Code reviews are something that not all of us like or do, but they can be very valuable. I thought I would express some of my thoughts/opinions about the benefits and pit falls of performing code reviews.
Again, very very good!
Code reviews are thought to be painful by many, but in my opinion that can be avoided. Code reviews can be a great tool for a project to help keep the code clean and concise.
100% accurate!
We have two software projects that are going on at the Foundation. Project #1 is just finishing. It was not managed by me and it was done using a traditional waterfall death march type methodology. Project #2 is being managed by me and we’re using a traditional Agile project management approach.
# Project #1 is 100% over original estimate for no apparent reason. The customer gave up trying to even get a date from because they haven’t seen any deliverables, don’t even really understand the scope of work and just want it done.
# In Project #1, there was about 1 month just spent trying to define requirements. There were dozens of meetings trying to nail down field mappings with no code being written in the meantime (which starts to explain why the project is late). The right people were never in the room and the developers got different answers from different people.
# In Project #1, despite the investment in time, the output in terms of requirements documentation and certainty of scope was quite poor. Despite the investment, the requirements still changed up until the last week before testing including major business rule corrections.
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It is fair to say that trying to program and manage is not for everyone. But given that you are a programmer who now has management responsibilities how do you handle both? What I hope in this article is to show you that it is possible to do both and to improve your efficiency of both and that the roles can be very complimentary.
It is fair to say that trying to program and manage is not for everyone. In fact a large percentage of programmers are not suitable to management roles and most rightly see management as something which would require them to give up all morals and learn to speak a different language (e.g. say ‘pro active’ every other word). This is partly due to the fact that management (on the whole) positions get filled by people who understand social structures and a lot of programmers (especially some of the most talented ones) do not fall into this bracket.
But given that you are a programmer who now has management responsibilities how do you handle both?
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Peer review keeps us honest. That’s why open source code has to be better. You have to plan for the inevitable future when, if anyone ever cares at all about the code, other people will read it. You can’t just hide your obfuscated tangle of “we don’t know why it works, don’t change it or you’ll break it” spaghetti behind binary compilation.
Just looking at the title of this post, before the post is even written, I’m struck by the myriad interpretations that could be applied to it. It can be read in any number of ways, spanning a wide and varied spectrum of meanings. We’ll see, by the time I’m done, how many of those might still apply:
I’ve written elsewhere about why open source code has to be more secure. I didn’t use a title so cryptic and protean in its meaning at the time, of course, because it was written for professional publication — where the kind of word play I used in the title here is generally a no-no. As such, I also constrained the content somewhat to avoid directly addressing many of the potential meanings of the phrase “why open source code has to be more secure”. Think about this, though: peer review means exactly that your code has to be more secure. What code must be as secure as code that could be viewed — and reviewed — by (almost) literally anyone, for a period without known limits? It has to be more secure, because you never know who’s going to see it, and your reputation as a programmer is attached to that code. Open source development is probably the fastest way to build a reputation for yourself as a programmer, but there’s nothing that says that reputation has to be a good one other than your ability to turn out good code.
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1. Revenue
The iterative nature of agile development means features are delivered incrementally, enabling some benefits to be realised early as the product continues to develop.
2. Speed-to-market
Research suggests about 80% of all market leaders were first to market. As well as the higher revenue from incremental delivery, agile development philosophy also supports the notion of early and regular releases, and ‘perpetual beta’.
3. Quality
A key principle of agile development is that testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle, enabling regular inspection of the working product as it develops. This allows the product owner to make adjustments if necessary and gives the product team early sight of any quality issues.
4. Visibility
Agile development principles encourage active ‘user’ involvement throughout the product’s development and a very cooperative collaborative approach. This provides excellent visibility for key stakeholders, both of the project’s progress and of the product itself, which in turn helps to ensure that expectations are effectively managed.
5. Risk Management
Small incremental releases made visible to the product owner and product team through its development help to identify any issues early and make it easier to respond to change. The clear visibility in agile development helps to ensure that any necessary decisions can be taken at the earliest possible opportunity, while there’s still time to make a material difference to the outcome.
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Here are photos and a description of a team room from a 9-month, 5-person project.
Many newcomers to Extreme Programming wonder what a team room looks like. (For those unfamiliar with Extreme Programming, at the end of the article you will find a quick explanation of the XP terms that I use.) Here are photos and a description of a team room from a 9-month, 5-person project. Areas in the photos that might identify the client have been blurred out. If you have further questions or would like help adopting agile methods at your own organization, please contact the author.
A study
from Privacy International has ranked Google at the bottom of a list of major internet destinations for privacy.The study found that while a number of other Internet companies have issues with data protection, none comes as close to Google in “achieving the status of being an endemic threat to privacy.”
Issue with Google included:
And the most scary:
And Google’s ambitions may go well beyond the collection of personal information via the web. Their recent investment in 23andme, a service which will analyze people’s DNA, means that they may have access to people’s genetic makeup in the future. And that includes genetic flaws that might signal future health risks for them and their offspring. Google knowing what web searches we do today, or who we send emails to, is nothing compared with what may come in the future.
Google to Microsoft: We will sue you if you try to make your OS better, this from the supposed “Good Company”.
According to a report in “The New York Times” on Sunday, Internet search giant Google has levied an antitrust charge against Microsoft, but the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has declined to pursue the case. The report is notable for a number of reasons. First, as noted by the Times, the DOJ has clearly changed its tune regarding Microsoft antitrust issues: Now, the agency is defending, not pursuing, the software giant. Second, as also noted by the Times, the DOJ and the Federal District Court overseeing Microsoft’s ongoing antitrust consent decree, have gone so far as to keep this most recent complaint a secret. But the third and most important point seems to be completely lost on the Times: Google’s charge is frivolous, baseless, and hypocritical.
A top programmer examines a number of the top items of programming advice commonly given, and makes a great case for why they should NOT be followed. Some interesting food for thought for any programmer.
…Very cool. New graphics output in Mathematica seems really powerful.
Computer software developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has made it possible to peer into the human body with greater accuracy.
We know more about the edge of the universe than about the core of our planet. Could a crazy mission get to the bottom of things? This article explores what we know, what we THINK we know (both the accepted theory and some that are a little…out there), and the possibility of exploring to the earth’s core.
“…The consequence of this seismic shift in microprocessor development means that traditional single threaded applications will no longer see any significant gains in performance let alone exponential gains. That means a typical single-threaded application will probably not be that much faster 8 years from now…”
In the standard model of particle physics, particles are considered to be points moving through space, tracing out a line called the World Line. To take into account the different interactions observed in Nature one has to provide particles with more degrees of freedom than only their position and velocity, such as mass, electric charge, color.
One of the most remarkable predictions of String Theory is that space-time has ten dimensions! At first sight, this may be seen as a reason to dismiss the theory altogether, as we obviously have only three dimensions of space and one of time. However, if we assume that six of these dimensions are curled up very tightly, then we may never be aware of their existence. Furthermore, having these so-called compact dimensions is very beneficial if String Theory is to describe a Theory of Everything. The idea is that degrees of freedom like the electric charge of an electron will then arise simply as motion in the extra compact directions! The principle that compact dimensions may lead to unifying theories is not new, but dates from the 1920’s, since the theory of Kaluza and Klein. In a sense, String Theory is the ultimate Kaluza-Klein theory.
For simplicity, it is usually assumed that the extra dimensions are wrapped up on six circles. For realistic results they are treated as being wrapped up on mathematical elaborations known as Calabi-Yau Manifolds and Orbifolds.
read more | digg story
For the molecular biologist in all of you.
Fatty Acid Synthase
Fat, these days, is a bad word. But we can’t survive without fats, and more particularly, without fatty acids. Fatty acids are small molecules composed of a long string of carbon and hydrogen atoms, with an acidic group at one end. They are used for two essential things in your body. First, they are used to build the lipids that make up all of the membranes around and inside your cells. Second, fatty acids are a concentrated source of energy, so they are often connected to glycerol to form fats, which are a compact way to store energy until it is needed. But as we all know, if we eat too much, this extra fat can build up!
Brain uses both neural ‘teacher’ and ‘tinkerer’ networks in learning. While most people need peace and quiet to cram for a test, the brain itself may need noise to learn, a recent MIT study suggests. In experiments with monkeys, the researchers found that neural activities in the brain gradually change, even when nothing new is being learned.
Ronald C. Lasky, director of the Cook Engineering Design Center at Dartmouth College, explains the significance behind this hallowed equation:
It tells us that mass and energy are related, and, in those rare instances where mass is converted totally into energy, how much energy that will be. The elegance with which it ties together three disparate parts of nature—energy, the speed of light and mass—is profound.
Holistic learning: five easy steps to ace your tests with minimal studying.
“I’ve never been that keen on studying before an exam. I rarely study for more than a half hour, even for big final exams worth more than half my grade. When I do study, I usually just skim over the material and do a few practice questions. For some of my math classes I have yet to do a single practice question for homework. Most people study by cramming in as much information before walking into the test room, whereas I consider studying to be no more than a light stretch before running.”
- Scott Young
Just ran across this–the Harvard College Math Review is a free online journal, apparently featuring articles from some students and famous people. And best of all, it’s free and open!
