Chris Johnston

I am working on a top secret project with a very small group of people. We have been using “ActiveCollab”:http://www.activecollab.com/ up until now and it has worked out fairly well. Recently though it has started to show its limitations; it does not do software development very well. By this I mean that it cannot manage user stories, track bugs, show source code, etc.

It does an amazing job of managing the regular communication that happens between members of a group and means that we do not have a million emails flying around all the time; however, it can’t manage the particulars of a software development project.

For this, we are moving to “Trac”:http://trac.edgewall.org/. I have not used it, but my impression is that it is quickly becoming the defacto standard for managing software projects. I will be installing it over the next few days.

There were two quiet releases/announcements made today along with all the iPhone hype:

* Apple has released a new version of AirportExtreme that incorporates 802.11n and software to turn on the 802.11n cards in new Macs such as the Macbook and the Macbook Pro.
* Microsoft announced Mac Office 2008 incorporating the new user interface which uses the ribbon instead of menus. I realize that I am probably suppose to hate MS, but I personally think that the new Office UI is a huge step in the right direction when it comes to creating software. And it is just really cool.

Both links go to the Mac Rumors website where you will find more information and more links.

I “watched” the Steve Job’s keynote address via the Mac Rumors website and was a little disappointed with it. I watched the video of it and I have to to say that I am still a little disappointed, but for different reasons. The first disappointment was because there was not more Mac stuff. The second disappointment is from the realization that I may never be own an iPhone.

First though I have to say that both AppleTV and the iPhone both look incredible. I want both, right now. I will probably be running out to buy AppleTV as soon as it is available at the Apple store here in Toronto. We have been looking for a media centre PC and this is definitely the one to get. I think Apple will corner the media pc market with this release. At the very least, if you check the prices of the accessories, Apple has some of the cheapest HDMI cables around.

The iPhone is simply amazing; and probably won’t be available in Canada any time soon. My prediction is actually that it will never be available in Canada. I hope I’m wrong.

Hi, my name is Chris and I am completely sold on “Ruby on Rails”:http://www.rubyonrails.com. I also love the new book “Agile Web Development with Rails“:http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0977616630/ref=pd_rvi_gw_3/701-1977922-1183541. It is an excellent introduction to Rails and one of the best tech/tutorial books I have read in a long time. I am only up to chapter 10, but so far it is excellent. I highly recommend the book to everyone who is trying to learn Rails. Look for a lot more Rails posts from in the future.

I am also working on a top secret Rails project that I hope to unveil this summer. I will also be dropping hints about it as well as the months go by. So stay tuned.

One thing I am learning more and more as I do software development is that software development is not about writing code; it is about people and interacting with people. And if you practice XP, then even the programming part is about people.

The idea that software is developed by individuals sitting alone in their basements/cubicles/offices is a complete myth. I am not sure if I have ever had a day where I have been able to simply sit at my computer for an entire 8 hours and bang out code. Eventually I have to communicate with a person. Whether it is to clarify some requirement with a user or discuss a problem with another developer or solve a bug in production with a sysadmin, the point is that it involves people.

So far in my very short career since graduation from university, I think this is the single most important lesson I have learned. Negotiation skills are needed by programmers and developers every bit as much as they are needed by business people and politicians.

This drives me nuts. At work, we have these things called iterations. In each iteration we develop a new bit of the application based on use cases that we created and finalized in the previous iteration. This is enough for people to think that this constitutes an Agile, iterative based approach to development.

I disagree.

The reason is twofold: 1) the use cases are suppose to be completely finished and signed off in the previous iteration and 2) each piece that we finish in a single iteration is expected to be feature complete and not be revisited. The implication is that features are added incrementally, but the application as a whole is not developed iteratively.

The biggest thing missing is user feedback. We have a testing team that gets each iteration’s release, but the user only gets the final product. We start off by gathering requirements and finalizing those requirements before we move to development. Once construction is finished, we move to testing and then user acceptance. To me, this is waterfall and not iterative development.

So far, I can’t convince anyone of this because we have iterations. Therefore, the mere presence of iterations means we must be doing iterative development.

Iterative, Agile development, to me at least, means more then just having iterations. I am just not sure what else it must include, but I have a feeling that it must include an Agile attitude. I’m not sure. What do other people think?

I am looking for a really nice, full size, 5 button, bluetooth mouse to go with my Macbook Pro. I don’t want the Mighty Mouse. What I do want is one with the standard two buttons plus scroll wheel/middle mouse button plus two side buttons for navigating forwards and backwards. Anyone have any suggestions? I have tried Best Buy and my local computer shop and can’t find one. The biggest problem so far is finding a full size mouse. Most of the ones so far seem to be designed for notebooks and are, therefore, smaller.