Stop bitching and moaning. Get your 501(c)(12) and crank'er up. Community organizations can do this, don't let a few corporations control your life blood and the communication medium of the future. For all the supposed technical expertise on/. you'd think we'd be rolling in public broadband alternatives.
Shesh, mental masturbation can only get you so far in life...
My Grandpa was an engineer on a similar project in the sixties. They had a prototype build, it just wasn't economically feasible then. I think it was FMC, but I'm not positive.
-W
5 to 6 talented programmers go off and spend 8 months developing a well defined application.
Each programmer works on different components of the system.
Little customer communication occured and the final release didn't integrate at all with the current systems. Half of the the written requirements were not met.
The different components did not even work well together.
After implementing XP:
Most of the same developers, plus a few new novice ones implement XP. Pair programming improves developer communications and allows the different system components to always be in sync. Also, each developer becomes more competent and code quality skyrockets.
Religious unit testing before checking in proves additions to the system integrate with the rest. Check-in happened daily, so the system was tested multiple times per day by each pair.
Short iterations and daily builds allow the customer to see the system working often and allows them to make changes quickly and easily without bringing down the schedule or costing mucho man hours.
Building just what is needed and refactoring later allows the developers to focus on the business issues at hand and not worry about predicting the future.
At the end of development, 90% of the requirements are done and most of the other 10% have been deamed to be unnecessary.
Further, there are now 8 developers who know the code base inside and out and bug fixing breezes by.
Don't be fooled by the nay-sayers, XP can work. It can also fail miserably, but that's not the fault of the process. Yes, most of the practices in XP are not new. What is new, is that these best practices have been packaged up into a process that developers, business sponsors and management can believe in. In the business world, this carries weight and in my job that's what pays the bills.
I learned to program using C++ in college and hated it. It was too constraining and I about died when we got to pointers:-). I did make it through the courses but I never touched it again after that (no, I wasn't a CS major).
Then the Web happened and I picked up Perl reluctantly. I was hooked after a day. It made programming simple and fun - I could actually make the computer do exactly what I wanted with minimal fuss and syntax errors. No, my first programs were not well formed - but the larger my projects got, the better the code. It at least got me into programming again and gave me a chance to learn how to do it right.
Now I've done more work in C and Java, where you have to be more disciplined. But at least I know that now and can understand it, all thanks to Perl giving me a second chance to become a software developer.
This gets you great cross platform capabilities and the whole spectrum of Java functionality. Also, it is very scalable between multiple servers and best of all, it's open source. PHP is it's own proprietary language that relies on only a few people for enhancements. ColdFusion, while a great product, does not give you the scaling capabilities and cross-platform support. This, at the moment, is the most open and scalable platform for Web applications. The only issue currently is the lack of examples and help getting started down this road since this solution is so new. http://java.apache.org/ http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/~yaroslav/gnujsp/
CardBus flies, I use the 3Com/Megahertz 10/100 (3CCFE575BT) without issues. The Tecra 8K is a great platform for Linux. Also, all the apm stuff works better than in W2K.
Slashdot Mirror
Do some work on an open source project you like.
If you have the time, this is much more interesting than real work or school. Plus, you'll learn a whole hell of a lot more.
Stop bitching and moaning. Get your 501(c)(12) and crank'er up. Community organizations can do this, don't let a few corporations control your life blood and the communication medium of the future. For all the supposed technical expertise on /. you'd think we'd be rolling in public broadband alternatives.
Shesh, mental masturbation can only get you so far in life...
ttp://www.topica.com/lists/community-broadband/
-Warum
Because you can!
My Grandpa was an engineer on a similar project in the sixties. They had a prototype build, it just wasn't economically feasible then. I think it was FMC, but I'm not positive. -W
Recent troubled project:
5 to 6 talented programmers go off and spend 8 months developing a well defined application.
Each programmer works on different components of the system.
Little customer communication occured and the final release didn't integrate at all with the current systems. Half of the the written requirements were not met.
The different components did not even work well together.
Most of the same developers, plus a few new novice ones implement XP. Pair programming improves developer communications and allows the different system components to always be in sync. Also, each developer becomes more competent and code quality skyrockets.
Religious unit testing before checking in proves additions to the system integrate with the rest. Check-in happened daily, so the system was tested multiple times per day by each pair.
Short iterations and daily builds allow the customer to see the system working often and allows them to make changes quickly and easily without bringing down the schedule or costing mucho man hours.
Building just what is needed and refactoring later allows the developers to focus on the business issues at hand and not worry about predicting the future.
At the end of development, 90% of the requirements are done and most of the other 10% have been deamed to be unnecessary.
Further, there are now 8 developers who know the code base inside and out and bug fixing breezes by.
Don't be fooled by the nay-sayers, XP can work. It can also fail miserably, but that's not the fault of the process. Yes, most of the practices in XP are not new. What is new, is that these best practices have been packaged up into a process that developers, business sponsors and management can believe in. In the business world, this carries weight and in my job that's what pays the bills.
I learned to program using C++ in college and hated it. It was too constraining and I about died when we got to pointers :-). I did make it through the courses but I never touched it again after that (no, I wasn't a CS major).
Then the Web happened and I picked up Perl reluctantly. I was hooked after a day. It made programming simple and fun - I could actually make the computer do exactly what I wanted with minimal fuss and syntax errors. No, my first programs were not well formed - but the larger my projects got, the better the code. It at least got me into programming again and gave me a chance to learn how to do it right.
Now I've done more work in C and Java, where you have to be more disciplined. But at least I know that now and can understand it, all thanks to Perl giving me a second chance to become a software developer.
Now it's what I do for a living.
Thanks Perl (and Larry)
Enhydra (the OpenSource Java Application server) has similar issues.
So, they've decided to mix and match.
This gets you great cross platform capabilities and the whole spectrum of Java functionality. Also, it is very scalable between multiple servers and best of all, it's open source. PHP is it's own proprietary language that relies on only a few people for enhancements. ColdFusion, while a great product, does not give you the scaling capabilities and cross-platform support. This, at the moment, is the most open and scalable platform for Web applications. The only issue currently is the lack of examples and help getting started down this road since this solution is so new. http://java.apache.org/ http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/~yaroslav/gnujsp/
CardBus flies, I use the 3Com/Megahertz 10/100 (3CCFE575BT) without issues. The Tecra 8K is a great platform for Linux. Also, all the apm stuff works better than in W2K.