The way things work in Llewellyn's world

This (new) developers life

2012-01-22T08:50:00.001-08:00

Today I discovered the podcast “This Developer’s Life”. It’s a very differently crafted podcast. Very true to the style of "This American Life” that it’s name is borrowed from. It is more in a story telling venue, better production quality, not about API’s or even craftsmanship, but rather “common” themes to lives programmers.

I listened to Episode’s “Play” & “Problems”. They are nice, but it stirred in me an issue that first surfaced last year at Tech Ed South Africa, when I attended a presentation that presented this clip from the Movie “The social network” about being “wired in” and then stated this is the best way to be productive. I remembered nights or days with my headphones on, programming in the zone, but I could NOT remember the last time I actually programmed with headphones. I don’t work that way anymore.

“Play” also described this state, but mentioned that it was hard to get into with programming. They argued that racecars could instantly move you into it, but code was more haphazard about when you’d get into the zone.

“Problems” talked about what I consider to be the opposite effect;Bugs and the frustration and confusion they bring about. They also talked about the lack of satisfaction when the bug is finally found. Techniques to build up success, when to quit or undo.

The Old Me

I remember a time when this felt very familiar. In fact most of my younger years identified heavily with these anecdotes. I use to say “you have to love programming to be able to survive because bugs are so frustrating.” However, this whole thing was more of a nostalgic experience for me. In fact, I found myself shaking my head often, wanting to correct the process. For example, In the “Problems” episode, when they are talking about the bug introduced while programming in Sinatra, all I could think was “use Git Bisect”.

I’m not sure exactly when the changes started and I became proficient enough in my new skills and attained enough discipline that I stopped having these experiences. And I should note that they haven’t stopped completely, I still have relapses sometimes, but they are much much fewer and father apart.

But I do know why I have changed.

The New Me

Nowadays, I am almost constantly in the zone when I’m programming. I rarely fight with a bug for hours, and almost never if it’s an regression bug, in fact 10 minutes is a long time for a regression bug.

I am more disciplined than ever in my code, and part of that is focus, and part of that is small steps building up success.

I also am frequently in a state I would describe as “brain on fire” a state of hyper creativity that makes the old “in the zone” feel a bit stale.

The changes have come from from eXtreme programming. I started on this road almost a decade ago in 2002, and I have to search back to around that time to identify with the concepts and stories in the podcast.

There are many practices in eXtreme programming that contribute to the overall effect, and the combine upon each other to get the full result, but I want to highlight the most useful ones. I’ll do it in order of value for me personally.

Pair Programming

When they talk about the zone, pairing brings that almost instantly. I am amazed at how focused I can be when pairing with someone. Email, twitter, other people… it all fades into the background, and the code pops in front of you. Even if a interruption occurs it is quick & easy to regain that focus.

Learn more about pair programming, here & here.

Test Driven Development (TDD)

A clearly stated problem, constant feedback, and regression about twice every minute! TDD has removed the massive hell that bugs by breaking things into nice little steps, and catching you if you slip. Nowadays when something goes wrong I know about it 30 seconds later, and Ctrl+Z is usually the answer.

“The journey of a Million lines starts with a single Unit Test.”

Learn more about TDD here, here & watch a video demo here.

Incremental & Iterative Development

TDD sort of forces you to do small steps in a iterative fashion with constant feedback, but eXtreme programming doesn’t stop there. It uses this technique with user stories, refactoring, continuous integration, source control, retrospectives and many other practices. It’s extremely powerful. Do something small. No smaller. Now add some more.

How powerful is smaller? Let me show you an example from my own history

Books written – 0
Blog Posts – 25
Tweets - 2,621

Agile 2012 Development Practices & Craftsmanship stage

2011-12-19T10:17:00.000-08:00

This is the original description we made as the producers for the Agile 2012 Development Practices Stage.

It didn't fit the needed format, so we couldn't use it, but it is what we have in our mind, and I thought it would be useful for speakers who are thinking of submitting to read.

You can submit here: http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/

Development Practices & Craftsmanship stage
"We have come to valueWorking Software"
This stage is about the code, and our goal is to have each attendee go away from each session having taken their game to a higher level.That's what real craftsmanship is all about - the desire to constantly improve.

We will accomplish this in 3 ways:

Core Practices: By having an explicit minimum set of "must have" topics
Practice: we intend for Wednesday to be a code retreat day within the conference! (more details to follow)
Advanced: Agile2012 is also the premier place to share what we've learned as we've continued to improve over the last year

It should be stated that as our track is about code, we are looking for sessions with lots of code in them. Demo heavy rather than slide heavy.

Must-have
"You can't possibly have a stage for dev practices and craftsmanship and not cover ________ !"
That's what goes in this list for us.This stage must have an introductory session to these areas,
which we consider fundamental: TDD - Refactoring - Pairing - CI - BDD

Guidelines
Language: As these sessions are about code, one factor is which language will the demo's be given in. Please clearly state that in your submission.

No first-run sessions: Your session should be one that you've given at least once before. Even if that was just at an in-house event or for a small local group - that is ok.

Speaking skills: Help us to know what you are like as a speaker.Please include a link to a online video (preferably youtube) of you speaking at a user group or conference. This is extra helpful if you are linking to the talk you will be presenting at Agile2012, but any presentation will be helpful to us.

Training: The core goal for this stage is to transfer skill.Sessions should help people to improve their skills rather than just delivering a lecture.

Agile Open Northern California

2011-09-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

What is Agile Open Northern California?
[Register Here]
Agile Open NorCal is an annual, 2-day event hosted by the local agile community. Here managers, developers & students meet and discuss topics that they are interested in.
Past topics included

Team self improvement
Coding skills practice
Kanban
How to test
Communication through drawings

Open spaces are optimized to help you learn what YOU need to, not what someone else wants you to hear.

Find out more about open spaces at here.

Who attends Agile Open Northern California?

Managers:
There are many sessions about managing technical professionals. Agile helps to improve communication, prioritize work streams, and visibility into the team and unstick teams. Managers share their successes. Many times puzzles and games are used to help understand underlying behavioral issues.

Developers:
There are usually hands on coding sessions to help developers practice and hone their craft. Agile development is strong on continual learning of best development practices. While Agile Open space is not language or API specific, many times the hands-on discussions are very specific to the problems you are having (For example: many times a dev will open up their legacy code challenge to solicit advice.)

Students:
This is an excellent opportunity for students to find about ‘working in the real world.’ Also they can talk and code side-by-side with both technical managers and developers. Agile Open is a great place to ‘try out’ ideas students have been learning in their classrooms.

Details:
Agile Open NorCal is hosted at Fort Mason Conference Center in San Francisco on

Monday, Oct. 3rd
Tuesday, Oct. 4rd

8:30 am to 5 pm.
It costs $250 to attend. We hope to see you there.
Register Here

Open Agile SoCal 2011

2011-09-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

What is Open Agile SoCal?
[Register Here]
Open Agile SoCal is an annual, 2-day event hosted by the local agile community. Here managers, developers & students meet and discuss topics that they are interested in.
Past topics included

Team self improvement
Coding skills practice
Kanban
How to test
Communication through drawings

Open spaces are optimized to help you learn what YOU need to, not what someone else wants you to hear.

Find out more about open spaces at here.

Who attends Open Agile SoCal?

Managers:
There are many sessions about managing technical professionals. Agile helps to improve communication, prioritize work streams, and visibility into the team and unstick teams. Managers share their successes. Many times puzzles and games are used to help understand underlying behavioral issues.

Developers:
There are usually hands on coding sessions to help developers practice and hone their craft. Agile development is strong on continual learning of best development practices. While Agile Open space is not language or API specific, many times the hands-on discussions are very specific to the problems you are having (For example: many times a dev will open up their legacy code challenge to solicit advice.)

Students:
This is an excellent opportunity for students to find about ‘working in the real world.’ Also they can talk and code side-by-side with both technical managers and developers. OpenAgile is a great place to ‘try out’ ideas students have been learning in their classrooms.
For students OpenAgile costs just $50 for the entire event.

Details:
OpenAgile SoCal is hosted at UCI at Donald Bren Hall (DBH) on

Thursday, Sept. 15th
Friday, Sept. 16th

8:30 am to 6 pm.
It costs $250 to attend. We hope to see you there.
Register Here

Test-Driven Cameras

2011-09-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

I am getting old.

The other day I was hanging around with my friend, Ike Ellis. He told me a story about his kids. His 3 young sons had been given disposable cameras as a gift. These kids were actually confused by the idea of a camera that used film. The first question they asked was

“Where is the picture?”
Ike explained that they had to look through the camera lens to see what the picture would look like. They seemed ok with that, but the next question they asked was

“How do you know if you have taken a bad picture?”
Ike said “You won’t be able to know until after we get the film developed.” To which they replied,

“When will that be?” Still confused, they continued asking

“How do you delete the bad pictures?”
Ike said, “You can’t.” At this point, the kids lost interest in the cameras.

However, because these cameras were gifts, the oldest decided to actually try out using the camera anyway.
The first thing he did was to take 6 pictures of the same thing.
Ike tried to explain that he shouldn’t do that, because the camera only had the ability to take a total of 32 (film) pictures. After realizing that he could not experiment and would probably end up with a bad picture anyway, he set his camera next too the other two and walked away.

I wish people had this same reaction to the idea of writing code without first writing tests (TDD).

Tests give you the chance:

To see what you are going to write, BEFORE you write it.
To see if what you wrote actually worked.
To immediately get feedback. 
To play (or experiment) with possible solutions. 

If you haven’t already, here’s a great place to start learning to Test-Driven Development 

If you are already writing tests, here’s a free library to make test even easier to write 

Llewellyn Falco & Lynn Langit

Fire Programmers not using Source Control

2011-05-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

In our community development work we come across hundreds of good developers. Those developers rarely agree on anything. They ceaselessly debate the merits of Test Driven Development. They argue about why C# is better than Java, or Ruby, or VB. They relentlessly pontificate about the future of Cloud computing.

They all agree on 1 thing: “Use Source Control”

… Of course which source control is still up for debate.

What continues to confuse us is the lack of source control adoption in the wider development community. If everyone at every conference is pro-source control, why are there shops without it? It seems to us the reason these shops exist is because their developers are never interacting with the greater development community. They are living in a bubble. Does this mean they can’t be good developers? YES!

Our industry moves incredibly fast. To be a professional, you need to be constantly learning and collaborating with others.

The reason why source control is a universally accepted best practice is because it enables us to change code without fear, to experiment, and allows multiple developers to work on the same code base.

If your developers are not using source control; Fire Them! If this most basic of practices is not being followed, you have hundreds more problems in your code base that are much harder to detect and fix. You have hired a programmer that is not a professional, and does not intend to become one.

Llewellyn & Ike Ellis

The value of Pair Programming

2011-04-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Gary Filer made an interesting comment to me the other day;

“I use to think that the value of pair programming was the shared brain”

“But after seeing you pair for the last week, I realized that the shared part is actually the waste. The value is in the differences”

The Cost of Mistakes
In my talk ‘Introduction to Agile’ I assert that the core principle of agile development is accepting that we will make mistakes, and doing things to

core agile value:

Reduce the cost of mistakes

Being an introduction talk, I only talk about pair programming from a “Knowledge Backup” point of view:

“If one of your employee’s leaves, what happens to your project?”

But pairing reduces the cost of mistakes constantly.

What Gary was seeing was the countless times Jason or I would say “Let’s do ...” only to have the other one say, “No, your forgetting about...” or “No, there's a better way...”. Each of those times would have resulted in a much more costly mistake that was headed off at the pass.

Of course, another value of the pairing overlap comes from just looking at the mistakes.

For Example: We were doing some cleanup just the other day. Finding dead code and deleting it. Removed about 10,000 lines of useless clutter from the project, which is good. However, I probably had 5-6 times where I went to delete something that was NOT clutter, and Jason stopped me. Likewise Jason had 4-5 times where he went to delete the wrong thing and I stopped him. Together, we didn’t push any of those mistakes back to the main branch when we checked in. This is like a raided disk drive. You don’t double, you square. If I’m right 95% of the time, and Jason is right 95% of the time. Then individually we are wrong 5% of the time. But paired, we are only wrong 0.25% of the Time (5% of 5%)

In today’s world of Ctrl+Z it is sometimes easy to forget that an undo even qualifies as a mistake, the cost is so low. Agile methods endeavor to make all mistakes that cheap.

Illusions of Grandeur and Agreement

2011-04-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching Adam Savage presenting at maker faire. It’s a pretty great talk. Kinda.

Here’s what I’m taking away:

“Set deadlines for personal projects”

But about 22 minutes in I become pretty dissatisfied, and I want to talk about why:

I am agreeing with Adam about everything.

Everything? Yep, It ALL makes sense. I know it ALL already... Now do I believe that if I was to sit down and actually do something with Adam that everything would be great? No disagreement? Nothing to learn?

Of course not. That’s a stupid idea. There would be tons to learn probably in the first 22 minutes. So why am I “sitting down with him now” and not disagreeing? I think my girlfriend, Lynn Langit who happens to be a Microsoft Evanglist, said it best today:

“Evangelist seek to make everyone in the room feel smart,

Trainers try to make everyone in the room be smarter”

This illusion of agreement is starting to bug me more and more. I don’t want to spend and hour feeling smart. I want to be smarter, but I think I’m a bit odd in this. Odd not just in the desire to learn, but in my reaction when I am, or am not, learning.

There is an interesting video from Veritasium about this.

http://www.veritasium.com/2011/03/khan-academy-and-effectiveness-of.html

Learning involves some disagreement. So next time you are watching someone talk, ask yourself “Am I agreeing with everything?” If you are there is probably a miscommunication going on.

I am constantly reminded of the training scene from ‘The Matrix’:

Morpheus: How did I beat you?

Neo: (breathing hard) You... you're too fast.

Morpheus: Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place?

Neo: (Shakes Head No)

Morpheus: Do you think that's air you're breathing now?

Neo: (Stops breathing hard)

Guide to opening Christmas presents with 10+ people

2011-01-03T11:14:00.000-08:00

Christmas is a big and wonderful event at my family. This year we had 10 people joining us for Christmas morning. This means a bunch of presents. If you try to just hand them out without a system you will end up with people feeling left out.

If nothing else, you need to sort.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. First, Let’s do some math:

If 10 people buy 1 present for each of the other 9 people

Then

10 * 1* 9 = 90 presents

Which means, that you will have a minimum of 90 presents for a 10 person group.

For us, a big part of Christmas is enjoying seeing each other’s faces as they open their present. Which means that opening a present might take 3-4 minutes. So

90 presents * 4 minutes / present = 360 minutes = 6 hours... minimum.

Which is a fair bit of time. However, just to complicate things not everyone is “equal” in the present receiving world. Some people might get 4-5 gifts from a loved one, which means you might have a few people with 30 presents instead of 9. This isn’t even a simple matter of “popularity”. You might get your father in law 4 small presents, while getting your sweetie only 1 Diamond bracelet.

If you don’t time things right, you can have people sitting around for 4-5 hours without receiving a single gift.

So the question falls to how do you manage opening the gifts. I have been in the “Santa” position quite a few times, and finally feel happy enough with my methodology to share it with you.

But first,

The Axioms:

Include everybody

The goal here is to distribute gifts so that everyone feels included, and no one feels left-out or feeling like “why am I still here”.

Memory is not accounting

How people remember the gift giving is not simple numbers. If it was, it wouldn’t matter in which order you handed out the gifts.

Equal Distribution

Ideally, if you had 4 people you would distribute to person 1, person 2, person 3, person 4. You can’t do that of course, because not everyone has the same number of presents. But this is the idea.

Not all boxes are equal

While the size of the box does not correlate to the goodness of the gift. It is generally assumed that bigger presents are more exciting. These should also be distributed to avoid clustering. For example if you 4 small presents & 3 large presents, you wouldn’t want to open 3 large presents followed by 4 small ones.

Related Presents

Presents can group both by a single person, or by multiple people. You might have given someone a Wii & Wii Fit. The Wii Fit should not be opened 1st, as it would give away the Wii. Likewise, you might have gotten the same “group therapy” T-Shirts for 3 different people, they should be opened together.

Continual Opening

No one wants to wait around for santa to figure out what gift should be opened next.

Now lets look at

The Methodology

Start Strong & End Strong

The most import parts are the start and the finish. You should try to give 1 present to everyone there both at the beginning and at the end of the gift giving. This should be done in a circular order so that it is a easy pattern that will stick in the memories everyone there and make them feel like everyone is included. Keep in mind that some people (last minute guests) might only have 2-3 presents. So be careful not to use up all of their presents in the first few rounds.

Sort into Piles

You need to have some idea of how many presents per person you are dealing with, otherwise all hope is lost. Also you need to be able to easily answer the question “Where is a gift for Mary?”.

To do this, start to create piles of gifts for each person there. Creating these will take some time (90 * 30 seconds = 45 minutes of sorting), so you’ll need to do it as you go. Create the piles of presents while people are open the gifts. I usually start by giving 1 gift to every person (only acceptable at the 1st and last round), and having them go 1 at a time after each other. Make sure to put some space between the piles, or they will quickly get confused.

Prepare Next Gift

If you give out 4 present at then you will end up with 2 being opened at the same time, or one being set down and forgotten. If you don’t hand out 1 while one is being opened, you’ll have a 1/2 minute pause in between. It doesn’t seem like much, but it will add an extra hour to the gift opening process.

Ask for Help

You will not be able to know which presents are related. Sometimes you can guess “group” presents by package shape. But simply asking if “these should be opened together”, or “is this a good one to open now?” is useful. Having sorted piles will make it easy to swap out the present if you need to.

Sub Group

Once you’ve finally gotten the presents into piles, start making “finishing” piles. The Idea here is to make it easy to finish strong. Take this scenario:

Bob	8 gifts
Colette	14 gifts
Marsha	10 gifts
Jan	5 gifts
Brie	6 gifts

How do you distribute? Hard to do right?

Now, look at the same scenario, with a 4 present sub-pile finish. This allows for the differences in gifts to be easier to see. You want the finishing pile to be as big of a number as possible. Now you have

Bob	4 gifts +	4
Colette	4 gifts +	10
Marsha	4 gifts +	6
Jan	4 gifts +	1
Brie	4 gifts +	2

Better start increasing the gifts to Colette & Marsha!

To make thing worse, you aren’t going to be able to easily get a “count” it’s just a pile of presents. The finishing pile helps you to not have to constantly re-count.

Piles of presents (notice it's still hard to count)

Confuse the middle

While you want the start and end to be nice and ordered a bit of confusion will go a long way in the middle. Try to give presents so it doesn’t just go around in a circle. Lot’s of back and forth. Give presents to people sitting far away. The less of a “pattern” the harder it will be to realize that someone is opening more presents than someone else.

But be careful to not forget people. In the above scenario, it’s important to make sure Jan gets a present now and then, even if means adjusting your “finishing pile” to 3 or 2 presents.

Hopefully this will help you to have a even merrier Christmas!

My Treadmill Desk

2010-11-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

Overview

At July’s Ignite San Diego, I saw Ernesto give a talk where he showed his treadmill desk. Yesterday, I made one for myself.

Am I able to work while using it? I’m writing this blog right now while walking at 1.5 mph.

Verdict

I’m happy with the desk. I’m walking at 1.5 mph which is about right for me, sometimes I need to slow it down to 1 mph depending on the detail of work I am doing or if I am worried about sweating. You don’t sweat a lot but even so 2 hours of small sweat isn’t great if you are going to a meeting. I have not yet gotten to try it out pair programming (except remotely, which doesn’t count). I’m not sure whether or not you need 2 treadmills for that.

Cost

$1250 total.

Let’s break that down.

Treadmill - $1,000

Desk - $250

I’m happy with my choices, but I believe a treadmill bought off of craigslist can dramatically improve the bottom line here.

F.A.Q

Q. Do the controls on the floor matter?

A. No, you aren't changing the speed often or at all, and it's moving slow.

Q. Do you like it?

A. Yes

Q. Do you sweat?

A. Not at 1 mph, a little at 1.5 mph

The Parts

The Tread Mill

I got a AFG 3.0 AT treadmill. It cost $800 on sale at sports chalet. I also got the extended 5 year warranty which was an additional $200. I don’t usually get the warranty, but thought I might be using this a bit more than the average person.

It’s worth noting this thing is HEAVY (350 lbs) so get some help moving it.

The Desk

Ikea came thru nicely with the Fredrik 50 inch long desk($200). I modified the setup to put the top self at the bottom (which you need to do 1st) but otherwise it works perfectly.

Extras. I also got a 48 inch power strip ($25 at Fry’s) which I love and would recommend for any desk. A Belkin usb hub ($25), which makes it easier to hook up the laptop to the keyboard and mouse.

The Build

The assembly of the treadmill looks quite complicated, but I wouldn’t know because it turns out you don’t have to do it. You don’t want the hand rails anyways. and the console is just sitting at the side of the base.

The desk is likewise easy to assemble. I placed the main desk layer so that when walking on the treadmill my arms naturally bent to that height. I am also liking having the screen at the higher height, so i don’t have to bend over, which is a bit hard while walking.

Links

AFG 3.0 AT treadmill http://www.advancedfitnessgroup.com/products/treadmills/30AT.aspx

Ikea Fredrik Desk http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60111123

Ernesto Ramiez http://www.ernestoramirez.org/home/projects-2/#Other

Active WorkOffice http://www.theactiveoffice.org/

Extension Methods

2010-09-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

Extension Methods allow for the readability you expect in code you don't own. C# and Ruby have had them for a while, and I created a jar to so you can use them in java as well. (you can read the original post here)

I vBlogged my thoughts here:

Here's the simple reason you want a fluent interface for your code.

Download Extension Methods for Java

Lamdbas in Java 1.6

2010-09-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

If you've ever heard that java is a poor language because it doesn't have lambdas, that ends today!

I created a way to do lambda's in java 1.6 without changing: the JDK, the compiler, the ByteCode or the Syntax.

I vBlogged my thoughts here:

It's only a jar file, no special requirements or changes.

You can down load it here at www.approvaltests.com

You might also be interested in my similar addition of extension method in java

Here's the diagram of the syntax :

I also made a small tutorial here : http://blog.approvaltests.com/2010/10/java-lambdas.html

Theory Based Testing

2010-09-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

Most of us are familiar with classic unit testing. Today, I wanted to talk a about a different form of unit testing, that is much more powerful when it is possible.

Theory based test take the normal form of
Given A & B expect C
and change it to
Given A & B expect C theory
This removal of the expected C, allows you to test MANY more cases, because you don't need to pre-plan the results for a given A & B

I vBlogged my thoughts here:

btw: if you are interested in attending an open spaces, check out Open Agile So Cal. There's one coming up in San Francisco Oct. 11, 2010

Rewriting Vs Refactoring

2010-09-04T23:34:00.000-07:00

Once again, I found myself having a discussion about the dangers of doing a legacy code rewrite. Durning this client meeting, I came up with an illustration I wanted to share.

I vBlogged my thoughts here:

These 3 graphs sum up the Massive Risk at the end.

The Rewrite Scenario

The Hidden Question at the End

The Refactor Scenario

The importance of your Compile Time

2010-08-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

Lot's of time i find myself working to shorten compile and build times. While most people agree with shorter is better for compile times, the questions of what is short? and how important is it? seem to remain vague and seemly open to judgement.

It's not. So I wanted to take a moment to clarify it.

I vBlogged my thoughts here

You can see the excel sheet here
and read the Joel on Software Thread here

Recipes in Java

2010-01-18T08:00:00.003-08:00

Learning to Program Java with Recipes

14 amazing kids showed up yesterday for a session at Wintriss Techinical school on learning to program Java! We tackled 2 recipes durning these 2 hours, and wanted to show how to setup your own computer so you can continue at home.

Here's What you need to do to get started with the Recipes. First the quick-links, then detailed instructions below.

Download Java SDK

Download Eclipse

Download Workspace
Import Workspace

Download Java SDK

If you don't already have java on your machine you'll have to download it. How can you tell if you do have java? open an terminal window.
Mac : command+space then type terminal and hit enter
Windows : windowskey+r then type CMD and hit enter
In the terminal/command window type
java -version
if you see something like
java version "1.6.0_15"
you've got it, otherwise download it from Sun at http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/widget/jdk6.jsp

Download Eclipse

You want to download the "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers (92MB)"
it's here
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Download the Workspace

Download the "Learn To Program - In Java" workspace from CodePlex. http://learntoprogram.codeplex.com/
Unzip it to the directory of your choice. But remember the location, you will need in the next step.

Import the Workspace

In Eclipse, right click in the Navigator Window and select "Import Workspace".
A Window will appear asking for an import source, select "Existing Projects into Workspace", if you can't find it start typing existing and it will appear.
Click next.
The root directory is the location where you unzipped the workspace. then simply hit finish.

If you are successful you should see the IntroToProgramming folder in the navigator window.

That's it, Happy Programming!
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Recipes in Java

2010-01-18T08:00:00.001-08:00

Learning to Program Java with Recipes

Here's What you need to do to get started with the Recipes. First the quick-links, then detailed instructions below.

Download Java SDK

Download Eclipse

Download Workspace
Import Workspace

Download Java SDK

Download Eclipse

You want to download the "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers (92MB)"
it's here
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Download the Workspace

Import the Workspace

Mock Smells

2010-01-16T07:39:00.001-08:00

Today, Bob Martin tweeted :

unclebobmartin

I use mocking frameworks as little as possible. I think heavy reliance on a mocking framework is a smell. I usually write my own mocks.

I agree with this. Of course the 140 characters allowed in a tweet don’t really give much space to explain what that smell is. So let’s refine our nose.

Mocks let you test implementation. Anyone who ever gets uppity about the use of stubs, fakes & mocks is paying a lot of attention to this. With a mock you can verify that something has been called. While this can be useful, it is rarely part of the Behavior of a system, and often part of the implementation. Since there are literally 1,000’s of way to program the exact same behavior, Unit tests that lock a particular implementation will actually in up “protecting” your code from being refactored. This smell tends to come up in newly written code, and is usually accompanied by the phrase

“anytime I want to change anything a bunch of tests break and I have to go and fix them”.

Mocks let you fake very hard to fake calls. Ever need to mock out a call to HttpServletRequest? There are over 40 methods on that interface. Even with the help of your IDE, that’s a pain. A good mocking framework (I prefer EasyMock) will let you do it in 2-3 lines. This is great, especially in legacy code, or API’s you don’t control. But it’s a cover for a much more insidious smell that exists in HttpServletRequest. Simply put, an interface should not have 40 methods. Now you might argue that was how many were needed to handle something as complex as a web call. And you would be wrong. Take a look at Rack (or our Port of it - JRack) it handles everything with 1 simple abstraction.

When mocks are the easiest way to gain an handle into your code, you have coupled you code too tightly, and not left enough inserts points.

Mocks let you fake calls. Lastly, mocks let you fake easy calls too. One example I use a lot is Loaders. My Loader interface looks like this:

public interface Loader<T>

{

public T load() throws Exception;

}

I will constantly be making calls like

request.init2Edit(new MockLoader<Member>(member));

But here a mocking framework is overkill. It’s so easy to write the above line, than

Loader<Member> loader = EasyMock.createMock(Loader.class);

EasyMock.expect(loader.load()).andReturn(member);

request.init2Edit(loader);

If I’ve kept my code clean, mocking frameworks just aren’t that useful.

So hopefully you will start to sense the same things in your code. Of course if your nose is prickling over some hard to test piece of code, grab your mocking framework. It’s your first line of attack. Like grabbing some cologne when you are a bit smelly and guest are coming over, just realize that eventually you have to take a bath.

Extensions Methods In Java!

2009-03-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

W00T!

I just added extension methods to java. It's a bit of a hack, but a small bit. (you need to replace the java.lang.Object class)

First, the hack, download and follow the instructions in the readme file of Java_Extensions.zip

Now you can run this test successfully...

package com.spun.util.extensions.tests;

import junit.framework.TestCase;

public class ExtensionsTest extends TestCase
{
public static class MyStringUtils extends ExtendableBase<String>
{
public String removeVowels()
{
StringBuffer b = new StringBuffer();
for (Character c : caller.toCharArray())
{
switch (c)
{
case 'a' :
case 'e' :
case 'i' :
case 'o' :
case 'u' :
break;
default :
b.append(c);
}
}
return b.toString();
}
}
public void testname() throws Exception
{
String name = "Hello World".use(MyStringUtils.class).removeVowels();
assertEquals("Hll Wrld", name);
}
}

Pay extra attention to this line:

"Hello World".use(MyStringUtils.class).removeVowels();

What's more: this use of extensions doesn't have name spacing issues, nor does it pollute all of your objects. It's IDE friendly supporting both code completion and quick fixes!

As a side note, if generics were done better, I would like it to be:

"Hello World".use<MyStringUtils>().removeVowels();

But this is available now! I'll blog more on it tomorrow, but I am very excited about it.

That which is measured gets done.

2009-01-10T18:18:00.000-08:00

The other day at my Letip meeting one of our members, Mikel Bruce, gave a great talk on goal setting.

One of the things he mentioned, which I particularly liked, was a tool called an awareness sheet. The idea is simple, write down all the things you want to do each day: exercise, eat diner as family, limit tv watching, floss etc… then at the end of each day, you check off what you’ve done.

The important part here though isn’t in checking off what you’ve done. This is why you don’t check it off as you do it. The important part is the awareness of what you haven’t done. The benefit here is that it isn’t penalizing you for not doing it. It’s not like you have to do everything every day. It’s just making you aware of what you want to do, and if you’re doing it. However, this awareness will help you to actually do it.

Think of it as a small commercial, every night, reminding you what you want. Here’s a small picture of a sample month.
In the end, it's just measuring the habits you want. I'm also finding this useful for events. For example, an presentation awareness sheet. Just to keep me aware of all the details I want to improve when speaking.

Java Packing

2008-10-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I have started to have a large appreciation for java’s class loader and jar packages. The combination allowing for many great things that becomes troublesome and cumbersome in other languages. But, I wanted to talk about a few things I believe could be much better.

Embedded jars.
Jar files can have class files in them, even resources in them, but not other jar files. Why not? If I have a project that needs a.jar, b.jar, myproject.jar, it would be simpler and easier to jar up the a & b jars into my jar. I’m not saying this is always the best way to go, but it should be an option.

Monkey Patching.
Monkey Patching is the ability to hack out a solution over someone else nice code. Interpreted languages like ruby or php always get this, since you get the source, not a binary. Now there are lots of bad things about Monkey Patching, but it’s really useful when you need it. Now I understand that if you don’t have source, Monkey Patching is not so practical.

However 100% of the jar files I am currently using are Open Source. As such, there should be a standard way of constructing a Jar file so the source is included. Additionally, there should also be easy ways to recompile the jar.
Like: javac recompile a.jar
Again, the jars I’m using are open source, but the ability to easily modify that source is very complex in java. Also, debugging into those classes usually loses source. We need a simpler way to work with the source the jar was made from.

Distilling Minimum class files.
This would also be nice if you could use the jar file the same as regular source path.
For example, let’s say I have a class my1 which uses a1, and a1 uses b1.
(short hand: my1-> a1 -> b1 ) but my source tree has
my1.java
my2.java
a1.java
a2.java
b1.java
b2.java

if I compile my1.java and let javac know my source path,
it’s will follow the links and only give me

my1.class
a1.class
b1.class

Nice right, the minimum needed to run my class. Now think how nice it would be if you had jar files with source attached,
a1 & a2 are in a.jar
b1 & b2 are in b.jar

but still you could get the same results, a jar file with just the minimum needed to run your app.

Right now, there might be a class that i'd like to use, but i'll rewrite it, because i don't want to include the whole jar that it's packaged in. I can't just remove the class file, because it depends on other class files. So I rewrite rather that bloat.
Why should I ever have to make that choice?

Approval Tests (a pictures worth a 1000 tests)

2008-10-13T00:45:00.001-07:00

Scenario 1 [Testing a User Interface]

Core Concept :

Component gui = createGui();

Approvals.approve(gui);

This creates a snap shot of the gui: gui.received.png

This passes if gui.received.png == gui.approved.png

If you like the result, simply rename gui.received.png -> gui.approved.png and the test will pass.

Could you explain that in a diagram?

yes.

Why is this awesome?

“a picture is worth a 1000 tests”. Ever find that your unit tests aren’t giving you enough security? Have you started making lots & lots of asserts? Ever find your tests test too many things and the maintenance required to change anything is actually reducing your agility?

Approval Testing gives you 100% lock down on your gui, yet changes simply require a click of a button.

Where are the approved images stored?

Approved images are stored in your testing folder and in your source control. This makes the test repeatable on different systems & you can actually browse a visual of how your gui’s have changed over time!

How does it work for a web app?

String html = createWebPage();

Approvals.approve(html);

Instead of an image, now a text file (page.received.html) is created.

Scenario 2 [Behavior Driven Development]

Core Concept :

Object myObject = createObject();