Connected Systems Practice Lead East at Neudesic - Service-Oriented Architecture, Connected Systems, Enterprise Architecture, and Software Architecture from an experienced INETA Speaker and Connected Systems MVP - Software Architecture, SOA, .NET Framework 3.5 WCF, Connected Systems
Welcome! When I sawour post on your old blog wanting a new home, I knew we had to make you an offer. I'm glad the other guys agreed and made it happen.
Just look out for Sahil. ;)
Sam,
I agree completely with your assessment of Microsoft's understanding of "Agile" development practices and how we developers (including architects, core devs and testers) work on a day to day basis. I'm visiting Redmond next week for some TAP training and am (hopefully) having dinner with Rob Caron [MSFT] to discuss a few of these points.
Welcome aboard and I'm looking forward to hearing about your Vista experiences as a development machine.
--
Jeff
Interesting Finds
Wonderful, happy to have you here.
Just look out for Geoffy. ;)
We're elated to have you with us now Sam!
I'm honored to be around such smart people. I know to totally watch out for Sahil as he is now a big shot with his book-))). I need to bow to him now-)
Yes, Great to have you here Sam. Sahil is very very sneaky. Watch out for that guy. He doesn't ever sleep, and has mad computer hacking and numchuck skills. Just watch you back is all I have to say about that.
It's great to have you.
CodeBetter feels warmer and smarter already!! :)
Scott,
I agree, it feels smarter because Sam joined in. And warmer because Brendan had beans for lunch.
SM
Welcome aboard Sam, I've been reading your old blog for quite awhile.
I've been in your shoes and wrestled with the same problems. Just-In-Time or Continous Design doesn't preclude thinking ahead, only implementing infrastructure before it's necessary. I don't think that XP addresses cross-cutting concerns directly, but the extra collaboration afforded by pair programming and just being co-located go a long way towards creating a standardized approach and understanding of architectural concerns throughout the team.
On XP/Scrum projects we've done occasional spike stories to address specific architectural changes or strategies with decent results. You've got to bring architectural concerns to the forefront and get those spikes into the iteration plans. A lot depends on having a mutual trust relationship between the tech lead and the PM.
Thank you - that is very helpful as is your blog which I have been reading and recomending for some time now.
Good to see this and hope it works for you. I've been wanting to comment on a few posts from time to time but didn't have the opportunity.
I posted my comment policy after opening up comments here (weblogs.asp.net/.../203055.aspx) not that anyone reads them. It's been pretty good but I get the occasional spammer that needs a good whacking.
Here's to some good discussions in the future!
The blog looks a whole lot better and loads a lot faster; you did right to move. Anon comments are switched on for all other blogs I visit daily (e.g. Chris Sells, Brad Abrams) and the amount of maverick posts is usually very low. Good luck with it!
I've never been as straightforward as you about this, but it is true, the number of folks that contact for help are impossible for one person to reply one-by-one.
I get well meaning emails from many readers (which I do appreciate), requesting an opinion or help on a certain technical manner. As much as I'd love to pitch in and help each one of them out, it is not humany possible. Certainly not for free atleast.
Welcome to codebetter, it's a whole lot better here.
How long should the sprint review meetings take?
I have no idea as Sprints as from SCRUM and we don't do SCRUM. Also please provide a name and URL
Actually I didn't write any of it as I stole Bill's intact-). But that is what I needed to express.
TFS Release Candidate Coming Soon
Thanks Sam! Looks like you've settled into your new blogging home really well.
+1
SOA and Proud!
NUnit 2.2.6 - January 21, 2006
General
* NUnit may now be installed by a non-administrator. In this case, the framework is not added to the GAC, no entries are made in the local machine registry hive and NUnit assemblies will not appear as an option in the Visual Studio Add Reference dialog.
Note: Some NUnit tests fail when run by a non-admin. This will be remedied in a future release.
* The /fixture option used with a namespace now loads all instances of the namespace across multiple assemblies.
* A user-defined suite may now be created by adding the System.Type for the the user fixture to the suite, without instantiating the object.
* Protected TestFixtureSetUp and TestFixtureTearDown methods are now recognized.
Bug Fixes
* Assert count always zero
* Tests out of order in the gui after a reload
* User-defined suites not loaded in gui and not working as documented.
* Non-default config file setting in project was being ignored
* Config file for exes assumed to end in .dll.config rather than .exe.config.
* Non-auto probing path set in project was being ignored.
* Problems in Assert.Greater and Assert.Less
* Source not building under .Net 1.0
Like you I've only been using Ruby (and Ruby on Rails) for a short while now, but I've definitely found migrations to be a great way of setting up and migrating schemas.
However, the thing I _really_ love (and wish there was a way I could come up with something suitable for ASP.NET) is the way Rails provides everything you need for writing good functional tests. I've only just started with them, but my first experience was so good I felt it was worth a blog post:
www.oobaloo.co.uk/.../loving-rails-functional-testing
I love the way I can almost construct a CSS-based site without firing open a web browser -- with support for finding tags, it's possible to just layout the structure of the content of the site and then test against that. Once you know the structure's ok, it's all CSS, and you rarely need to open a browser to take a look!