Sharing Trough Implementation Patterns
Published January 31st, 2008 Under Quotes, Software Development | Leave a Comment
The thing I like about the pattern form is that it gives you a way to talk about the motivation for what you are doing. So there is a lot of Java style books, and good ones, out there people with lots of experience, people who’ve thought carefully about how to program, but when I read them what I hear is a set of commandments, “Name variables like this, arrange your code like that, etc” and all those are good things to do in certain circumstances, but what doesn’t ever come true for me is why? What’s the context, what stage needs to be set before that’s the right thing to do, and what are the consequences? If I do that what other thing should I do so that the whole system works well together? So there are different personal styles.
People come to those styles because there are a bunch of decisions that work well together. Taking one bit of that out and using it isn’t necessarily working well. So by writing a pattern kind of format I get a chance to say: “How do you name fields?” Well, let’s see. What are all the things that you might want to communicate? What things might a reader be interested in if they are reading a name of a variable? What are all the constraints on naming, both in terms of like cognitive constraints. Abbreviations don’t work well for a variety of reasons, but why? Really long names don’t work well, but why? By writing in terms of patterns I get an opportunity to think about all of those. Here is my rule for naming variables, to use simple names that describe the role of the variable in the computation, but if I just said that as a commandment, someone could copy that, but they don’t really get it in the same sense that I care about, and more importantly when that is not the right rule, they don’t get any sense of what thinking was behind that rule, so they don’t know when to break it.
Source: “Kent Beck on Implementation Patterns” on infoq.com
The main point in Kent Beck’s words is that you cannot use software development methods and tools without knowing the context in which you should use them. Every time you find something interesting and new, you should ask yourself why and when you could use it, and why and when you should not use it.
Software Development Articles
Published January 30th, 2008 Under Software Development | Leave a Comment
Some of the last interesting additions to http://www.softdevarticles.com:
* Views: the Key to Database Agility
This article explains how the use of views in databases affords the best hope
of bringing developers and DBAs together, facilitating the application
development process, and bridging the object-relational gap.
* How to Avoid Software Inspection Failure and Achieve Ongoing Benefits
This article examines why software inspections are not used more widely,
identify the issues contributing to their lack of use, identify why inspection
benefits deteriorate for many companies, and recommend what can be done to
address and solve these issues.
New Conferences Partnerships
Published January 28th, 2008 Under Conferences, Software Development | Leave a Comment
Methods & Tools is proud to have been chosen as media partner by the following software development conferences
Software Test & Performance Conference April 15-17, 2008, San Mateo, CA, USA
Developer Day Scotland May 10 2008 Glasgow Scotland, UK
XP Day France 2008 12-13 mai 2008, Paris
25th International Practical Software Quality and Testing (PSQT)
Conquest 08 September 24-26, Potsdam, Germany
Looking Back to 2007
Published January 22nd, 2008 Under News, Software Development | Leave a Comment
At the beginning of 2008, it is time to look back at what happened in the software development world during 2007. Amongst the most important trends developed during this year, I choose the continuation of the consolidation in the software industry, the entry of Microsoft in the battle for the rich internet interface market, the expanded usage of software as a service, the diffusion of open common architecture frameworks, the greater importance given to agile software development practice in the media and the better recognition of Ruby by commercial tools editors. Read more
Sun is Buying MySQL
Published January 16th, 2008 Under News, Software Development | Leave a Comment
It should be something related to the sales period as the same day that Oracle scoop BEA Systems, Sun Microsystems announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB for approximately $1 billion.
MySQL was forecasted to set an IPO this year, but it seems that with the difficult conditions of the stock market its initial investors have chosen the easy solution to cash their money by letting Sun acquire the company.
For Sun, who recently changed its NASDAQ stock ticker from SUN to JAVA, it is a confirmation that the new strategic direction is in software and services. This move is therefore an important step to transform itself more in a service oriented company. With MySQL, Sun acquires a fast-growing company that has already a dual open source-commercial approach. Its estimated 2007 revenues were around $70 million. It is also a quick and good ticket to enter the database market already occupied by its competitors (Microsoft, Oracle and IBM). We suppose that Sun will not touch a lot to the existing MySQL organization. Being backed by a bigger company will bring an increased credibility and a better sales channel. Sun could also provide additional resources to improve its product so that it will become a more fierce competitor against Oracle.
The acquisition could also help Sun to propose its own alternative to the open source Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) architecture. As it put its Solaris operating system in open source last year, it could propose a Solaris/Apache/MySQL/Java (SAMJ) pack that could be optimized. This could be a real alternative to the Windows ecosystem that is backed by a “old” company, thus allowing medium-size companies to have the impression to make a safer transition than with a pack of dispersed open source projects.
This move also changes the landscape for the other companies operating in the open source database area, like PostgreSQL and Ingres. However it is also a financial validation of the open source commercial model and some companies could end being the target of a bigger fish in the future. I will not be surprised if companies like Red Hat, HP… or Yahoo! will make some acquisitions in the sector in a near future.
keep looking »