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I recently got brought on board to a new client where, true to form, a project was in a state of failure - everybody sort of knew it, but nobody would say it out loud. What Was Going Wrong? After my initial assessment, I made a quick decision that the major thing holding everyone back was an early decision...
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We're all familiar with the Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare . In the story, the hare, who is in every way is faster than the tortoise, loses a race to the tortoise. The main principle of the story is that slow and steady wins the race. In my development I am shooting to...
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If you have not hear, Karl Seguin has authored a great, short eBook which he is giving away free to the world. This book is based of his blog series of the same title. Do yourself a favor and go download this book, it is pretty short and is a great read. There are great nuggets of information...
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I finally got around to downloading and playing with the forthcoming release of Rhino Mocks v3.5 (more info here from Ayende). The major changes to this version is that the syntax has been revamped to allow for the new language features in .Net 3.5. Another big change with this release is that...
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As the discussion on the altdotnet list continued ( some of it around my blog yesterday ), it became apparent that some people didn't want to use an IoC container - but more confusing was that their objection to the whole pattern was that they thought the IoC container in here meant I was writing...
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Ian Cooper brought up an interesting point on the altdotnet mailing list recently, around the language used to describe Mocks, or more accurately his preference for the term Test Double over my use of the generic term Mock. In most areas of development I can often be considered a language perfectionist...
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Yes, you heard me! Apparently ReSharper 4.0 is now in Beta status . This has got to be one of the longest upgrades in development history - I was beginning to think that ReSharper 4 was never going to be released! I love ReSharper, and the EAP program has given me a "free" licence for it for...
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Awhile back there was some discussion on the new ALT.NET list about what it would be like to start a consultancy with a bunch ALT.NET minded people. The hypothetical scenario proposed there wasn't quite what I did, but I thought I'd go ahead and share my experiences and how we addressed (or are...
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Code quality is an abstract concept again, and can be defined may ways depending on how you perceive quality. A good discussion of the many aspects of code quality can be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality Some general high level objectives for software quality could...
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Industry experience suggests that the design of metrics will encourage certain kinds of behaviour from the people being measured. The common phrase applied is "you get what you measure" (or "be careful what you wish for"). A Brief Explanation of Cyclomatic Complexity and Code Coverage...
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Some reports will highlight lines of code as a figure to attach some relevance to, and these become measures used to establish progress. These are possibly the most misleading figures to use, in fact almost always within a well designed application and code base, the reverse is true. Good code tends...
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"Working software is the primary measure of progress" Fundamentally, there is no more valid measure for progress, than the working software itself. This only leaves open to discussion, the definition of "working software". Defining "Working Software" The criterion for defining...
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I got an email at the end of last week from a developer asking about Agile development. It highlights a few problems with development in general, and with Agile as a "badge of honour" that are worth exploring. It deserved a fairly detailed reply, so excerts of the email follow: I just came...
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Prompted partially by some comments yesterday on my post on How to Make Late Software, Even Later , and partially by a discussion on the altdotnet Yahoo list, I wrote this long email. As it became an epic in its own right, I thought it deserved a blog. We Are Doing Agile! I can claim to be doing Agile...
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I made a comment yesterday on the altdotnet Yahoo group to the effect of: Test Driven Development is All About Design, Tests Are a Useful By-Product I worded it slightly differently then, but I think this sums it up better. And coincidentally, Oren just blogged a very similar sentiment . Whatever you...