Monthly Archives: August 2005

How Agile practices can help staunch the flow of defects

Posted on August 25, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

I was in a project retrospective meeting today, and I’ve got another one tomorrow.  I think we had a fairly low rate of defects compared to the complexity of the code, but we had some definite inefficiency in the amount … Continue reading →

Posted in Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development | 5 Comments

The Importance of Being Explicit

Posted on August 23, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

I’ve gotten burned several times lately with little defects that are indirectly caused by implicit “read the tea leaves” style programming.  Here’s an example of what I mean taken from my work last week.<Rule DayLimit=”5″ /> It’s just an attribute … Continue reading →

Posted in Ranting | 8 Comments

Good quote from today

Posted on August 23, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

During an iteration kickoff meeting– “Guys, I know you’re just becoming familiar with XYZ, but could you tell us when every un-scheduled downtime event is going to be this year?” Promptly followed by: “Can you go ahead and estimate the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Yes, but CruiseControl.Net and its ilk are still important

Posted on August 23, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

James Shore has been running a series of somewhat controversial posts about continuous integration.  Continuous Integration: There’s Another Step Why I Don’t Like CruiseControl Continuous Integration is an Attitude, Not a Tool The gist of his writings is that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Continuous Integration | Leave a comment

Application Re-write Wackiness

Posted on August 19, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

To any colleagues that stumble across this, please don’t take any offense.  It was a bad, bad day around the Austin office that day. – Jeremy 10/26/2005     Have you ever had to do a re-write of an existing … Continue reading →

Posted in Ranting | 4 Comments

Testing Granularity, Feedback Cycles, and Holistic Development

Posted on August 18, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

So far this year I’ve done a greenfield development project, made changes to a legacy application, and am about to take over development on a third product.  The new code was built with Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration from the … Continue reading →

Posted in Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development | 6 Comments

James Shore dissects the FBI’s Trilogy project failure

Posted on August 17, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

James Shore has a good article in the current issue of SDTimes called It’s Not Too Late to Learn about the massive failure of the FBI’s Trilogy project.   

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Use a refactoring checklist to pay down Technical Debt as you work

Posted on August 12, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

If you’ve never heard the term “Technical Debt,” check out Martin Fowler’s definition and Ward Cunningham’s Wiki on the subject. The triumvirite TDD coding cycle of “Red, Green, Refactor” is plastered all over the web and endlessly repeated by all us TDD zombies.  If … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Why aren’t design patterns common knowledge?

Posted on August 10, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

Take this all with a grain of salt, I’m just a little frustrated.  I received a glimmer of hope today.  We were interviewing a candidate for a senior developer role today and he was able to speak knowledgeably and confidently about … Continue reading →

Posted in Design Patterns, Ranting | 19 Comments

Chill out on the Singleton Fetish

Posted on August 4, 2005 by Jeremy Miller

My little team is taking over development for one of our other products.  Today is the first day of the typical ”I’m getting the app up on my box and the NAnt build doesn’t work on my box” hell.  One of the things … Continue reading →

Posted in Test Driven Development | 8 Comments