Taking over a project and not sure what to ask the people who are responsible for it during the handover period? Read on for a summary of a very interesting discussion over at stackoverflow.com.
- Perform a checkout and build project on a ‘naked’ machine and keep your eyes open for anything that is not automated
- Make sure you get all the relevant passwords for any server/db/anything that is involved in the project
- As a pair programming exercise try and add new simple features to different parts of the product to get some first hand exposure to it, since documentation might be non-complete
- Compile a list of known issues together
- Make sure you understand configurations parameters and that they are documented
- Compile a trouble shooting cheat sheet with tips about what to look for in log files and common problems that occur
- Ask who to talk to for finding out the real non-documented requirements about the system
- Get advice on which parts of the system are due for an upgrade/redesign etc
The original thread contains a lot more reading material and I strongly recommend it for anyone who might find themselves in a similar position in the near future.
Uncategorized Programming, project ownership
The other day I signed up with Stackoverflow.com and I like it so much I thought it was worth mentioning here. One of the brains behind Stackoverflow.com is Joel Spolsky who you might know as the blogger of www.joelonsoftware.com.
This site is a place for programmers by programmers. Much like a wiki it is the users that will generate the content. This is generally done by asking questions on different programming topics and other users will answer them. What separates it from other similar sites is that by contributing in different ways a user can earn badges and reputation. This really appeal to the gamer in me and since the site is brimming with posters not just me.
The site has a very slick minimalistic design and it is very responsive. In a proper community spirit www.stackoverflow.com is naturally free and so far there have been no annoying popups or banners begging for money. They do have a few sponsors and there is a tiny area dedicated to showing a very non-intrusive ad from them.
Rating: 5/5
Programming, Uncategorized, review
Dawnthief is the first part out of seven in a James Barclay’s series about a band of mercenaries called The Raven. The Raven have been successful for years and are well known throughout Balaia and have made a fortune. They have one thing that sets them apart from other mercenary companies and that is their unique code, “Kill, but never murder”.
However the six warriors and the elven mage has spent the last ten years traveling across Balaia fighting in numerous battles and in their last assignment one of their number committed a mistake which lead to one of The Raven being killed. This has disaster has led to talks about retirement, but everyone is not ready for it.
Their plans of early retirement has to be laid on ice for one final mission. The Wytch Lords that were imprisoned 300 years ago by the Dark College of Magic, Xetesk, have now escaped and are once again determined to bring destruction upon Balaia. The Wytch Lords have raised a huge army of Wesmen and have thousands of shamans add magical power to their army which already have a numerous advantage over the Balarian defenders. There is only one thing that can stop the Wytch Lords, the spell Dawnthief. Denser is the only mage capable of casting Dawnthief so The Raven has to assist him in finding the spell.
While The Raven and Denser search for the spell the four Collages of Magic has to try and set work around their differences to mount a defense against the horde of Wesmen threatening their borders. The Korina Trade Alliance seem more interested in fighting with each other and chose not to take the threat that the Wyth Lords and Wesmen pose seriously and only two of their members rallies their warriors to come to Balaia’s defense.
I did enjoy reading Dawnthief and James Barclay has succeeded in creating interesting characters without really revealing that much about them. There is something of a mysterious air surrounding the memeber of the Raven and then especially their front figure and leader, The Unknown Warrior. Their quest to discover Dawnthief is a dangerous mission and I can guarantee a lot of action, both individual melees and large scale battles. The Raven are good but they are not invincible, how high will the cost for them be in order to save Balaia.
Score: 4/5
Fantasy, review
Let me try and outline what I have done first and I’ll have a chance to do some enhancements if necessary.
I have a class level meta attribute “property-change-support” which will add the field propertyChangeSupport of the type java.beans.PropertyChangeSupport. It will also add the following methods:
public void firePropertyChange(String property,
Object oldValue,
Object newValue);
public void addPropertyChangeListener(String property,
java.beans.PropertyChangeListener listener);
public void removePropertyChangeListener(String property,
java.beans.PropertyChangeListener listener);
Any property with the following meta attribute “bound-property” will have a constant generated and its set method modified to something along the line of:
public static final String CREDIT_PROPERTY = "credit";
public void setCredit(double credit) {
double old = this.credit;
this.credit = credit;
firePropertyChange("credit",
Double.valueOf(old),
Double.valueOf(this.credit));
}
I have no support for indexed properties and at the moment you have to specify which properties you want to be bound.
java hbm2java, hibernate, java
This was one of those ridiculous problems that I spent way too much time trying to solve and once again turns out to be a configuration problem. I had a simple program that tried to write some data into a my HSQLDB database, but after the program terminated the database was empty. The problem was that per default a newly created database is configured to wait 10ms before it actually persists changes. This can be fixed by editing the script file that is created and change this line:
SET WRITE DELAY 10 MILLIS
By setting the delay to 0 programs that terminate straight after writing to the database will actually have their changes saved. Thanks Tony!
java hsql, java
For one of my projects I’ve decided to use bound properties and implement this behavior through the use of the PropertyChangeSupport class. Bound properties will inform any listeners of any changes to itself. I use Hibernate and hbm2java to generate my domain classes and was somewhat surprised when there seemed to be no way to have hbm2java generate classes with bound properties. After some research it seemed like my only option was to modify the FreeMarker templates and use meta tags to accomplish this. After doing this it struck me that I simply cannot be the only one that have needed to do this which makes me wonder why I could not find more information about it. Am I really the only one that uses bound properties in my domain objects? Is it a terrible idea?
java hbm2java, hibernate, java, oo design
Recent Comments