http://caines.ca/blog Shell-Shocked Ramblings from the Trenches of Software Development Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:30:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Version control branches come with costs. I'm at the point now that I don't think it's possible to get away without spending a couple of days every month managing issues with version control and merging if you're using feature branches liberally as is common with DVCS (like git) users. ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/311/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed I'm working on a toolkit that can hopefully remove some boilerplate from Rails apps that are trying to implement RESTful APIs (specifically in JSON right now), while simultaneously trying to write a production JSON-REST API.  As I start to dig into the details, it's clear to me that JSON is ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/json-is-under-defined-for-rest/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed Let's just forget about story points, pigs, chickens, daily stand-ups, burndown charts, sprints and scrummasters for a second.  In my experience all of that weird jargon is really hurting Agile's adoption among the no-nonsense type of developer that doesn't have time for fluff and wants to know the real benefits of ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/agile-the-good-parts/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed One of my more perverse guilty pleasures in software development is deadlines.  Deadlines take the task of developing software, which is usually pretty complex, and add a another dimension to it, which sort of makes me feel like I'm in game-show mode.  I start to think about creative ways to ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/are-you-writing-code-for-a-deadline-or-are-you-writing-code-for-the-future/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed Deciding What Not to Test I see a lot of people finding their automated tests to be tedious and time-consuming to write and wondering what parts are okay to not test.   A QA manager once asked me a question along the same lines… "How much coverage do you really need?" ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/deciding-what-not-to-test/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed After having been a freelance developer for about 9 years, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but there were a few things I learned in that time that I try to take to my subsequent jobs. Learn what "done" means. When you say something's done, it means ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/10-steps-to-being-a-more-professional-programmer/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed One fine day in the trenches, a junior engineer was tasked with optimizing a particular web service call that was way too slow (sometimes slower than 20 seconds!).  I had just figured out how to use a performance profiler for that particular platform, so I thought I'd offer to show ... http://caines.ca/blog/testing/quality-control-is-the-constraint/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed Fight starter #66: The Exercise Suite It's no fun to write about stuff that everyone agrees on, so I'm going to write about something that almost everyone seems to disagree with me about: 100% code coverage is almost always possible. It's a valuable target, and it's a worthwhile goal in and of itself. The ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/fight-starter-66-the-exercise-suite/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed 5 Common Excuses for Avoiding Unit-Testing I just finished reading an article on the The Maintainability of Unit Tests (http://java.dzone.com/articles/maintainability-unit-tests) and a lot of what was being said there is contrary to my experiences with unit-testing, so I wanted to suggest a few counterpoints. Basically there's a discussion of how unit-testing can ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/the-top-5-common-excuses-to-avoiding-unit-testing/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar In my last entry I talked about how difficult it is to transition a team from being a deadline-oriented team to a quality-oriented ... http://caines.ca/blog/programming/overcoming-the-difficulty-of-changing-to-a-focus-on-quality/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed