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stallings_mike1 | 1 Jan 2003 02:04
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Re: Adventures in C#: Digression -- WordCount

> Unfortunately, I'm stuck with VB 6... 

To the contrary!  I spent a year or so with VB, a few years back.  It 
was liberating.  C/C++ developers are thinking of pointers and 
sockets (that's me), Java programmers are thinking of beans and 
File.IO.Exception, but VB developers are thinking of GUI's, 
databases, and business logic (and yes, DLL hell).  Yes, I'm 
exaggerating, but truly, in VB you are simply asked to do more, 
faster, and thus will learn more.  Furthermore, if you know 
enterprise VB/COM/MTS, then you know the principles of enterprise 
Java and .NET.  The first time I read an enterprise Java book, I was 
astounded how much it looked like VB/COM/MTS, item per item.  
Concepts matter, syntax is nothing.  (Especially in .NET.)

> I think Java is safe.  But that's just my opinion.

The more languages you know, the better, but why not learn C#?  
Here's a clue: no one refers to it as "a server language".

Good luck!

Mike

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Michael Lane | 1 Jan 2003 02:15
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Suitability, advantages and disadvantages of using an agile method such as XP in fast paced web development environments

Hi,
A colleague and I are researching the use of agile methodologies such as
XP in fast paced Web development environments.
We would like hear some comments from practitioners concerning the
suitability, advantages and disadvantages of agile methodologies such as
extreme programming in fact paced Web development environments. 
First consider the following two general statements about agile
methodologies and extreme programming and answer the two questions that
follow
Agile methodologies value: 
*	Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. 
*	Working software over comprehensive documentation. 
*	Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. 
*	Responding to change over following a plan." 
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, agile
methodologies place more value the items on the left (Agile Manifesto
2002)

Extreme Programming (XP) is most widely popularized agile methodology.
XP is based on 12 core practices that adhere to philosophy and values of
Agile methodologies. XP espouses a discipline of software development
based on values of simplicity, communication, feedback, and courage. It
works by bringing the whole team together in the presence of simple
practices, with enough feedback to enable the team to see where they are
and to tune the practices to their unique situation (Jeffries 2001). The
emphasis is on small teams. 

I would like to hear comments from practitioners using agile methods
such as XP in Web development regarding the following two questions:
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Charlie Poole | 1 Jan 2003 04:06
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RE: Re: Adventures in C#: Digression -- WordCount

Ron and Mike,

> And again ... it's your baby. If you feel you need async tests, 
> then we COMMAND
> you to write them. ;-> And if, having written them, you find that 
> the effort was
> worthwhile, that's good. And if you decide it was too much effort 
> and there's a
> way to do without them, that's good too.

And tell me... either way please.

> The point of this practice, and every practice, is to get us so 
> sensitive to our
> problem space and our own kind of fallibility, that we tune 
> things to our own
> situation. It's your tail on the line, and it's your call on what 
> tests you
> want. No matter how many we do -- it seems we always need one 
> more. It's fun to
> work where we can learn every day, isn't it?

Which is why I ask again... please show me something you need 
to test that requires the asynchronous call... that's a really
cost-effective way for me to learn something. :-)

OTOH, don't just test the whole shebang all together because it's 
easier than figuring out each little thing you need to test.

Charlie Poole
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Phlip | 1 Jan 2003 05:04
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Re: Suitability, advantages and disadvantages of using an agile method such as XP in fast paced web development environments

Michael Lane sez:

> 1. Are agile methods such as XP the best approach is fast paced Web
> development environment?

You have not listed your awareness of what the non-"agile" lifecycles look 
like.

Suppose, for a moment, that they consisted of forcing individuals to sit in 
separate offices, use tools they did not select or vote on, document what 
they do, enforce compliance with requirements documents the customer signed 
months ago, and test last.

The HTML culture barely comprehends testing. So anything sent to the end of 
the lifecycle just might get skipped. The site looks okay, so publish it.

HTML & its support systems are very easy to refactor, and terrible to 
refactor well. If the customer changes their mind, based on actually seeing 
the working site, changing it without up-front tests adds incredible risk.

The Dot Com Boom fed HTML a huge gallery of support systems, all of dubious 
quality. Your customer does not >want< Jade, for example, they want a working 
site. But if your contract sold them Jade, by golly they'r gonna get Jade, 
even if it gives your project nothing and slows everyone down.

Finally, people in offices far from each other collaborate poorly, 
leading to integration hell.

> 2. What are advantages and limitations of XP in a fast paced Web
> development environment?
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Laurent Bossavit | 1 Jan 2003 13:30

Ownership models (was Re: Looking back)

Hi Steve,

> But people do make honest mistakes. Or, if something in your team 
> ownership model is broken, someone can just misunderstand how
> something should work.

Can you say more about ways in which a team's ownership model might 
be broken ?

Cheers,
Laurent

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Laurent Bossavit | 1 Jan 2003 13:37

Re: Looking back

> If subsystem X supports three features A, B, and C, and a
> change is made in X to support some new twist in A, and this breaks
> the functional tests for B and C, well, this isn't even really
> screwing up -- it's just normal human lack of omniscience.

And, perhaps, normal human lack of design competence; one might want 
to make the "new twist" in A and the parts of X that were relevantly 
changed more cohesive together and less coupled with all the rest of 
the system ?

I suspect, but it's only a vague and inarticulate hunch at this 
point, that there's a tension between "looking back" in this way 
and "going forward" with the design. Something like, if it takes that 
much work to understand why something broke, then it's indeed no 
one's fault but a sign that the design needs mending.

Cheers,
Laurent

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Ron Phillips | 1 Jan 2003 13:42
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Re: Suitability, advantages and disadvantages of using an agile method such as X

Phlip said

>The HTML culture barely comprehends testing. So anything sent to the >end 
>of the lifecycle just might get skipped. The site looks okay, so >publish 
>it.

Can't argue with that. It seems that OOP is essential to XP, and HTML isn't 
OO.

The best Pseudo-OOP (or, POOP) approach I have found so far is Fusebox, 
which makes it POSSIBLE to employ encapsulation. Fusebox provides a 
"TestHarness" for Unit Testing, and some tools for collecting user stories 
in a site-structured way. I think some Agile techniques will be applicable. 
(Just getting started myself.)

There is also CFObjects, which is not widely adopted, but which does do 
objects in ColdFusion.

Ron Phillips

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8 is here: Try it free* for 2 months 
http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup

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Ron Jeffries | 1 Jan 2003 13:55
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Re: Looking back

On Wednesday, January 1, 2003, at 7:37:01 AM, Laurent Bossavit <laurent <at> bossavit.com> wrote:

>> If subsystem X supports three features A, B, and C, and a
>> change is made in X to support some new twist in A, and this breaks
>> the functional tests for B and C, well, this isn't even really
>> screwing up -- it's just normal human lack of omniscience.

> And, perhaps, normal human lack of design competence; one might want 
> to make the "new twist" in A and the parts of X that were relevantly 
> changed more cohesive together and less coupled with all the rest of 
> the system ?

And, lack of sufficient tests, and team code ownership. When an XP team has this
happen, they know that they need to write more tests, and make sure, when
releasing X, that all the tests run. We don't stop when our story runs, we stop
when ALL the stories run.

> I suspect, but it's only a vague and inarticulate hunch at this 
> point, that there's a tension between "looking back" in this way 
> and "going forward" with the design. Something like, if it takes that 
> much work to understand why something broke, then it's indeed no 
> one's fault but a sign that the design needs mending.

Yes. There's another thing that happens. When you really get into TDD /
Continuous Integration / Team Ownership, Customer Tests, every hour or two, some
pair releases code and ALL the tests run. All the old ones, and some new ones.
Every hour or two, the system gets a little bit better. It inches forward,
rarely falls back. When it does fall back, we write more tests, make the system
as perfect as it can be, then go back into inching forward every couple of
hours.
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Laurent Bossavit | 1 Jan 2003 14:33

Re: Suitability, advantages and disadvantages of using an agile method such as X

> Can't argue with that. It seems that OOP is essential to XP, and
> HTML isn't OO.

On the other hand, there's no law prohibiting you from using 
Smalltalk, Java, Eiffel or C# to generate HTML.

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stallings_mike1 | 1 Jan 2003 16:29
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Re: Adventures in C#: Digression -- WordCount

 > Which is why I ask again... please show me something you need 
> to test that requires the asynchronous call...

I thought I just did, with the echo server example, but we have a 
philosophical misunderstanding, that's all.  I don't believe in the 
unit test/customer test way of thinking.  I believe you need a 
continuum of tests.  I was trying to use NUnit for partial system 
testing.  Since I'm just getting started with NUnit and TDD, I'm not 
completely sure that pushing NUnit that far is a good idea.  I'd like 
to try other solutions and experiment some more.  

Mike

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Gmane