gmane.comp.programming.extreme-programming

Re: Keys to success in a Manifiesto

M. Manca — 2012-05-18T07:13:59

Il 18/05/2012 04:59, gusridd ha scritto:
This is not exactly an argument related to the group that is extreme
programming but in this particular case I suggest to don't think to it
as spam. I hope also that the more involved engineers can give to
gusridd some indications about what he asks.
Good luck gusridd.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Keys to success in a Manifiesto

gusridd — 2012-05-18T02:59:49

Hi, i'm new to this group and i'd like to make a question to the community:

I'm representing a group of programmers from Chile that support the agile manifesto. Recently in our country a new movement is emerging due to the catastrophic events that have occurred in the past years that hopes to go beyond the agile manifesto putting emphasis on collaboration and solidarity, we call it The Digital Solidarity Manifesto.

We would like to ask which were the success keys for having such a great community. We have found some keys that we found important and we'd appreciate your validation.

In the first place, the way a message is transmitted is as important as the message itself. So we need to find a balance between content and the way this is published.

Secondly, the message must innovate in some way, we recognize more manifesto's initiatives around the globe, especially the agile manifesto that breaks the old-fashioned way of coding. So we must innovate in the message and in the way this is transmitted.

Have y

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

Adrian Howard — 2012-05-17T18:36:05

Hi Charlie,

On 16 May 2012, at 17:10, Charlie Poole wrote:
[snip]
[snip]

This is one of the reasons I *really* like Perl's testing framework - it has exactly this sort of setup.

It's evolved so everything produces and consumes TAP (http://testanything.org/) a simple human-readable protocol for expressing pass/fail results (with standard modules that help people output and consume TAP).

This means I can write tests procedurally, or in an xUnit style, or a BDD style, or a specification-based testing style, or use various DSLs for things like exception testing or for testing web apps... and so on. 

I just use the style that seems most appropriate for the thing being tested. They all output TAP. All the standard test runners consume TAP. Everything "just works" and plays nice together.

I can even easily integrate tests running in other languages or environments as long as they output TAP.

In addition - since almost all of the Perl testing modules use a common TAP output module - you can usually integrate

Re: Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

Charlie Poole — 2012-05-17T18:02:06

Hi Marvin,

Convenience assert methods are easy to write in almost every framework.

We were talking about an entire syntactic overlay, not just a single assert.

"Trivial" for me would mean that pretty much anyone with the
skills needed to use the framework would be able to extend it - not
just the reigning guru on a particular team

Suppose, for example, I want to create a type of test class that runs all
the tests in parallel, with facilities for coordination among them. I'd like
to express that by adding a ParallellFixture attribute to the class.

This is doable in NUnit but not trivial. It's doable in JUnit by creating a
runner and using it - still what I'd call a non-trivial operation.

That's the case for most current frameworks for static languages. But it
could be made easy - even  trivial - by thoughtful design of the framework.

I know that several other tool-builders are also thinking this way.

Charlie


On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 9:47 AM, MarvinToll.com <MarvinToll< at >gtcgroup.com>wrote:



[Non-text

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

MarvinToll.com — 2012-05-17T16:47:35


Perhaps I'm not understanding how to make this complicated?

Here are three representative convenience assert methods for persistence using JUnit v. 3 that seem straight-forward to me?

public abstract class SjpBaseIncontainerTestCase extends
        SjcBaseIncontainerTestCase {

    /**
     * This method ensures instances were persisted.
     * 
     * < at >param persistenceSI
     * < at >param instances
     */
    protected void assertPersisted(final SjcPiPersistenceSI persistenceSI,
            final SjcBaseBO... instances) {

        // Declare/Initialize
        int numberOfInstances = 0;

        System.out.println("\n\t*** Begin Persisted Assertion ***; thread="
                + Thread.currentThread().getName() + "\n");

        final long startTime = System.nanoTime();

        for (final SjcBaseBO instance : instances) {

            if (!persistenceSI.exists(instance)) {

                Assert.fail("The instance ["
                        + instance.retrieveIdentityAsStringTM()

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

Charlie Poole — 2012-05-17T15:11:33

Hi Marvin,

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 4:45 AM, MarvinToll.com <MarvinToll< at >gtcgroup.com> wrote:

It could be, provided that the relevant parts of the framework are (1)
user-accessible
and (2) designed to be inherited from.

As a first cut at defining "trivial" in this context, I would suggest:

1) The user does not need to modify any parts of the framework, just
extend them.

2) The user does not need to extend parts of the framework that are not normally
  used in tests.

In the case of NUnit, for example, the portion normally used in tests comprises
about 10% of the code base (off the top of my head). So all desired syntax
recognition and handling would need to be (re)located in that portion of code.
I don't consider it "trivial" to develop an NUnit addin, which is what
you must now
do to define a new type of fixture. It would be trivial, if you could
do it by extending
the TestFixture attribute. For JUnit, the names are different, but the
idea is the same.

3) The extension technology is well-known to most u

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

MarvinToll.com — 2012-05-17T12:26:49

A trivial thought occurring during my daily ten-mile bike ride yesterday...

It was 26 years (1959 - 1985) for COBOL to stabilize with the release of COBOL 85.

Oracle has mapped a release schedule of Java through 2021 with JDK 12... Precisely 26 years (since 1995).

_Marvin

* Being unaware if Martin Fowler has provided a definition of "stable" software I'm using my own... http://wp.me/P1FU3L-cl 
--- In extremeprogramming< at >yahoogroups.com, "JeffGrigg" <jeffreytoddgrigg< at >...> wrote:

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

MarvinToll.com — 2012-05-17T11:45:14

This sounds like inheritance to me.

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

George Dinwiddie — 2012-05-17T08:32:15

Charlie,

On 5/16/12 6:10 PM, Charlie Poole wrote:

Exactly right, in my opinion.

  - George

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

JeffGrigg — 2012-05-16T20:11:44

In the Java world, we wish we had LINQ.  And Lambdas.  But some of that is more convenience than substance.  We've had anonymous inner classes in Java for some time; aside from the really cluttered and inconvenient syntax, they work mostly like lambdas.

I'm not expecting much of a "sea change" to come from the Java enhancements mentioned.  Sure, they'll be nice.  But did LINQ and PLINKQ turn the .NET community into a multi-processing paradise?  [Hardly.]

I'm using the Gosu language heavily.  And it isn't the only language on the JVM that already provides lambdas and bulk processing methods on collections.  Such things are very convenient, and they improve productivity.

But we will need more than that to make good use of the multi-core hardware that is being delivered already.


OpenJDK
"JEP 107: Bulk Data Operations for Collections"
http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/107


--- "MarvinToll.com" <MarvinToll< at >...> wrote:

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

Charlie Poole — 2012-05-16T16:10:06

Hi George,

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 7:46 AM, George Dinwiddie
<lists< at >idiacomputing.com> wrote:

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have personal habits and idiosyncracies,
so long as those things needing to be standardized across a team get
standardized. Higher levels of standardization (company, community)
are of secondary benefit IMO.

Ideally, I'd want a test framework that allows the team to trivially create a
syntactic overlay that meets their own needs. This seems like a workable
goal and a better one than trying to come up with the syntax that beats
all others, for all purposes.

Charlie

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

George Dinwiddie — 2012-05-16T14:46:20

Charlie,

On 5/16/12 2:07 AM, Charlie Poole wrote:

Yes, that. While it didn't say "should," it seemed more natural and 
convenient to use those matchers after using rspec for awhile. But I've 
been slow to pick up Hamcrest in Java for some reason. I guess I just 
haven't done enough to make it worth changing habits.

George

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

MarvinToll.com — 2012-05-16T12:03:14

Lambdas are available with Java 8 - ( http://jdk8.java.net/lambda/ )

Using a (very) broad brush for the Java world... we have seen with the last three releases a complete API for multi-core (concurrent) processing and now the emphasis has shifted to providing a useful subset of functional programming capabilities.

As an aside, Java 10 (2017) may become fully OO... that is, no primitives. ( http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2012/120315-oracle-s-java-roadmap.html )

--- In extremeprogramming< at >yahoogroups.com, Charlie Poole <charliepoole< at >...> wrote:

Re: TDD as a "proof"... or not?

JeffGrigg — 2012-05-16T09:18:13

I've always had a hard time holding up my end of a coherent conversation at 5am EST.  ;->


[And, quite ironically, I've just checked the clocks:  It just happens to be right after 5am EST right now!]

Re: Facts for incremental value of BDD? (Beyond TDD)

extremeprogrammer — 2012-05-16T07:26:24

"xUnit Patterns" means "Patterns for Using xUnit", not "Using xUnit to Test Patterns"

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

Charlie Poole — 2012-05-16T01:39:35

Hi Ron,

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 5:30 PM, RonJeffries <ronjeffries< at >acm.org> wrote:

That's why it's good to have a choice of tools or for a tool like
NUnit to give a choice of syntaxes. As I have said before, I didn't
implement the NUnit fluent syntax because I liked it, but because some
folks wanted it. I did learn to like it in the end though.

In practice, I find that only a small percentage of asserts call for a
complex syntax but that a larger group does benefit from the ability
to add modifiers like '.IgnoreCase' to the comparison being made.

The 'coming thing' in the .NET world seems to be replacing all this
extra syntax with use of lambdas, allowing C# programmers to write
their constraints in C#, VBers in VB, etc.

Charlie

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

RonJeffries — 2012-05-16T00:30:32

Hi Charlie,

On May 15, 2012, at 8:07 PM, Charlie Poole wrote:



I confess that I don't like it either, and for the same reason I don't like most of the given when thingies: I can't read them easily as programming statements. The fact that they are like English doesn't help me. They aren't English, they don't have its flexibility, and they're hard to read as programming.

I'm old-fashioned, I guess. I'm perfectly happy with assertEquals etc.

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy. -- Paul Graham



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Re: Learning, continuity and the need for a enduring professional volcabulary

Charlie Poole — 2012-05-16T00:07:51

Hi George,


My first intro to BDD was in the days of jBehave. The person explaining it
to me told me my personal view of testing was fatally flawed because I didn't
talk about 'should'. It still rankles, probably more than I should let it, and
may keep me from seeing the good in the movement - although I already
pointed out what I see as important contributions it has made.

'nuff said 'bout that I think.

I'm interested in your reference to the 'rspec-ish' NUnit syntax. I'm assuming
you mean Assert.That(...) together with the various constraints. When I first
wrote it back in 2007, my main influences were Joe Walnes assertThat
libary, which later became Hamcrest and the syntax used in NMock2 for
matching arguments to methods. It doesn't seem to be a syntax that most
BDD folks like, although there are other syntaxes on top of NUnit that do
implement the context/specification and given/when/then syntaxes.

Charlie

Re: Facts for incremental value of BDD? (Beyond TDD)

PAUL — 2012-05-15T23:18:50

Hi George, 
--- In extremeprogramming< at >yahoogroups.com, George Dinwiddie <lists< at >...> wrote:

Thanks for the book recommendations. I've visited Goyko's website and thought yes!  I must get his book. I'm not anti-BDD. I use BDD by choice when it comes to customer tests, and I am indifferent, BDD or TDD, when it comes to unit tests. 

About Meilir, Page-Jones, it's the one that classifies the different sorts of coupling and cohesion. You know, stamp coupling, control coupling, temporal cohesion, etc. It has lots of structure (Jackson) chart diagrams in it. The thing that stuck in my head is the explanation of afferent and efferent coupling as data flows through a procedural program. Sorry I can't check for the examples you mention because all my books are in storage right now :( but I hope this is enough to trigger your memory.

Take care,

Paul.

Re: TDD as a "proof"... or not?

MarvinToll.com — 2012-05-15T21:09:10

Alright... I'll answer these question and then I'll shut-up about this.

--- In extremeprogramming< at >yahoogroups.com, "MarvinToll.com" <MarvinToll< at >...> wrote:

The effort invested in establishing, communicating and providing a reference application for patterns (as a starting point) was an explicit investment to encourage voluntary collaboration across four continents.  Ford Motor Company does NOT mandate or measure or verify if anyone uses the patterns offered.


The drammatic negative impact of distributed development cries-out for a compensating solution... however imperfect. 
 

I have found enormous personal satisfaction in being able to collaborate globally with a development community grounded in a consistent architectural and design starting point.
 

As a musician (and former public school band director) it is counter-intuitive to me that learning patterns can damage anything, especially creativity - since patterns are the basis for teaching and learning (initial or rudimentary) musical skills.  And e

Re: Re: Facts for incremental value of BDD? (Beyond TDD)

George Dinwiddie — 2012-05-15T20:19:11

Paul,

On 5/15/12 9:39 PM, George Dinwiddie wrote:

You might also be interested in ATDD By Example (http://amzn.to/Kdkyt3) 
by Markus Gartner, due out in July. I've not read the final text of this 
book, but I can recommend it from the draft I read. It seems like just 
the book you're asking for.

  - George