

Cheerios, Greg

If you ever asked yourself a question, what is the purpose of life? Why are we here? Where are we going to? I’m totally convinced you can get an answer from this guy Professor Sahib is the answer to anything (if you still don’t know what I’m talking about read the leaflet on a picture). A friend of mine in London got this delivered in his letter box. This is real stuff Perhaps some of you need help with the addition .

Greg and Professor

In last few months I was working on a little personal project. When Google App Engine team announced that preview of Java version is available I decided to give it a try. When I was looking for a subject of my application, one of the ideas started to emerge more that others. I was looking for a web site that could aggregate all the information about Formula 1 racing. Because there was none available (or my Google search ended on first few results that were not satisfactory) I decided to make one.

Few weeks and cups of coffee latter F1Dashboard.com is released.

F1 Dashboard screen shot

Generalities

So, in few words, F1 Dashboard is agregator of news, and media feeds from world of Formula 1. I decided not to collect content, just store information where to find it and short description.

News are harvested from a number of web sites. Twitter updates serves as another source of news.

Images are comming from Flickr, videos from YouTube.

All updates  are happening every few minutes and are 100% automated.

Technicalities

GAE supports Groovy as one of JVM programming languages. I decided to give it a try. I love Groovy, it is somewhere in between a friendly and known Java API and Ruby programming language.

It took me a moment to use to BigTable type of DataStore. It restrictes a way I used to work with databases normaly. Google provide entire environment for local development, whitch means I don’t have to upload to a cloud to see working result.

I created a little homegrown Model Views Presenter/Controller framework and used StringTemplate as rendering engine.

jQuery is the library of choice to handle all JavaScript.

Page styling was done by a friendly and kind designer from Circa82 Michael Austin (thanks buddy).

Come on guys, give it a try and tell me what you think Feedback greatlly appriciated. http://www.f1dashboard.com

Cheerios, Greg