Essential Skills for Agile Development

An online copy of the book Essential Skills for Agile Development is available. If you want a print copy you need to buy it though. The book is based on actual training material used to successfully teach the concepts of OO design, Test Driven Development (TDD), team development, planning, communication and pair programming.

C++Builder Rebirth

Like a phoenix from the ashes. Or I guess you could say the reports of C++Builder's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Either way this is great news for C++ developers.

Borland just published an Open Letter to the C++Builder Community where they announced "The next version of C++Builder will be part of the Delphi IDE family." Allen Bauer has an addendum to this as well. This continuation of the C++Builder product line should make a lot of people happy, especially for all those developers who signed the community letter to Borland [PDF] back in October.

So we will have a single IDE that does Delphi.Win32, Delphi.net, C++, C# and any other .net language. I wonder if there are plans to add Java into the mix. It would be nice if Borland added specific support for other languages, maybe Python.

Don't know if anyone else remembers Charlotte, but it was a language Borland started developing back in 2002 specifically for web services. Someone asked about the status of the language a while back, turns out it has been shelved in favor of the .net work (I think that was the reason.) I would suspect with this trend if they bring it back it will be in the same IDE too. Probably be called Charlotte.net. Iin the immortal words of the Wombat "All is one!"

Useless components

I am sure most of you have used components you thought were useless, but what about a component that goal was to be truly useless?

David I is looking for useless componet ideas. He sites a few examples of past useless comonents, and offers some suggestions for new ones.

My idea for a useless component would be one that demonstrated the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.Well at least that demonstrates the common understanding of it that the activity of observing changes the observed(link to very funny comic on the subject). So every time you read a property it changes what it is by an amount.

That in and of itself doesn’t really describe any functionality of a component. If you just had a component with propery that's value changed everytime you read it then it would esentially be a random number generator, which would be usefull.

Maybe you might make some sort of DataSet component that does that.So just reading the values out of the DataSet changes the values stored in the table. I guess we could call it the Heisenberg uncertainty dataset™.

I think that would be truly useless, or at least very anoying!

Delphi 2005 Tour Wrap-Up

We had a pretty good turn out. There were 22 people who confirmed via RSVP, plus some people showed up who didn't RSVP. In the end we only had about 20 people there. There were some people from NETDUG as well as from BSDG, plus a few new faces and once we hadn't seen in a long time.

Since we didn't want to run out of pizza we ended up with plenty of pizza for everyone. I hope everyone got full.

Ander's presentation consisted of a PowerPoint which covered the main points, then he would jump into Delphi 2005 for actual demonstrations. Lots of neat features! It was obvious that most everyone in the room was impressed with what they saw. After each feature was introduced everyone would lean to the person next to them and excitedly talk about it.

Ander's ended up giving away two copies of Delphi 2005. One Professional and one Architect. The Professional edition went to Anthony Fuller - I think this was his first time attending. Maybe he will come back after a door prize like that. The Architect edition went to Kelly Simper from the .NET group. Congratulations guys! I herd a few people offer them cash for their prizes. I picked up a couple extra T-shirts and 25%-off coupons. The coupons are good through the END OF THE MONTH, so get with me before then to get one. I will be out of town tomorrow evening through the end of the week.

If you couldn't make it, or want more information on the features, then you can check the following sources online:

• What’s New in Delphi 2005? by Bob Swart - About 14 pages of the new stuff
• Delphi 2005 Overview [PDF] by Jeremy McGee - A 28 page overview
• Delphi 2005 Reviewers Guide [PDF] by Cary Jensen - A 121 page reference

And since I know both Kelly and Anthony are fairly new to Delphi programming, or for anyone else who has Delphi 2005 (or downloaded the free trial), here are some links for learning Delphi.

• Essential Pascal by Marco Cantù
• Essential Delphi by Marco Cantù
• Essential Delphi for .NET by Marco Cantù - Only chapter 3 - The Delphi language is available, but is a great chapter!
• Plus all the books!

That should be enough to get you over the initial learning curve.

Delphi for .NET: The Book

Got an email from Kim Spilker who is a Product Marketing Manager for Sams and Que Publishing. I will be getting a copy of Delphi for .NET by Xavier Pacheco to review for the group. This looks to be a good book and I generally like Xavier Pacheco's work. I got to meet him at BorCon 2004 as well (at lunch with him and a bunch of other luminaries). If you don't want to wait for the review you might want to pick up a copy today.

If you are really interested in reviewing this book, and can get me one quickly, then I will let you read it first. I'll bring it to a future meeting and you can let me know.

Microsoft PDC 2005

I just got an email from Steve Cellini. He runs the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference or PDC. (Not to be confused with Primary Domain Controller, a very common misconception!)

They just announced that they will be holding PDC 2005 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA from September 13 to the 16 (Pre-conferences September 11 and 12). You can sign up for updates and more details from the PDC site.

I generally hear good things about PDC, although I have never been.

This is in follow up to my original post.

Are you Mocking me?

I previously mentioned NMock for .net mock objects, both as part of my top .net tools and when I was introduced to them back in August. David I just posted to his blog about mock objects, specifically EasyMock for Java and JUnit.

He has some good information about mock objects as well as a number of good links on the subject. Most of the information refers to Java, but we all know that C# and .net is just like Java, only by Microsoft. In other words, the information is easy to adapt. Links of particular interest include the c2.com Wiki and the Mock Objects Wiki.

In the comments David Hervieux pointed out the commercial package POCMock for .NET (also in French).

Meeting Location

Our meeting location is in the Washington Group International headquarters location in the Washington Group Plaza (formally known as MK Plaza) at 720 Park Blvd. in Boise, Idaho. Here is a map:

The red star represents about where the fountain is that marks the main entrance on Park Blvd. Myrtle St. turns into Park Blvd when it crosses Broadway Ave.

Here is an aerial photo of the immediate area with some landmarks marked.

The north-south street to the west is Broadway Ave., and to the south-west (over the river) is The BSU stadium. Park Blvd. runs in front of the MK Plaza, while Front St. runs behind it. The yellow circle is around the fountain at the main entrance. Park just east of the fountain, or most anywhere else in that general area where there is space.

Here is a photo of the sign on Park Blvd. indicating the main entrance. It says Washington Group Plaza now, instead of MK.

Here is a photo of the fountain. Although it runs year round, it will be covered with ice during the winter months.

To the left of the fountain above you can see the large glass entrance behind the flags. This is where to enter the building. Someone will meet you at the security desk and escort you to the meeting room.

Top .NET Developer Tools

James Avery from MSDN magazine published his list of Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now. It looks like some useful ones for .NET developers. Most of them would work with Delphi as well, in fact NUnit is included with Delphi 2005. Although I doubt Snippit Compiler will compile Delphi code. I'll need to try that. The switchers are decidedly specific for VS.NET. You don't need anything like that to switch versions of Delphi.

His list:

1. NUnit to write unit tests
2. NDoc to create code documentation
3. NAnt to build your solutions
4. CodeSmith to generate code
5. FxCop to police your code
6. Snippet Compiler to compile small bits of code
7. Two different switcher tools, the ASP.NET Version Switcher
8. and the Visual Studio .NET Project Converter
9. Regulator to build regular expressions
10. Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector to examine assemblies

I would add the following tools:

1. Delphi 2005 - if you are not already planning to get it. . .
2. SharpDevelop for a lightwight IDE (with added features over Visual Studio)
3. Reflector.FileDisassembler to dump the disassembled code from Reflector
4. Borland Together Designer Community Edition (free) - Go from requirements to code faster.
5. Borland Optimizeit Profiler for the Microsoft .NET Framework
6. NProf the .NET profiler
7. NMock the dynamic mock-object library

Notice I don't see Visual Studio.NET or Source Safe anywhere on this list? That is because they are the tools you use when you really don't have a choice.

What would you add to this list?

December 2004 Meeting Wrap Up and News

Chris covered SharpDevelop, the open source .NET IDE.

While the demo was great, and there were a number of features and advantages over Visual Studio.NET the overall conclusion was that you are better off using a commercial IDE for most of your projects. Might be a nice additional tool to have in your toolbox.

Randy talked about job descriptions, skills and pay rates. We discussed ways to increase our earning capacity. Pretty interesting discussion.

We finally covered chapters 5 though 8 in Design Pattern's Explained. The book is really easy reading so we are stepping up the pace. Next month (January) we are covering 9 through 17. We will devote more time to it at the meetings.

Didn't get a chance to get to news, so here is what I had left to cover:

Delphi Popularity

Delphi 2005 Launch Tour in Boise

Top 10 Persistent Design Bugs

I would add failure to trim trailing white space from a programming IDE to the list.

Firefox 1 released

Just in case you were living under a rock. In related news IE's popularity has begun a steady decline. Mozilla seems to control between 10% and 20% (or more) of the traffic depending on the site. In other related news, AOL announced the next Netscape to support both IE and Gecko (Mozilla's) engines. If you are interested in using the Gecko engine in your browser you can use the Mozilla ActiveX control that was designed to mimic the IE ActiveX control.

Delphi 2005 without .NET

Want to use Delphi 2005, but could care less about .NET?

Exploring MDD and the future of Development

IBM explores MDD and the future of software development. Might be a good idea to keep your eyes on this trend.

OOPSLA 2004 MDA Panel

More on MDA from the OOPSLA panel, as posted in David I's blog.

User-Centric UI

More information on improving your user interface.

Joel On Software: The Book

Take one popular Blog on software development (and related areas), edit, add some content and you have the new Joel On Software book. If nothing else it is more effective to hit people with when they just don't get it.

US, India, Russia and Ukraine - largest programmer populations

Interestingly Ukraine has the 4th largest programmer population.

EA faces Class Action lawsuit for programmer conditions

Electronic Arts requires seven 13 hour days from their developers. Aren't you glad you don't work in the gaming industry? My question is are you really more productive after about 60 hours a week?

Make Love Not Spam - Lycos.uk's DDoS screen saver against spam

Lycos.uk's launches a screen saver that launches a DDoS attack against spam sites. More effective then expected.

2004 IOCCC Winners Source Code Released

And you thought that code you were supporting was bad. Take a look at this code from the "Winners" of the 17th International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Some of it is actually pretty, but not if you were to try and maintain it.

The Lessons of Software Monoculture

Commentary about a homogenous software culture. It makes it easier for programmers, but also easier for cracker and script kiddies.

Programmers Hold Funerals for Old Code

I guess it can't be that bad of an idea if it gets programmers to get rid of their old code. Some of them just never let it go! (I am guilty of that)

Standards-Based CSS/XHTML Slide Show

A competitor to PowerPoint designed for web deployment. Pretty cool.

Grid Computing: Conceptual Flyover For Developers

What is this "Grid Computing" you speak of, and what does it mean to me as a software developer?

Google Scholar

Google scholarly papers and citations.

JBuilder 2005 Update 1 is available for download

Seems like everyone always waits for the first patch.

Delphi 2005 update 1 comming

Because of yet another last minute "fix" from Microsoft for Internet Explorer Delphi 2005 has some odd behavior on a fully patched machine. This update will address that as well as a few other issues. Should be any day now.