start your journey with a Lean coach that also happens to know intimately what software development is all aboutThough it seems to come as a shock to some that such coaches actually want paying! ;-)
20 May 2010
Healthy Software Projects
Love this little gem on eXtreme Programming: eXtreme Pill: Increase the odds of a lasting, healthy software project
18 May 2010
The Way You (Probably) Use Subversion is Just Wrong
Trying to learn Hg (Take 2) I learned something about Subversion: it seems that many people are using it all wrong!
Prompted by a conversation last week with Brian which touched on Subversion and Git, I decided to have another go at grokking distributed version control. I confess that I'm probably hopelessly brain-damaged on this score; I can't help it: I started out with version control systems in the days of SCCS, graduated to RCS, was forced to deal with the abomination that was PVCS, migrated to CVS, and have largely been reasonably OK (though not ecstatically happy) with Subversion for the past several years and a half. So I can't really be blamed for my difficulties getting to grips with distributed version control, can I? I learned all I know about the subject back in the Dark Ages.
But, hey! I'm a distributed worker kind of guy. I'm sure I can figure this out, even at my advanced age.
Rather than tackle the Swiss Army Chainsaw that is Git, I thought I'd give Mercurial a second go. I lucked into Spolsky's HgInit tutorial which seems a lot more approachable than other tutorials I've seen to date, and a lot shorter than The Mercurial Book. Almost immediately I ran into a passage that stopped me short with the thought, "If this is how people are using Subversion, no wonder they want to move onto something better!"
Joel on Subversion
Wrong. All wrong!
As luck would have it I was discussing repository-management strategies just last week with a client's (new) development team, and suggesting that they use a much more aggressive strategy than they've ever seen before: Multiple checkins per day by every developer. Maybe go so far as to tie the "File-Save" key to "checkin". Anytime a developer does not make a checkin for 2 days in a row there's almost certainly a problem!
How do we achieve this without the tears and craziness described by Spolsky? Simple! Have every developer working in their own private branch. Or even flipping between a variety of private branches as they switch between tasks. (Yes, I know its not the most productive way to work, but sometimes we have to respond to demands from the outside world, so we do have to take the hit of task-switching.)
I suggested a structure where each developer simply gets a private piece of the repository to work in. Anything that's broken in there is your own problem, but doesn't affect anybody else on the team. When you're satisfied that your branch won't break the world you're ready to merge back to the main development line and integrate your work with your colleagues'. And yes, then you might have some merge conflicts, but I don't really see how any version control system can avoid this; you fix the conflicts and 'Lo! the build is intact. This does imply, though, that you want to merge quite frequently. At least every day or two. Or every time your private branch builds and tests clean. Or maybe just builds clean. All depends on your team - team size, maturity, process-maturity, personal temperaments,... One must study this very hard.
I suppose that the hangups about branching and merging come from the days of CVS, where branching was really, really expensive, and merging really, really difficult. Admittedly, too, earlier versions of Subversion were also not too hot on the merge side of things. (Though I guess it is still work-in-progress and we may yet see some improvements there.)
In recent times I have been using Subversion branches very aggressively. Frequently I'll find myself flipping between as many as 6 or 8 branches on related modules, merging them, abandoning them,... and this is on a one-man project! It means that I have to use branch-names that are pretty long and descriptive, otherwise I would soon lose myself in the forest of twisty little names.
But really, I don't see the dilemma Joel talks about in the quote above. I'll readily agree that Subversion's merging still needs some work: It can be quite counterintuitive and error prone until you get the habits right. But this Big Hairy Deal about breaking the build? Doesn't exist if you just use Subversion right!
Go forth and branch!
Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to Hg... Maybe I'll fall in love with it yet, if it makes this style of working easier for me. There's hope for the old fart, yet.
Prompted by a conversation last week with Brian which touched on Subversion and Git, I decided to have another go at grokking distributed version control. I confess that I'm probably hopelessly brain-damaged on this score; I can't help it: I started out with version control systems in the days of SCCS, graduated to RCS, was forced to deal with the abomination that was PVCS, migrated to CVS, and have largely been reasonably OK (though not ecstatically happy) with Subversion for the past several years and a half. So I can't really be blamed for my difficulties getting to grips with distributed version control, can I? I learned all I know about the subject back in the Dark Ages.
But, hey! I'm a distributed worker kind of guy. I'm sure I can figure this out, even at my advanced age.
Rather than tackle the Swiss Army Chainsaw that is Git, I thought I'd give Mercurial a second go. I lucked into Spolsky's HgInit tutorial which seems a lot more approachable than other tutorials I've seen to date, and a lot shorter than The Mercurial Book. Almost immediately I ran into a passage that stopped me short with the thought, "If this is how people are using Subversion, no wonder they want to move onto something better!"
Joel on Subversion
Now, here’s how Subversion works:No, that's not me he's talking about; that's some other Mike.
* When you check new code in, everybody else gets it.
Since all new code that you write has bugs, you have a choice.
* You can check in buggy code and drive everyone else crazy, or
* You can avoid checking it in until it’s fully debugged.
Subversion always gives you this horrible dilemma. Either the repository is full of bugs because it includes new code that was just written, or new code that was just written is not in the repository.
As Subversion users, we are so used to this dilemma that it’s hard to imagine it not existing.
Subversion team members often go days or weeks without checking anything in. In Subversion teams, newbies are terrified of checking any code in, for fear of breaking the build, or pissing off Mike, the senior developer, or whatever.
Wrong. All wrong!
As luck would have it I was discussing repository-management strategies just last week with a client's (new) development team, and suggesting that they use a much more aggressive strategy than they've ever seen before: Multiple checkins per day by every developer. Maybe go so far as to tie the "File-Save" key to "checkin". Anytime a developer does not make a checkin for 2 days in a row there's almost certainly a problem!
How do we achieve this without the tears and craziness described by Spolsky? Simple! Have every developer working in their own private branch. Or even flipping between a variety of private branches as they switch between tasks. (Yes, I know its not the most productive way to work, but sometimes we have to respond to demands from the outside world, so we do have to take the hit of task-switching.)
I suggested a structure where each developer simply gets a private piece of the repository to work in. Anything that's broken in there is your own problem, but doesn't affect anybody else on the team. When you're satisfied that your branch won't break the world you're ready to merge back to the main development line and integrate your work with your colleagues'. And yes, then you might have some merge conflicts, but I don't really see how any version control system can avoid this; you fix the conflicts and 'Lo! the build is intact. This does imply, though, that you want to merge quite frequently. At least every day or two. Or every time your private branch builds and tests clean. Or maybe just builds clean. All depends on your team - team size, maturity, process-maturity, personal temperaments,... One must study this very hard.
I suppose that the hangups about branching and merging come from the days of CVS, where branching was really, really expensive, and merging really, really difficult. Admittedly, too, earlier versions of Subversion were also not too hot on the merge side of things. (Though I guess it is still work-in-progress and we may yet see some improvements there.)
In recent times I have been using Subversion branches very aggressively. Frequently I'll find myself flipping between as many as 6 or 8 branches on related modules, merging them, abandoning them,... and this is on a one-man project! It means that I have to use branch-names that are pretty long and descriptive, otherwise I would soon lose myself in the forest of twisty little names.
But really, I don't see the dilemma Joel talks about in the quote above. I'll readily agree that Subversion's merging still needs some work: It can be quite counterintuitive and error prone until you get the habits right. But this Big Hairy Deal about breaking the build? Doesn't exist if you just use Subversion right!
Go forth and branch!
Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to Hg... Maybe I'll fall in love with it yet, if it makes this style of working easier for me. There's hope for the old fart, yet.
12 April 2010
Cogito Ergo Wiki
For your entertainment and delectation, I offer up a small write-up in which I muse about complexity and simplicity in the tools we choose to inflict upon our project partners.
A short excerpt:
A short excerpt:
I think that WikiMedia is a relatively terrible thing to inflict upon unsuspecting project partners who are already stressed out by the weird idea that they should contribute documentation to your project, that they might actually be asked to actually write somethingWiki Wondering: Share and enjoy.
04 March 2010
Those Damn JavaStations Just Won't Go Away
Actually, this thing - going by the dubious name of 'zero client' - looks to be something more like a SunRay than a JavaStation NC.
I have what is probably one of the only production JavaStations left in the world sitting downstairs - by the front door - waiting to get dumped for recycling. It is not one of those original concept JavaStations - youknow, the one that looked like the Heart Of Gold starship with Infinite Improbability Drive. Rather it was one that actually worked, looking more like a conventional PC, but with an odd (smart-card) slot in the front. It was part of a special production-run that Sun did for a client about 10 years ago which deal fell into disarray when the Left Hand of Marketing failed to talk to the Right Hand of Management at Sun, and they canned the entire JavaStation concept. As a result a couple of thousand of these JavaStations got dumped and the customer got the contract fulfilled by other means.
Actually, it would make a nice X terminal when running Linux. You'd just have to reflash the BIOS.
It occurs to me that there must be some JavaStation nostalgia buff out there that might want it. Any offers?
I have what is probably one of the only production JavaStations left in the world sitting downstairs - by the front door - waiting to get dumped for recycling. It is not one of those original concept JavaStations - youknow, the one that looked like the Heart Of Gold starship with Infinite Improbability Drive. Rather it was one that actually worked, looking more like a conventional PC, but with an odd (smart-card) slot in the front. It was part of a special production-run that Sun did for a client about 10 years ago which deal fell into disarray when the Left Hand of Marketing failed to talk to the Right Hand of Management at Sun, and they canned the entire JavaStation concept. As a result a couple of thousand of these JavaStations got dumped and the customer got the contract fulfilled by other means.
Actually, it would make a nice X terminal when running Linux. You'd just have to reflash the BIOS.
It occurs to me that there must be some JavaStation nostalgia buff out there that might want it. Any offers?
24 February 2010
Invalid Field Feedback Failure
Random musing on UI misdesign
A particular egregious error (seen in websites too numerous to list) is to validate a form, rejecting some field's value as invalid input, and then not telling the user the correct or acceptable values/formats. In other words, leaving the poor user in the dark over what they did wrong.
Only the most motivated and perseverant user will try more than once or twice before simply giving up and going away. And you will fail to capture some information/data the presumably would have been of some value. (Otherwise why would you have constructed a form in the first place?)
Example: Dzone user-profile editing rejects phone numbers entered in a format identical with the example displayed below the phone-number input field, and never provides and explanation of why. Just "Invalid input" over and over again. Result: users do not (cannot) provide valid registration information.
Somehow this failure is even worse when your form absolutely refuses to accept an entry that is perfectly valid in the user's world, but, through your own ignorance or provincialism, you reject as invalid in your own part of the world. A classic example of this crops up on websites requiring a postal-code (zip-code) as part of their input, but insist that postal codes contain exactly 5 or 9 digits. This might be a requirement for valid postal-codes in some parts of the world, but it is patently false for the vast majority of global users. Admittedly this problem has abated some over the past 10 years, but not enough, yet.
So: When you reject a user's input, please tell them how to provide something you will accept. Even better, use input mechanisms that only produce valid values in the first place, and both you and your users will be happier. e.g. Clicking on a map to indicate a position is inherently easier and more error-proof than typing in a latitude and longitude into a textbox.
[Repost from http://mikro2nd.net/bits/Wiki.jsp?page=UIDesign]
A particular egregious error (seen in websites too numerous to list) is to validate a form, rejecting some field's value as invalid input, and then not telling the user the correct or acceptable values/formats. In other words, leaving the poor user in the dark over what they did wrong.
Only the most motivated and perseverant user will try more than once or twice before simply giving up and going away. And you will fail to capture some information/data the presumably would have been of some value. (Otherwise why would you have constructed a form in the first place?)
Example: Dzone user-profile editing rejects phone numbers entered in a format identical with the example displayed below the phone-number input field, and never provides and explanation of why. Just "Invalid input" over and over again. Result: users do not (cannot) provide valid registration information.
Somehow this failure is even worse when your form absolutely refuses to accept an entry that is perfectly valid in the user's world, but, through your own ignorance or provincialism, you reject as invalid in your own part of the world. A classic example of this crops up on websites requiring a postal-code (zip-code) as part of their input, but insist that postal codes contain exactly 5 or 9 digits. This might be a requirement for valid postal-codes in some parts of the world, but it is patently false for the vast majority of global users. Admittedly this problem has abated some over the past 10 years, but not enough, yet.
So: When you reject a user's input, please tell them how to provide something you will accept. Even better, use input mechanisms that only produce valid values in the first place, and both you and your users will be happier. e.g. Clicking on a map to indicate a position is inherently easier and more error-proof than typing in a latitude and longitude into a textbox.
[Repost from http://mikro2nd.net/bits/Wiki.jsp?page=UIDesign]
18 February 2010
MIA: Google News Upgrades
When is Google going to upgrade Google News?
I don't mean anything too radical... I really, really don't want people clicking news articles straight through to Buzz on the assumption that this somehow substitutes for real communication. I have enough noise in my life already!
But I would like to see a way to promote/demote articles that the News software decides to feed me. I'm sick to death of seeing articles for the latest car models released. Let's leave aside the fact that the articles are hideously misclassified... Helloooo, Google! It's over 100 years since cars were bleeding edge Sci/Tech! At least a promote/demote system would allow their software to learn over time that I'm never going to read articles about cars or cricket... that "How Green is Your Valentine", apart from being a bit dated at this point in time, is definitely not climate-change news...
Then, too, it would be so nice to have a way to say to Google News, "Please never show me news from source X ever again." Certain news sites are so tediously flashy that they're not worth the bother of clicking through. I'd rather just make them vanish - at least from my view of the world.
Does this mean I would only get biased, half-arsed, partial news? Of course. But that's what any of us are seeing anyway!
Ah well, its pretty unlikely that Google are paying any attention to this anyway. ;-) My real point is about software adapting to the way I work, play, communicate and view the world. I'll elaborate in another post.
I don't mean anything too radical... I really, really don't want people clicking news articles straight through to Buzz on the assumption that this somehow substitutes for real communication. I have enough noise in my life already!
But I would like to see a way to promote/demote articles that the News software decides to feed me. I'm sick to death of seeing articles for the latest car models released. Let's leave aside the fact that the articles are hideously misclassified... Helloooo, Google! It's over 100 years since cars were bleeding edge Sci/Tech! At least a promote/demote system would allow their software to learn over time that I'm never going to read articles about cars or cricket... that "How Green is Your Valentine", apart from being a bit dated at this point in time, is definitely not climate-change news...
Then, too, it would be so nice to have a way to say to Google News, "Please never show me news from source X ever again." Certain news sites are so tediously flashy that they're not worth the bother of clicking through. I'd rather just make them vanish - at least from my view of the world.
Does this mean I would only get biased, half-arsed, partial news? Of course. But that's what any of us are seeing anyway!
Ah well, its pretty unlikely that Google are paying any attention to this anyway. ;-) My real point is about software adapting to the way I work, play, communicate and view the world. I'll elaborate in another post.
11 February 2010
User Interface Redesigns
I love this quote by E. A. Vander Veer in "Why Does Facebook Keep Redesigning?"
This is more true than I care to think about! Case in point: the SA Weather Service's abomination of a website. They went from a site that, while it had its faults, was uncluttered, easy to navigate, and pretty useful to an astonishingly broad range of audiences whose weather-and-climate-information needs are wildly different: from farmers to firefighters, airline pilots to town-planners. The new site provoked such a backlash when it was first released that the Weather Service website developers were forced to put in links back to the old site in order to provide the vast swathes of information that was missing from the new one.1
Rather than ragging any further on the shitty Weather Service website, allow me to point out one fundamental driver of user-interface redesigns that E A Vander Veer seems to have missed... a reason that goes, in fact, far further than UI redesigns, but is all too often a well concealed motivation for many, many software rewrites and redesigns: We redesign and rewrite because the developers want to play around with a bunch of flavour-of-the-day, oooh-shiny-new-toy technologies.
Not knocking E A's basic insight, though... The motivation seldom comes from the users (or their legitimate representatives) themselves, but almost always from the technical insiders who want change for change's sake.
Like those who thought that adding autoboxing and varargs to the Java language was a value-add...
[1] At the same time the SAWS web designers tried to do the whole "Social Weather 2.0" thing. Sadly they missed the point completely. Any negative comments on the forums regarding the new site were silently deleted. Way to build trust, guys!
typically users aren't considered at all when it comes to software redesigns. I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it in action on countless projects in several different companies! The attitude is, "We're the experts, we know what you want and need, our redesign is making it better, and it won't take more than a few minutes for you to get up to speed."
This is more true than I care to think about! Case in point: the SA Weather Service's abomination of a website. They went from a site that, while it had its faults, was uncluttered, easy to navigate, and pretty useful to an astonishingly broad range of audiences whose weather-and-climate-information needs are wildly different: from farmers to firefighters, airline pilots to town-planners. The new site provoked such a backlash when it was first released that the Weather Service website developers were forced to put in links back to the old site in order to provide the vast swathes of information that was missing from the new one.1
Rather than ragging any further on the shitty Weather Service website, allow me to point out one fundamental driver of user-interface redesigns that E A Vander Veer seems to have missed... a reason that goes, in fact, far further than UI redesigns, but is all too often a well concealed motivation for many, many software rewrites and redesigns: We redesign and rewrite because the developers want to play around with a bunch of flavour-of-the-day, oooh-shiny-new-toy technologies.
Not knocking E A's basic insight, though... The motivation seldom comes from the users (or their legitimate representatives) themselves, but almost always from the technical insiders who want change for change's sake.
Like those who thought that adding autoboxing and varargs to the Java language was a value-add...
[1] At the same time the SAWS web designers tried to do the whole "Social Weather 2.0" thing. Sadly they missed the point completely. Any negative comments on the forums regarding the new site were silently deleted. Way to build trust, guys!
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