Great Series on Sinful Programming

Eric Gunnerson is running a series on deadly sins of programming.  He’s only got the first two installments up, but they’re great already.

Classic American Novels

The guys over at Power Line blog (warning: site by often-raving conservative lawyers) have a cool list of what they think are the top 21 American novels ever written.  (Funny, there aren’t any novels there by Canadian, Mexican, or Brazilian authors…)

It’s a great-looking list, and I’m happy to say I’ve actually read a number of them.  And yes, that number is > 0, although I have to fess up that Moby Dick is still unfinished.

There are some works on the list that I’ll look to get into after mid-July when James and I finish up work on the book.

Managing a Writing Project

James and I are getting a significant number of contributors writing for our book, which means I’ve got a significant amount of workflow to handle all the overhead involved in that.  I’ve got a pretty good workflow down, based partially on GTD and partially on McGhee’s book (the two are pretty dang similar).

First off, we’re tracking contents of each chapter via To-Do lists on our Basecamp site—and Basecamp been friggin invaluable as a tracking/collaboration tool.  Each chapter’s To-Do list has deadlines for contributor submissions, and chapter delivery deadlines are tracked via Milestones.  We’ve got a short time between contributor deadlines and chapter delivery, basically just enough time to finish our own writing and get everything edited up.

I use a template for initially contacting contributors.  I’ll note on the chapter’s to-do when I’ve sent out the solicitation e-mail so I know when it’s time to get myself or James writing the article if the contributor doesn’t reply.  I could put a deadline for receiving a reply on the to-do list as well as creating an Outlook appointment, but have found that a visual check of the To-Do list has worked fine so far.

If I get a positive reply back from contributors I’ll forward them another templated e-mail with the writing templates, style guides, example articles, and some contractual gunk in it.  I let contributors know I’ll check in with them a few days before their deadline (noted in the first template and the second mail too) for a status update.  I create an Outlook appointment for that status check and move the contributor’s accepting e-mail into that appointment — cleaning up my Inbox and getting the right info into the appointment all in one swell foop.  We also created a general Basecamp user for contributors which lets us quickly see who’s writing specific articles, a general contributor, me, James, or Ben Carey, who has been doing killer work both as a focus-group-of-one as well as writing some seriously golden content.

When first draft articles are complete (from contributors, James, or myself) they get checked into a Subversion repository.  I’ll update the Basecamp To-Do list, noting the article’s arrived and is ready for review—and assign myself as the person responsible since I’m first in line for reviews. (Except for stuff I write, natch.)

If at all possible, I try to give the article a once-over right upon reception.  This lets me make sure the general content and style of the article is on track.  I learned that lesson the hard way, having left a couple early-arrivers until much later, only to find some serious errors.  Upon reception of the article I also make an appointment for the “real” review.   This keeps me focused on what’s in the pipeline and helps me keep my nose to the grindstone instead of heading out to the garden to chase my kids around the yard.

At this point we’re moving along pretty well.  James and I have a good flow for reviewing and editing articles, after which we consolidate the articles into one chapter and hand that off to the folks at O’Reilly.

Sure, there have been plenty of hitches, but it’s going relatively smoothly, and the workflow lets me get writing and management done while still doing the Mr. Mom thing of ferrying kids around to preschool/school/piano lessons. (Not to mention finally finishing the new flooring in the office.)

Now Playing: Molly Hatchet—Molly Hatchet

Happy Memorial Day!

I’ve tried scratching out a few different blog posts on what today means to me, but nothing was sounding quite right.  The best thing I can do is just point back to what I wrote last year because that really rings quite true to me.

Here in the US, Memorial Day is about honoring vetrans who’ve given their lives in service to this nation so that the rest of us can have safer lives in a country where freedom rings.  Regan said it so poignaintly when he spoke of our great land being a shining city calling to others.  This shining city (warts and all) is what it is in no small part due to folks in our military who’ve made sacrifices most of us can’t fathom.

Memorial Day isn’t just about grilling burgers on the grill, although I did that.  It’s about reflecting on what others have done so that your life is better than what they might have had.  You don’t have to limit that to folks in the military members, and you certainly don’t have to limit that to the borders of the USA.

I spent some quiet time today looking at a picture of an airplane on my wall, painted as a tribute to 24 of my friends and comrades who lost their lives in a crash some years ago while flying on a mission in Alaska.  I spent some significant time today thinking about the hard work my parents and their forebears have laid in to help me get where I am today.

Regardless of where you come from, regardless of what nation you call home, take some time and think of those who’ve sacrificed to help you have the life you’ve got.

Book Review: Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Systems

Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Systems, Sam Guchkenheimer, Addison-Wesley

This book isn't about implementing Visual Studio Team Systems, so don't expect details on setting up, configuring, or making use of VSTS in a daily work environment.  What this book really covers is the high-level use of project data, reports and features in VSTS.  The author himself says this is intended as a general book on software engineering practices, touching on how to use VSTS to get engineering done well.  You'll have to look elsewhere for the nitty-gritty details on actually rolling VSTS into your organization's development environment

What you will find in this book are some well-written, well-thought guidelines on how to approach various aspects of the software development process.  Frequently those guidelines will involve using products or features from VSTS, and the book does some nice analysis using those products.

Microsoft Solutions Framework, a platform to create software engineering lifecycle processes, gets moderate coverage through the book.  You'll see frequent references to the MSF implementations for Agile and CMMI, but again, only from a high-level aspect.

All this so far might sound like I didn't care for the book.  That's not true, it's just that it's written from a very different angle than I expected.  I was expecting more of a HOW-TO or implementation guide.  This book ain't that.

Specifics which I found very good in the book included the great sidebars, the section on using coverage reports for development feedback, and the troubleshooting section.  For example, some sidebars show you the specific MSDN heirarchy for finding specific documentation on an aspect of VSTS, helpful for that actual implementation stuff.  (That's assuming Microsoft doesn't completely re-arrange MSDN's content structure as they seem wont to do with alarming frequency.)  The portion on coverage feedback is great for developers understanding why coverage might change in unexpected fashions as they're moving through their work. 

The troubleshooting chapter is seriously good stuff.  Guckenheimer does a great job of tossing up many graphs with different data and showing how to interpret them.  He shows how graph states might reflect problems on the project with scope creep, architectural mistakes, or various issues with defects such as reactivations or poor unit testing.

Guckenheimer's closing chapter is quite useful too.  He's very forthright about potential criticisms of his book, but makes a good case on why the book's structured as it is -- it was at this point that I finally clued into the book's purpose.

The book is definitely not for developers looking to learn more about VSTS, but rather for management and leads looking to understand how VSTS can help them effectively manage their projects will get a whole lot of use from the book.

Congress And The Separation Of Powers

Warning: Political Stuff.  Skip over this if you’re only interested in reading my blog posts on gardening, cooking, or whatever that dang .NET thing is.

I don't know whether you care or not about the flap surrounding the FBI's search of Congressman Jefferson's office, but Glenn Reynolds has some good stuff over at  Instapundit.com on the issue.  Jerry Pournell, on the other hand, shows that while he’s an absolutely brilliant science fiction and general-issue tech writer, he should probably stay away from attempting to pontificate on Constitutional law matters.

Reynolds hits it on the head in his opening graf: “What’s frustrating in these discussions is the failure to distinguish between what the law should be in somebody's opinion, and what it actually is, based on the Constitution and the caselaw.”

The behavior of the GOP Speaker of the House is continuing to drive the nail deeper in my resolve to vote Democrat in the next election, not because I approve of anything the Democrats are doing (which is nothing but hyperbolic, vitrolic criticism without offering any alternatives), but because the GOP Congress has shown they’re completely out to lunch with regards to any form of accountability, fiscal responsibility, or respect for we folks who elected them.

Setting up a Subversion Server under Windows

I'm working on setting up Trac, a neat-looking issues-tracking system with integration between a Wiki and Subversion. It's a huge PITA to install on Windows, but here are two good helpers I've found so far:

• Setting Up Subversion on Windows
• Setting up Trac on Windows

Trac’s as bad, if not worse, than Bugzilla for setup pain, but it looks like it will be something interesting to explore.

(Posted mostly for my own future reference)

Terrific Video on Assembly Hijacking

Watch this terrific video for a killer demonstration on exactly how bad guys can hijack assemblies in your apps.  This is a step-by-step demonstration on how bad guys can use sql injection and inference attacks to discover scary details of your system, then make your life miserable by taking over a simple logging DLL.

There’s also anice video on realistic Small Office Home Office (SOHO) security.

Via Microsoft’s Threat Modelling Blog.

Shiny New Presenter

Rob Keefer gave a great presentation on architecture at this month’s DevGroup meeting here in Dayton.  He had lots of great knowledge to pass on, and there was some very good Q&A, but what really caught my eye was the neat presenter he was using. 

I have a neat IR pointer/presenter Drew was nice enough to give me, but it’s IR which means line of sight.  I wander around a lot, guesturing like a madman, while doing my presentations, so the line of sight is a real pain in the butt. 

I’ve been a good boy lately and really being careful about not spending money on toys, but this one I couldn’t pass up, so I gave in to impulsive temptation and bought one.  (BTW, the company selling these from that Amazon link ROCKS!  They had the device in my hands two days after ordering, all for a very small shipping fee.)

I’m happy with the gadget so far, but I’m trying to research out keymapping options to change the Internet and E-Mail buttons to something more useful.  Who the heck would want a presenter widget to fire off e-mail and a browser?  OK, browser maybe, but not e-mail.

I’m hoping to remap the E-Mail key to Alt-1 and the Internet Key to Esc.  That would let me make great use of ZoomIt to scribble on the screen directly from the presenter without having to return to the laptop.  I tried SharpKeys but unfortunately it doesn’t recognize the Mail or Browser keystrokes, nor can I map Alt-1 using SharpKeys.  I may end up manually hacking the registry — but I’d rather have somebody else’s software to blame if I screw it up.

More and More MbUnit Goodness

I’ve been fooling around with MbUnit off and on for several months, and I continue to be knocked over by its goodness and killer features.

One cool thing I’m working on today is the TypeFixture attribute/test fixture which lets you use factories to bounce different instances through one set of tests.  This works very nicely for testing different types implemeting a common interface.

For example, here’s a simple (ok, contrived) example using an interface defined for employee object functionality:

public interface IEmployee

{

    string FName { get; set; } 

    string LName { get; set; } 

    double HourlyRate { get; set; } 

    string WageType { get; set; }

}

If I’ve SalariedEmployee and HourlyEmployee classes which both implement this, then I can do some quick testing by first building a couple factories:

public class EmployeeFactory

{

    [Factory]

    public SalariedEmployee BasicSalaried

    {

        get

        {

            return new SalariedEmployee("FirstName",

                                    "LastName",

                                    50,

                                    Employee.WageTypes.SALARY);

        }

    }

 

    [Factory]

    public SalariedEmployee BasicHourly

    {

        get

        {

            return new SalariedEmployee("FirstName",

                                    "LastName",

                                    50,

                                    Employee.WageTypes.HOURLY);

        }

    }

 

}

Now I create another class marked as a TypeFixture and let that class know where it will get its data from (the EmployeeFactory class above), and of what type that data will be (objects implemeting IEmployee).  This TypeFixture will deal with IEmployee objects as defined in the attribute.

[TypeFixture(typeof(IEmployee))]

[ProviderFactory(typeof(EmployeeFactory), typeof(IEmployee))]

public class MBIEmployeeTests

{

    [Test]

    [ExpectedException(typeof(ArgumentOutOfRangeException), "Rate less than zero")]

     public void CheckRateFailsUnderZero(IEmployee emp)

    {

        emp.HourlyRate = -20;

    }

 

    [Test]

    [ExpectedException(typeof(ArgumentOutOfRangeException), "Invalid wage type!")]

     public void CheckBadWageTypeFails(IEmployee emp)

    {

        emp.WageType = "Bogus!";

    }

 

 

}

MbUnit will run both the types output by the Factory-marked methods through the test fixture, resulting in four different tests.  Here’s the output from TestDriven’s test runner:

------ Test started: Assembly: JHSCR.Tests.dll ------

Test Execution

Exploring JHSCR.Tests, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null

MbUnit 1.0.2232.25376 Addin

Found 4 tests

[success] MBIEmployeeTests.EmployeeFactory.BasicSalaried.CheckRateFailsUnderZero

[success] MBIEmployeeTests.EmployeeFactory.BasicSalaried.CheckBadWageTypeFails

[success] MBIEmployeeTests.EmployeeFactory.BasicHourly.CheckRateFailsUnderZero

[success] MBIEmployeeTests.EmployeeFactory.BasicHourly.CheckBadWageTypeFails

[reports] generating HTML report

TestResults: file:///D:/Data/Iterative%20Rose/Presentations/Test%20Tools/JHSCR/Build/JHSCR.Tests.Tests.html

4 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, took 2.41 seconds.

Nifty stuff.  Elegant implementation and a big timesaver.

Software Security Isn't Just Code

From the "We're Really Friggin' Stupid" department: Veterans' data swiped in theft | CNET News.com.

Security isn’t just how well you build your code, it’s also about policies and procedures ensuring critical data is properly protected.  You can lock down access privileges all you want on your database and file system, do all the code reviews you want to ensure no SQL injection attacks are allowed, but at the end of the day all it takes is some stupid SOB taking home critical data on a laptop which then gets stolen.

I’m a veteran and my wife’s active duty military. Privacy information for both of us is now at risk.  Think I’m pissed off about this?  You bet.

This definitely gets added to my Into to Secuity presentation as an example of What Not To Do.

Review Addition: Practices of an Agile Programmer

Adding on to my earlier post about Practices of an Agile Developer. Here are more specifics on why this is such a great book.

One of the things I found so attractive about this book was its large section “Delivering What Users Want.”  I’m sure many of you have horror stories about management, leads, and developers who couldn’t have cared less about the customers/users.  Maybe you yourself think that customers and users don’t matter.  Here’s a secret for you: You as a developer most likely don’t pay yourself out of your own pocket.  It’s customers who buy your software which ends up putting money in the company’s coffers of which some ends up in your pockets.  It’s users who create a need for the stuff you’re working on, thereby enabling a flow of cash from said company coffers to said pockets.  Sorry, rant over.

The section on user focus hits some great points not which only specifically deal with enabling customer decisions to drive your products, but also forces you to think about why you should make various choices about how you’re building your software.  Desgin shouldn’t dictate, but guide.  Technology is cool, but can you really justify moving to that shiny new <Fill In The Blank> system?  Demos should happen often, and you should listen to what the audience tells you about the product.  I found this section to be very unique as compared to other books on Agile I’ve read.  There’s gold throughout the book, but this section in particular hit home for me.

The chapter on collaboration also brings up some nice points in a style different from other books I’ve read.  I particularly liked the bit on mentoring (but then I’ve written about that before…), and there’s a nice balancing article on letting folks figure things out themselves.  Feed a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish, and all that.

Again, as I mentioned in my other post, the Epilogue is just amazing.  Step-by-step guides on which practices to roll out first, plus two great guides for folks interested in trying to sell Agile.  One is written from a manager’s prospective on how to sell Agile to a team, the other from a developer’s viewpoint trying to sell Agile to management.  These are top-notch resources if you’re the lone voice trying to get pieces of Agile rolled into your envrionment.

All this may sound like I’m blathering on about the book.  I am.  It’s a great, great work right along the lines of amazing things like Peopleware.

Thanks. No.

Thanks. No..

For all that stupid crap you get from folks who think passing on every stupid Urban Legend and “wonderful story!” is a great use of bandwidth and time.

(Via Hanselman)

ReSharper 2.0 Released!

The amazing folks at JetBrains have released ReSharper 2.0.  I’ve been involved in the Early Access Program for a number of months and have been impressed with how much they accomplished.

Check out ReSharper if you’re at all interested in improving your VS experience.  It’s available for both 2003 and 2005 versions, plus I believe there’s some support for Visual Basic.  Download ReSharper 2.0 and ask ‘em for a 30 day license if you’re not familiar with it and are interested in checking it out.

Congrats to the great folks at JetBrains!

Short Review: Practices of an Agile Developer

UPDATE:  Once again, I prove my abiltiy to goof up:  The title of this book is Practices of an Agile Developer, not Programmer as I'd earlier noted. Fixed in the title and text. Sorry!

I got Practices of an Agile Developer not long ago and ended up reading it bit by bit over a week or two.  It’s a very short, concise book (176 pages!) with a lot of great stuff in it.  It’s absolutely worth picking up if you’re at all interested in learning about agile, moving to agile, or improving your existing agile approach.

Here’s the short review I posted up on Amazon.com:

This is an absolutely terrific book. It's well-written and lays out 45 essential practices for starting and keeping an agile project rolling.

Each chapter starts out with a very sensible overview, pointing out where the practices for that chapter might fit. Each specific practice is nicely done, with short, to-the-point discussions of what the practice is, how you roll in to it, and how you stay in the groove with that practice.

There's a lot of goodness in the bibliography for additional reading, plus the epilogue, "Moving To Agility" is worth pasting on the foreheads of stubborn mangement who are unwilling to listen to rationale for improving the development environment. The specific steps for rescuing a failing project are terrific, as are the other epilogue sections.

Lastly, there's a nice pull-out reference card with one or two sentance blurbs on each practice.

Sheer gold.

Well worth the asking price. (Disclaimer: I got this for free as a review book.)  This one gets saved on my bookshelf, unlike many other fine reference-style books which arrive in the mail.  Those get read, reviewed, and passed on to other folks simply because they’re not unique enough for me to keep around.

More on Software Development and Cooking

Dan good naturedly gave me a hard time last week about a post on software development compared to cooking.  In the same line, here’s a great article on Coding Horror talking about how programmers and chefs have one critical thing in common: the need to keep your workplace clean. 

In cooking, it’s keeping your mis en place straight and your cookware ready for the next round.  In software it’s the need to keep your code refactored.

Another good post from Jeff Atwood, and worth the read.

The Downside of Non-Admin Privs

I’ve been having various pains getting my new-to-me tablet configured (James sold me his well-used one for $8,799.  What a guy!).  Some of the pains are due to my attempts to get everything set up via installs using the MakeMeAdmin.cmd file to temporarily give myself admin privs.  Per Margosis’s suggestion in that same blog post, I also changed the default install behavior so that new objects belong to the Administrator, not the user doing the install.

All this is generally shiny, but it bit me with my Palm software’s synch stuff.  Attempts to HotSync were haging during the Media phase, and I wasn’t sure what the problem was.  Sysinternals to the rescue.  A quick capture session using Regmon and Filemon pointed me to the culprit: file privilege problems.

The profiles for HotSync don’t get installed in a user’s home directory, rather they’re separate folders in the \Program Files\PalmOne tree.  I can’t write there as a basic user who doesn’t own the installed objects.  Bad implementation on Palm’s part.  Quickly fixed by giving myself modify rights to the profile tree.

Life with non-admin privs takes a little getting used to, but it’s worth the curve.

My Current Mountainous Stack of Geek Books

OK, so I’m falling a bit behind on my pile of books to read.  Ugh. 

Actually, I’ve gotten through some of this pile already:

• I’m mostly through Practices of an Agile Developer and it’s sheer gold.  Short, concise, filled with goodness on getting Agile done right.
• Liberty’s Programming ASP.NET, 3rd ed is really well-done but is more about implementation without much on general web development. Gotta find another book for that.
• I've found some great stuff in ASP.NET 2.0, A Programmer’s Notebook so far. Overviews of 2.0 goodness, but you'll need other material to get in the guts of things.
• I’ve only skimmed parts of Perry’s Core C# and .NET, but it looks well-written and helpful.  Solved one or two things for me, so it’s got that going for it.

The next six weeks are sheer madness here as James and I crush to get the last half of the book knocked out.  I’ll have little time for any reading, so this pile ain’t gonna get much smaller any time soon…

SQL Connection String Help

Dave Donaldson blogged about ConnectionStrings.com some time ago, but I’d forgotten about it until today when I kept munging up an string in an attempt to get MyGeneration working. 

Now I’ve got a working string and life is happy.

Book Review: iPod & iTunes -- The Missing Manual, 4th ed

I’ve got an “old fashioned” 4th generation iPod with no video.  Poor me, I can only fit 10,000 or 15,000 songs on my rig and can’t watch movie clips.  Still, I manage to suffer through.

J.D. Biersdorfer’s iPod & iTunes -- The Missing Manual, 4th ed is a great companion for my iPod, even though a fair chunk of the book is geared to folks with the newer gadgets.  There is a good overview section on the different hardware models (the Shuffle gets its own chapter) to get you familiar with the players themselves, plus there’s a great discussion of the different audio formats.  I found that particularly useful since I wasn’t clear on impacts of moving away from iTunes’ native AAC format. 

Who It's For

Beginners and intermediate users will find plenty of good stuff in this book.  The basics are clear and concise, so you’ll quickly learn how to set up and manage your iPod and your iTunes library.  You’ll learn the ins and outs of connecting your iPod to everything from your home stereo to the AirPort Express home broadcasting system.

Who It's Not For

Folks who already know how to rip apart their iPods and replace the batteries.  Folks who already use AppleScripting to customize their iPod’s update process or control home lighting.

Good Stuff

The chapter on iTunes is pretty extensive and covers all the functionality from importing CDs to working wth playlists and the Music Store.  There’s a nice chapter on using the iPod as an external drive, a nice trick if you’re looking for an extra place to back up that presentation you’re travelling somewhere distant to make.  I also liked the chapter on Hacks and Cool Tools with its good list of extra software you can find to help you do things like better manage your library and iPod, change the volume of your iPod due to idiotic government mandated volume controls for European devices (sorry, libertarian rant there), or creating your own podcasts.

I’m particularly happy to read all the various websites with resources for iPods.  It’s handy to know where to look for information about battery issues, or find online communities of iPod users.

Bad Stuff

It would have been nice if the author covered the JHymn package which lets you back up your purchased music, but I can understand the hesitancy due to legality questions — but it’s my music that I bought and paid for, damnit!

The author might also have given a quick nod to covering running presentations from your iPod, but that’s a serious edge case.

Bottom Line

This really is a nice book if you’re at all interested in doing more with your iPod.

Intro to Security Presentation Recording

TechSmith was kind enough to donate copies of Camtasia to all the speakers presenting at last weekend’s Day of .NET in Ann Arbor.  We speakers were supposed to record our sessions, but my recording crapped out.  I redid the talk yesterday and burned off a WMV file.  It’s nearly 58MB in size, but it’s 76 minutes long and is at a large enough screen size that you can clearly see my code examples and the such. 

I’ll try some other formatting tweaks to see if I can get a smaller file, but for now you can grab the recording here.

Drop me a note and let me know what you think if you listen to it.

Good Quip on Simplicity

I’m working my way through Practices of an Agile Developer and am loving it for any number of reasons, but this blurb really jumped out at me:

“Simplicity, in coding or writing, is like a chef’s fine reduction sauce.  You start with a lot of wine, stock, and spices, and youcarefully boil it down to a super-concentrated essence.  That’s what good code should taste like—not a large watery mess but a rich, fine sauce.”

OK, so I’m a food nut and this hit my stomach, but it also hit home in the head.  Sensible thoughts out of a great book.  I’ll post up a review on it when I’m finished.

Zingerman's. Just Plain Fantastic.

If you’re read my blog for long you probably know I’m a food nut.  (My pal Jason would say I’m a coffee snob, but he’s missing my history of having drunk BAD coffee for years.  But I digress.)

Zingerman’s is a simply amazing place to get great foodstuffs from.  They’re expensive, but it’s worth it for occasional splurges on special occasions.  We’ve mail ordered from Zingerman’s several times over the years, but haven’t ever been to their deli in Ann Arbor before — we’ve always been far away from there.

Until this last weekend when I spoke at the Day of .NET in Ann Arbor.  What a great opportunity to hit the store!

It’s simply an amazing place: a tiny deli on a corner in Ann Arbor with a separate coffee/chocolate shop next door.  You walk in and are immediately bowled over by the wonderful aromas of cheeses, salumi, bread, and good food.  Even better, you get to sample just about anything.  We even got lucky enough to sample four different traditionale balsamicos, the real stuff.  The nice clerk even gave us a drop of the 100 year old stuff.  Yes, this 100 year old stuff.   Zingerman’s tuna is incredible if you’re looking for something amazing to top a simple salad or add to a bowl of piping hot spaghetti and oil. 

We also spent 15 minutes at the cheese counter gabbing with the really nice folks there and sampling a few things we don’t have access to here in Dayton.  We picked up a passle of neat stuff to bring home with us, perfect for a nice little treat after the kids finally get off to bed.

If you’re at all a foodie, then you ought to take a look at Zingerman’s.  It’s painful in the wallet, but oh-so-wonderful for an occasional treat.

(Plus the folks there are just plain cool.)

PS: Zingerman’s coffee shop next door has great espresso, almost as good as mine at home here.  It’s that coffee snob thing, you know… :)

Book Review: Tester's Guide to .NET Programming

Submitted earlier to Slashdot with little confidence it will make it up, so I’m cross-posting it here.

The focus of software development is drastically different for software testers as opposed to “real” developers. Yes, many of the fundamentals are exactly the same; however, testers need to concentrate on getting bits and pieces of code up quickly for different purposes. Furthermore, testers may not need to plumb the depths of a particular technology, instead concentrating on building just enough code to exercise particular functionality for a system. A Tester’s Guide to .NET Programming from Randal Root and Mary Romero Sweeny does a nice job of laying out just enough fundamentals on Microsoft’s .NET platform to enable a software tester to start building testing applications.

Who it’s For

This book is absolutely targeted to software testers. This isn’t an in-depth discussion of why one should use C#’s “as” keyword for safe casting, nor will you find details on asynchronous communication. What you will find is a quick coverage of enough basics to enable testers to start hitting web services, Windows and ASP forms, and even deal with basic COM interoperability.

Who it’s Not For

This book is definitely not for developers. There are some core software development concepts which get mangled in this book, such as the notion that the only thing static classes and methods (“shared” in VB) let one do is access that class or method directly via its fully-qualified name. That’s perhaps somewhere vaguely correct, but misses the real guts of how static things work.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that this book is for testers, not developers. Such near-misses are few and really don’t have much impact from a tester’s point of view.

What’s Good

The book is well-written, concise, and in a good voice. The authors carry a common project through much of the book, using the development of a bug reporting system to lay out .NET fundamentals. They use a nice building block approach along the way, starting out sections with the extreme basics and moving on to mid-level topics. (You won’t find anything particularly advanced in the book, but again, the focus isn’t on pointy-headed developers, it’s on pointy-headed testers.)

Helpful sidebars are scattered throughout the book covering critical topics such as the differences between using Debug or Trace classes for writing out various pieces of information. There’s also a nice sidebar on partitioning test data via equivalence classes, and how boundary (border) value tests should be used.

There are also several very nice basics covered such as dealing with moving files around programmatically, or using the database explorer to examine table state as part of test setup.

Readers will find fair discussions on how to start working with web services and COM objects, too. There’s also some nice exercises on how to use text injection for rudimentary text field testing. ADO.NET gets another nice nod too, with the fundamentals of database interaction getting quick coverage.

There’s also a very quick, but useful, introduction to the test platform in Team Systems. This chapter’s a little odd, with a different voice and different style for code examples, but it’s quite a nice overview of how Team System’s testing framework, test management tools, and load testing can be put to use by a tester.

What’s Not Good

There are several things I don’t care for in the book, mostly from a software engineer’s viewpoint. One thing driving me crazy was the already noted not-completely-correct discussion of static classes. Another would be the authors’ notion of code reuse via copying in code or classes vice simply referencing a different assembly and keeping code in one central spot.

I was also bothered that no mention was made whatsoever of existing test frameworks such as NUnit and MBUnit, nor was any mention made of automation tools like Selenium or Watir. I realize those are somewhat out of scope of the book, but a passing reference would help point testers to some invaluable tools.

Bottom Line

My small irritations with this book come from my background as a developer. I’ve also been in a specific testing role, so I can really appreciate the positive things this book offers. It’s not a book for any developer to fool with, but it’s an invaluable book for testers looking to learn programming in .NET, specifically tailored for their work as a tester.

Weird Graphics Issue

I ran into a completely nonsensical, flat-assed WEIRD graphics problem last Thursday while trying to help out the Day of .NET gang gin up some PocketMod schedules.  I had terrific luck with using PocketMods as schedules for the Dayton-Cincinnati Code Camp, and passed on my template to Josh, John, and Jason.

Thursday evening Josh asked me to fix up a couple things with their files — they were having some odd exception errors when trying to run the PDF to PocketMod conversion tool and he was swamped with other tasks.  It took me a number of hours, but I finally found that two GIF files were giving the converter grief.

Here’s the rough cut of what was occurring: 

• Alter my working template in MS Word
• Insert several graphics, one PNG, two GIF
• Print to PDF using PDF Creator
• Attempt to convert the PDF file to PocketMod format
• Get an exception during the conversion phase

As I said, I isolated the trouble to two GIF files.  Simply changing the two graphics to PNG format wasn’t enough, I actually had to alter the content of one of the files.  Here’s weird for you: I had to open up one of the files in Paint Shop Pro and use a very light, diffuse eraser to alter one specific region of one specific color.  I have no friggin’ clue how or why this solved the problem, but it did.  Believe me, I had tried a large number of other avenues, none with any success.

Frankly, I think Josh just pulled a fast one on me and was just trying to get my stress level up near his, John’s, and Jason’s.  (I’ve always felt the best way to deal with fear or stress is to get someone else equally wigged out.)

I’m going to pass on this odd problem Chad Adams, the really ingenious guy who came up with PocketMod.  Maybe he knows something about it.

Please pass on any theories about why this might have happend.  It’s certainly one of those things I’ve thrown my head up and said “How friggin’ weird is that?”  (Actually, I said something else, but I try to keep this blog somewhat family-friendly.)

The Rewards of Teaching

I spent a number of years in the Air Force in an instructor position where I was responsible for both classroom and one-on-one instruction.  Teaching anything is hard work, and it’s often not rewarding in obvious ways — you end up putting in a lot of preparation hours for classes or sessions and far too many times you’ll have a group of your students who couldn’t give a rat’s keester about being in your room.  If you’re lucky you might get one or two students/attendees who say “Thanks.”

It’s also seriously challenging because you’ve got to be on top of your game when you’re instructing.  You need to know your topic matter inside and out, because it never fails that you’ll get a question which makes you rethink your approach to the material.  You also need to be able to quickly come up with alternative approaches to the particular concept you’re trying to get across.  Your planned approach rarely comes through to all your students, so you need to be able to come at the concept from a number of different angles in order to get your points to folks who might not have understood your first attempt.

Tough work, no?

That said, every once in a while you get the tremendous reward of seeing someone’s eyes light up as a concept they’ve been struggling with finally sinks in.  It’s a wicked cool thing to see that happen, and it’s a tremendous motivator to push you on for your next class/session/whatever.

I was fortunate to have someone at my Intro to Security session at the Day of .NET in Ann Arbor get  one of those lights turned on, and I was more fortunate that the person took a moment to let me know about it after the session.  I missed the guy’s name, but he stopped me afterwards and said he’d been struggling with the concepts of public/private key encryption off and on for a year.  He even had this topic covered as part of a class he’d taken and it still didn’t sink in.  He said my ten minute coverage of keys finally cleared things up for him.

I tell ya, there was nothing more rewarding I could have taken away from the conference.  Nothing.  Whoever you were, you made my week!

I’m not passing this on to brag about my instructing or presenting skills.  What I’m trying to get across is just how wonderful the feeling is when a student or attendee passes on a remark like that to you after you’ve worked hard on a presentation or lesson plan. 

Do yourself a favor and push yourself to get into a mentoring or instructing role, or brush up your presentation skills and go talk at a users group or conference.  There is no better way to advance yourself than having to learn things well enough to teach someone else, plus it’s a great way to give back to your team, company, or community.  

You’ll be happy you did.

Day of .NET Rocked!

My family and I just got back from a road trip up to Ann Arbor where I helped out a bit and spoke at the Day of .NET.  John, Josh, and Jason (do events have to be planned by groups of folks with the same first initials?) did an amazing job putting on the event.  20 sessions presented by a terrirific crowd of speakers, plus, get this, $40,000 worth of swag.

They did some things that were a great improvement over the Dayton-Cincinnati Code Camp James and I put on in January.  First off, they had nametags (Yo, Michael: we’ll get these next year at the D-C Camp!), they had immense amounts of sponsors, plus they had a separate room for speakers to hang out, unwind, and get ready for their presentations.  (Or in my case, get nervous about presenting to 60 or 70 folks…) 

I’ve taken some notes on things to tweak for next year’s Code Camp here.  One of the coolest things about having a great regional community is that we’re able to share info and ideas on big events like this.  I got tremendous support from Josh and John (especially John!) for my camp; I was happy to be able to give back a tiny smidge for their well-run event.

My presentation went pretty well, although my system hung up two minutes into the gig — I got some funny mileage out of how not to start a presentation — then 3/4 of the way through my gig the system went into standby.  I’d forgotten to plug the #%^*@!! thing in and the battery was low.  Ooops.  Thankfully the audience was 1) very patient or 2) mostly asleep by that time.

I was supposed to have recorded my presentation, but the capture didn’t work right.  I’ll probably do a dry-run session in a day or two for posting up to the event’s site.  I’ll post a note here when that’s done.

The energy of these events is just terrific, both for attendees and for organizers.  You really need to look around for similar community-based events if you’ve not attended one.  It’s a seriously great way to network and energize yourself.

Many congrats to Jason, Josh, and John.  I know how much work these things are, and I’m ever so happy to have seen this event go off smashingly.

Day of .NET -- Two Days Away!

Only two days until the terrific Day of .NET event in Ann Arbor, MI.  I haven’t seen any announcements that registration is closed, so get signed up if you’re in the area and interested in attending a great conference!

More Excellent Book News!

I just found out from O’Reilly that James’s and my book will be up on O’Reilly’s Rough Cuts!  Rough Cuts is a really cool program where you can get access to the first draft manuscript of the book.  Sure, there will be some rough edges, but readers will actually have the opportunity to send in comments/feedback/gripes about the book.  I love the concept of getting early feedback to help us shape the book into a better product!

I realize I keep blabbing vaguarities about the book without giving you any specifics, but I can’t really just pop things out on my own.  James will be back from Hawaii (tough life) mid-month.  You can bet we’ll make more details public immediately after his return.

Cool Vacation Things

Highlights from five days on Hilton Head Island, SC, in no particular order:

• Finding a gelateria that actually knows how to make real gelato instead of some hideous crap masquerading as the good stuff.
• “Thank you for teaching me how to swim, Poppa!”  (Even though the not-quite-six-year old more or less taught herself.)
• Seeing a real bluebird.
• Hanging out at the very relaxing, not over-the-top Disney Hilton Head Island Resort.
• Seeing my not-quite-two-year old playing in the sand.
• Having a more or less quiet game of shuffleboard with my wife while remembering my grandfather teaching me the game decades ago.
• Getting back to our own bed six hours later than planned after a return trip travel day from hell.

PocketMod Template

Way back in January at the Dayton-Cincinnati Code Camp we handed out PocketMod sheets as schedules for the Camp.  Most folks loved ‘em, although we should have given each person a quick rundown on how the dang things work:  “No, don’t unfold them.  Just put them in your pocket and look at them like a book.” Oh well, lesson learned.

In any case, John Hopkins, one of the smart folks behind the Day of .NET in Ann Arbor next weekend, pinged me to ask how I did the PocketMod thing.  It’s really simple.  First, grab the template I created and change that to meet your needs.  Next, print that file as a PDF.  (Use PDFCreator if you need a PDF printer.)  Finally go grab the PDF to PocketMod converter and feed your PDF through it.

Note to event organizers: Get a gaggle of folks together for a folding party if you’re printing off scads of these.  I printed out 200 for the Code Camp and folded something like 100 myself.  I got to the point where I was doing one every 40 seconds, but that’s still a helluva lot of folding for one person!

Second note to event organizers running a PocketMod folding party: hold off the adult beverages until after the folding is done.