Quickie Orange Sauce

Quickie orange sauce:
  1 orange
  1 "new mexico pepper" (whatever the hell that is)
  1/3 cup (ish?) marsala
  1 slice butter
  1 tsp (ish?) cooking oil
  1 tsp (ish?) sugar

Crush orange into a glass
Add the other ingredients
Put in a pan on lowish heat
Stir until it reaches desired thickness (20 - 30 minutes?)
Turn to low heat
Continue to stir occasionally until time to serve

Lowering Cost of Goad Testing

I've lowered the cost of my long paper: Goad Testing.  This booklet shows a weakness in the way we usually do test-driven development along with a discipline we can apply to mitigate it.

I Write Like

I write like is a pretty neat little tool and surprisingly precise.  I haven't read either of the authors it says I write like so I cannot say how accurate it is but I can definitely say it is precise.

Most of the time I paste in a blog entry, it says I'm like this Canadian blogger, eh.  The rest of the time, it says I'm like some science-fiction writer/essayist.  Even if the comparisons are totally, horribly wrong.  Just having metrics capable of consistently mapping one person's writing to one or two other people's writing is worth a golf clap.

Rock on, guys.  Rock on.

Software Development and Flow

In response to Marco Dorantes's post on flow in software development.

Flow is part of it.  There are five Lean principles, all of equal importance:

• Start with a clear concept of value as a customer would define it
• Lay out the series of steps required to create value to define the value stream
• Create flow across the value stream
• Let the customer pull value
• Compete against perfection rather than other organizations

There are tools that allow us to do all five of these.  In fact, the tool that Al is promoting quite heavily right now - kanban - enables every single one of those things.  So, while I agree that flow is a critical part of the software development process - I don't understand why we are all so focused on the middle part.

It's like saying a ham sandwich with cheese and lettuce is all about cheese.  The cheese is necessary and not sufficient.

Moq Sequencing

Declan Whelan recently responded to my Moq Sequencer post.

Looks pretty good.

Switching web hosts

My current webhost - ServerIntellect.com - appears to be completely incompetent.  I'd put my uptime in the vicinity of seventy-five to eighty percent.  Generously.  I highly recommend that you do not use them, if you have the ability to avoid it.

I'm going to be switching away in a bit, here.

Support Matrix and Short Term Planning for DataClass

The next three months are going to be all about expanding DataClass's platform support.  I've published the current support matrix.  That same page also includes estimates as to when currently-unsupported platforms will become supported.

Anywho... check it out.  Also, if you haven't already, check out the way I documented the DataClass syntax and let me know what you think.

RE: Uncle Bob's "Software Calculus"

...which can be found here:

http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2010/07/05/software-calculus-the-missing-abstraction

It don't think the problem is a lack of thought-tools at all.  The problem is people won't use the tools we have.  Sure, we can keep refining our tool set.  We should always do that.  I just don't think we should hold our breath for a revolution...

Software development is the revolution.

DataClass Syntax Documentation now Available Online

I've posted documentation for the syntax of a DataClass source file online (here).  It was really not that hard to build the engine that provides documentation in that format and I think it really helps you learn the language.  It leads one to the question "Why aren't all languages documented this way?"  Surely a human language would be a lot harder but at least programming languages.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

We Reap What We Sew

...and I have sewn the seeds of a marriage to a tool that no longer provides adequate functionality.  All throughout DataClass, I coupled directly to Microsoft's CodeDom framework.

The following were my excuses for not encapsulating this stuff:

• What a convenient way to model the code I want to generate.
• It's just data.
• It's part of the framework, I can trust it.
• It will be easy to add support for Java because this is a language-independent format.

Bull...

...shit.

All of it.

Microsoft screwed us all over by getting rid of the J# code provider.  The C# code provider ought to work just fine with some small extensions but it is almost impossible to extend.  Bottom line, I'm having to write a working code modeling library; albeit one that only meets my needs.

They also gave .net eventing - a bastardized, incomplete, attempt at generically implementing the Observer pattern - a "little overhaul."  Translation: the way that you depended on these things working (crappy though it was) is no more.  Fortunately, I avoid those like the goddamn plague.

The bottom line, here, is this: If you didn't write it, don't trust it.  I'm not saying that Microsoft is likely to deprecate System.Int32 any time soon but you cannot count on them not changing something about how it works.  Encapsulate, encapsulate, encapsulate.

...or you will be sorry.

Why Me?

Has anyone else noticed that the universe or, at the very least, our social and economic system, is set up to reward the stupid, the weak, and the wicked while punishing those who are smart, strong, and virtuous?

Idiots get bailed out from their bad decision making with their credit cards and I labor under the weight of those bailouts.  Weaklings choose to live off the government and I struggle under their considerable mass as well.  Jackasses intentionally screw over the economy and it's my job to give them a handout too.

Yet, while doing all of that and trying to contribute to society, I can't get a goddamn computer to run right.  First, it's hard-drive dies.  Then it's power intake.  Where is the support system for the people who are generally making this a better place to exist but just happen to actually, literally be down on their luck?