Software Development

"This thread is for programmers to pledge they will participate in NANY 2010. Feel free to tell us as little or as much about what kind of program you are planning on releasing -- but let's keep this thread just for pledges, not for discussions. I'd like to encourage everyone who wants to participate to make a pledge to do so -- and to treat this pledge as a real promise to release something." - April Russo (app103) from Bookmarklet

A good friend of mine entered a small application in the first event back in 2007 (I twisted her arm and made her do it). It wasn't a very impressive application, but when she mentioned participating in the event at a job interview, her perspective employer was impressed enough with the fact that she even participated, that it was the deciding factor that got her what she considers to... more... - April Russo (app103)

"Since March of this year I've been running a private web spider looking at the number of web tags on web pages belonging to the Fortune 1000 and the top 1,000 web sites by traffic. Using the spider I've been able to see which products are deployed where, and how those products are growing or shrinking. The web tags being tracked are those used for ad serving, web analytics, A/B testing, audience measurement and similar." - xero from Bookmarklet

I have volunteered for the task of archiving the complete tweet history of the top 1000 for historical preservation purposes and some twitter users have just talked way to much, and I seem to only be able to get their last 3200 tweets. Is there any way around this? - April Russo (app103)

Here is my challenge to all of you with some coding skills. Join me in pledging to release a new program/utility/game on JANUARY 1st, 2010 to celebrate the new year! It doesn't matter how big it is, but it must go live to the public as freeware/donationware between Dec 31 and Jan 1st, 2010. We will give out fun prizes (custom dc mugs celebrating the event or something like that), for all coders who live up to their pledges. Ground rules: * You have to state you are participating well before the actual date (you shouldn't just wait until Dec 31 to reveal whether you decided to participate or not); ideally announce by posting a reply on this thread before dec 7, if possible. DECEMBER 7 is our goal to have the pledges. * This can't be an update of an existing program - has to be a new program. * You can post the program on your own website, etc. - you don't have to be affiliated with DonationCoder.com - you still get to announce it as part of the N.A.N.Y. Challenge. * The key thing here... more... - April Russo (app103) from Bookmarklet

I have participated in this every year, since it started. It is always a lot of fun. - April Russo (app103)

"Gerard Holzmann External Link was a keynote speaker at OOPSLA today. Gerard is a fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) External Link in Pasadena, California, and has done a great deal of software development for spacecrafts. It is indeed very interesting to see how NASA makes sure that their multi-million dollar space missions are not jeopardized due to programming glitches." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

Formal verification will be a really hard sell in industry. In some build systems I've worked on I've included automated checks and integrated in automated code reviews that integrated in with source code control, testing, source code control, etc, and even that was looked on unkindly. - Todd Hoff

"We’ve now completed our inaugural Test Pilot study, with more than 5,000 opt-in participants from around the world providing invaluable data into how they use tabs in their daily Web browsing, and today we’re making this data available under an open license for analysis by the wider research community." - xero from Bookmarklet

"10-4 is a weekly video podcast which gives you a look at what's coming in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. Over and out!" - xero from Bookmarklet

"C++0x is the unofficial name of the planned new standard for the C++ programming language. It is intended to replace the existing C++ standard, ISO/IEC 14882, which was published in 1998 and updated in 2003. These predecessors are informally known as C++98 and C++03. The new standard will include several additions to the core language and will extend the C++ standard library, incorporating most of the C++ Technical Report 1 libraries — most likely with the exception of the library of mathematical special functions. Since the standard is not yet finalized, this article may not reflect the most recent state of C++0x. The most recent working draft, N2914, was published in June 2009." - xero from Bookmarklet

whoa! - vijay

"Defects can be very costly for an organization. So the trick with defects is that you need to 1) Prevent them from happening in the first place and 2) Find and fix them as early in the development life-cycle as possible." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"An interesting quote from Mary and Tom Poppendieck's book called Implementing Lean Software Development, "If software routinely enters final verification with defects, then it is being produced by a defective process" - imabonehead

"The overall number of defects in open-source projects is dropping, a new study by vendor Coverity has found. Coverity, maker of tools for analyzing programming code, received a contract in 2006 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help boost the quality of open-source software, which is increasingly being used by government agencies." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

""Defect density" has dropped 16 percent during the past three years among the projects scanned through the site and some 11,200 defects have been eliminated, according to Coverity's latest report. Four projects have been granted top-level "Rung 3" status, after resolving defects discovered during Rung 1 and 2, Coverity said. They are Samba, tor, OpenPAM and Ruby." - imabonehead

"One principle duct tape programmers understand well is that any kind of coding technique that’s even slightly complicated is going to doom your project. Duct tape programmers tend to avoid C++, templates, multiple inheritence, multithreading, COM, CORBA, and a host of other technologies that are all totally reasonable, when you think long and hard about them, but are, honestly, just a little bit too hard for the human brain." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Duct tape programmers don’t give a shit what you think about them. They stick to simple basic and easy to use tools and use the extra brainpower that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers." - imabonehead

"Meyer’s post also triggered a resurgence of the age-old debate of whether software development is worthy of the “engineering” label. With bugs so prevalent in mainstream software, people (mostly developers themselves) question the professionalism of our industry. This reminds of the EclipseCon 2007 keynote by Robert Lefkowitz, which draws attention to the EULA used by Microsoft. In particular, Lefkowitz asks why Microsoft1 should be allowed to disclaim all warranty and liability for damages incurred by the use of their software. Why doesn’t the law protect the market from buggy software?" - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"In the nature vs. nurture debate, researchers have declared nurture the winner. People who excel are the ones who work the hardest; it takes ten+ years of deliberate practice to become an expert. Deliberate practice is not about putting in hours, it’s about working to improve performance. It does not mean doing what you are good at; it means challenging yourself under the guidance of a teacher." - xero from Bookmarklet

"This presentation attacks the problem of software complexity and how various modularity paradigms (e.g., object, functions, aspects) simplify complexity and help separate concerns. This talk explores the design problems where these paradigms are most applicable and extract rules of thumb for when to use them. We will also look at language support for these paradigms." - xero from Bookmarklet

"Agile came from small, colocated projects in the 1990s. It has spread to large, globally distributed commercial projects, affecting the IEEE, the PMI, the SEI and the Department of Defense. Agile now sits in a larger landscape and should be viewed accordingly. This talk shows that landscape, clarifying how classical agile fits in and what constitutes effective development outside that narrow area." - xero from Bookmarklet

"The people who make desktop software are making themselves obsolete. When you start developing on the web, your default is to be smart, to interact and to be open (with other software and with your users). Desktop software (like Word) is insanely unaware of what I do, why I do it and who I do it with. Right now, the desktop folks have the momentum of the incumbent. Not for long. Time to hurry." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"These days an average web developer needs to have a broad matrix of skills in order to do his/her job. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, XML, some server side language, some linux skills, some apache, some database skills, standards, accessibility, SEO, the list goes on. Parts of the list are also multiplied by (or raised to the power of?) the number of browsers you want to support. Crazy, isn't it? We're such optimists trying to make stuff work in such an environment. There's gotta be an easier way to write code that does something meaningful! Yes, there is, it's called JavaScript. You learn JavaScript, you learn it well, and you don't need to learn anything else. Isn't that cool? JavaScript is, practically, everywhere. Learn JavaScript and you can: * create rich and powerful web applications (the kind that runs inside the browser) * write server-side code such as ASP scripts or for example code that is run using Rhino (A JavaScript engine written in Java) * create rich media... more... - April Russo (app103) from Bookmarklet

а фазу интегрального тестирования SCRUM не предполагает? - Сло

"This blog contains details of managing Requirements Based Exploratory Testing in my current project. I use “test case” (and the tool is JIRA + confluence wiki). I’m happy to have customized Test Case life-cycle in JIRA. So how I use it is not typical. It does not agree with any standard or TCM tool vendor recommendations. But it works for me." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"Virus writers have gone old school with the creation of a virus that infects Delphi files as they are built. When a Delphi file infected with Induc-A virus is run, it searches for Delphi programming installations on an infected machine and attempts to infect this installation. More specifically, the malware attempts to infect SysConst.pas, which it then compiles to SysConst.dcu. Once this process is completed the SysConst.dcu file is programmed to add the Induc-A virus to every new Delphi file that gets compiled on the system." - April Russo (app103) from Bookmarklet

More info: this malware targets only versions 4 thru 7. It's payload is to infect Delphi, get compiled into an app, seek out a copy of Delphi on the machine of anyone that runs it, repeat. Typical end users wouldn't be affected by it even if they received an infected file and ran it...average people don't have Delphi installed. - April Russo (app103)