Software Engineering

"[F]ound out yesterday, that at least according to Xmarks, my blog is far more popular than even I thought. However, before you think my head has gotten too big, let me tell you about two companies I interviewed with recently that turned me down. Twitter turned me down a couple years ago, and Aardvark turned me down a couple weeks ago (which is really a shame because I think Aardvark is awesome!). ... Both of them said pretty much the same thing. They said I was too methodical and relied too heavily on documentation. More importantly, I'm sure, was that I didn't yet embrace test-driven development, TDD." - Micah Wittman from Bookmarklet

I was actually hacking on a (failed) fork of Processing called OhProcessing. The point was to cleanup the code base which is horrendous. Processing is awesome, but the command-line options were unfinished and there's quite a bit of duplication in the source... - Rudolf Olah

Simple Example: You must validate the contents of a list of Widgets. The most complex case involves 3 seperate lookups from other lists, each lookup depending on the other. The least complex is a simple lookup in another list. I'd generally tackle this from the most complex case as it starts me with the most generic solution that can get scaled back in each similar, but less complicated (and separate), implementation. It may vary by the situation specifics, but I generally go after the most complicated so that I have no surprises on the less complicated one. If the most complicated one seems too complicated then I will try for something in the middle if it exists. - xero

I usually go for the simple one first while also thinking about how to generalize it or where I may have to make changes. - Rudolf Olah

"For both, the company and the developers who have been following the traditional methods of development like waterfall, moving to scrum is a big deal and not many follow it the right way. Here I share the experiences that how things used to happen and what mistakes were done in the way and what could have been done better." - imabonehead from Bookmarklet

"What is NoSQL (technically speaking)? The names of these projects are as diverse as they are whimsical: Hadoop, Voldemort, Dynomite, and others. But they are generally unified by a few things, including: Don't call them databases. Amazon.com's CTO, Werner Vogels, refers to the company's influential Dynamo system as a "highly available key-value store." Google calls its BigTable, the other role model for many NoSQL adherents, a "distributed storage system for managing structured data." They can blow through enormous amounts of data." - xero

"If you find yourself maintaining this horribly designed, hacked together legacy code from the early days of a company be thankful and bask in its glory. Without that spaghetti nightmare you wouldn’t have that job. It was that short sighted thinking that was able to get something done and create a profitable product/company." - xero from Bookmarklet

I think you have to find the balancing point, but I think it leans toward productivity instead of elegance. But, the more you forgo good organization and design, the more important automatic tests are going to be. You have to keep maintenance in mind, but you generally let getting the job done quickly win at first. Version 3 or 4 of your product is almost always a complete rewrite... more... - xero

"At present Gallio can run tests from MbUnit versions 2 and 3, MSTest, NBehave, NUnit, xUnit.Net, and csUnit. Gallio provides tool support and integration with CCNet, MSBuild, NAnt, NCover, Pex, Powershell, Resharper, TestDriven.Net, TypeMock, and Visual Studio Team System. Gallio also includes its own command-line runner, Echo, and a Windows GUI, Icarus. Additional runners are planned or under development. Third parties are also encouraged to leverage the Gallio platform as part of their own applications." - xero from Bookmarklet