Chillisoft Blog
 

Industry best practice asserts that a development house should have all its projects compiling on a build server.  The advantages are clear.  Firstly, you ensure that your project doesn’t have dependencies that are usually only found on a developer’s PC, such as Active Reports DLLs referenced from the GAC.  Secondly, you can detect problems in a dependency chain.  For instance, with our development of the Habanero framework, we can check whether changes in Habanero trigger compile and test failures in client projects built on the framework.  This picks up errors in Habanero thinking way before the changes become concrete.

Lastly, a build server puts your work out on public display.  You march in for the morning meeting and the project manager adopts his best Stalinist look and growls: “The Squeaky Wheels Management System is failing on the build server.  What in flying peaches is going on?”  When the laughter and booing are over, the truth is you’ve been shown up for submitting a system to the repository that has failing tests.
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About a year ago we sent around a joke email about Habanero’s international adoption, which I thought would be nice to have on record.  The joke gets reversed, however, because we are well into the middle of the first Habanero book.  We’ve designed it as a reference tool for programmers wanting to enhance their skills by learning agile development techniques, including several software foundations like n-tier architecture, security, de-coupling and other critical concepts.  These concepts are illustrated using Habanero, with hands-on examples of their implementation.  Look out for a free draft copy released on the Habanero website this year.
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As a general good practice, when we build domain models using Habanero, we provide two-directional relationships.  As an example, a Car has a Wheels relationship to the Wheel object.  On the Wheel class, we add a return Car relationship back to the Car that the Wheel belongs to.  It provides some general convenience when you have been given a Wheel object and need to know about its cars.  Understandably there might be times when a object really does not need to know which object uses it, but there’s no harm done really.
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You can imagine the look of shock horror … importing a MySQL database into Visio, and ta-da:

It turns out there was a problem with the ODBC connector for MySQL, where version 3.5 was being used.  Upgrading to 5.0 solves the issue.  Worth a laugh though

In one of those many distracted moments you have while programming, I glanced out the window as a black and white cat jumped onto the fence post and ran off to the left. Thirty seconds later, I glanced out the window and a black and white cat jumped onto the fence post and ran off to the left. Dejavu! Something had changed in the matrix. Some new alteration had been given birth, and that my friends is an intended pun.
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I was highly amused when I scrolled to the bottom of one of my favourite websites today.  There was a typical Goodle ad block.  Four lines of advertised links as per usual.  But hey?  What were those two little symbols in the bottom left?  Only one would highlight when I hovered over it.  Oh arrows… so I clicked on it and sure enough a new set of ads appeared and now the reverse had a mouse-over colour change too.

I sat there in disbelief: did Google really think this would expose people to more adverts?  Who in their right mind would want to see more advertising and go clicking on those arrows?  And then I realised what I had just done.

The first year of university threws up a wide range of deliveries. If you’ll forgive my cricket jargon, some freshers are hit with a bouncer, others with a juicy half volley they can put away for four. Either way, by the time you’ve navigated your way to third or fourth year, you’ve already begun to build up a picture of this little workplace paradise that is all about lounging in your comfichair cranking up code projects that make whistles blow and dials spin. This is what a programming career must look like.
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We’re proud to announce a new form of development here at Chillisoft: “Development-Driven Tests”.  Actually, it’s an old development pattern that has stood the test of time, despite numerous onslaughts.  In truth, we can’t really claim it as our own, but at least we can now proudly put a name to it.

This monumental methodology has been under tremendous pressure from an impostor known by a similar name.  Some infidel sought to challenge the throne and coined a similar phrase “Test Driven Development”.  The mere ordering of the words suggested sacrilege, that somehow tests could impose authority and dominion on development.  The sheer thought of it!
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As Neo stood besides the governor of Zion, the governor quipped, “Do the machines depend on us, or do we depend on them?” A staggering thought for the computer addicts of the world. Even more staggering when you stare into a dark future of another kind - a real future: no power.

For foreigners, I’ll just clarify that South Africa is experiencing an electricity crisis, so that our current network cannot support the full load. What that simply means is that someone in headquarters says: no more availability, the systems are going to burn out, so we’ll just flip the switch on that city for two hours. Incredulous, isn’t it?
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Launching your blog and forum introduces you to a new set of friends: the spammers.  Getting your first spam is a novelty for a while - you appreciate the attention and it’s nice that someone seemed to take the time to find your site and make a few (unwelcome) comments.  The friendship is shortlived however, and I’ve finally pulled out my machete and chopped off a few heads.
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Perched nonchalantly on my hard chair, I scribble occasionally while the university lecturer blabbers on about development methodologies. They’re all just words to me, waterfalls and spirals and … forests and glades and … oops. Concentrate! A few exams later and I had a scroll in my hand that qualified me as a programmer. Now for the real world.

Now most of what I learnt at university has been useful in some way, but the one module I somehow missed was “Client Installations 101F”. Well, it must have been there, surely, but I guess I was thinking of forests at the time.
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10 PRINT "HELLO"
RUN
HELLO
READY.

It’s hard to deny: that is beautiful simplicity. No wonder I got hooked on BASIC when I was 14 years old. I had recently bought my very own Commodore64 for R300, complete with a full set of games on … wait for it … tapes, and two joysticks. Never mind peripherals, because the C64 was a complete unit itself, except for the tape player and the TV of course, which served as the monitor.
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This is a great list my brother sent me the other day. Obviously take it with a pinch of salt, although a lot of the observations ring true.

http://www.codesqueeze.com/101-ways-to-know-your-software-project-is-doomed/

“You start considering a new job so you don’t have to maintain the application you are building”. I liked this one, I think it’s true of a lot of us developers.

“The client will only talk about the requirements after they receive a fixed estimation”. This one happens from time to time in our fixed price projects.

“Developers use the excuse of ’self documenting code’ for no comment”.

But my code is self-documenting!