Why do we still do it the waterwall way?

Everybody knows that the waterfall way of developing software is very risky. You spend a lot of time writing requierements documents, and then a lot of time programming, and then you get a lot of software to a testing phase... and then you show a lot of software to your users...

In many cases, that leads to a lot of misunderstandings on the requiremetns documents, a lot of bugs in your software and unsattisfied users 'cause they got something they didn't ask for.

I just want to ask myself and maybe make you think about it. Maybe it works for you! Maybe not, and your current stress tells you that. Alberto Gutierrez says on this post:

Waterfall only works if you follow all of its steps and if you don’t make any change to the specifications when you start coding, when a waterfall project fails, most of the times is not because waterfall is wrong but because waterfall doesn’t adapt to the type of software they want to build, Waterfall doesn’t work with software that evolves while it’s been built.

Maybe you only develop this type of projects: everything is sequential and there's never surprises on the way. Most of us don't. So, maybe you'll like to read a little more and examine how are you developing software... as an engineering process or as a craftmanship? Check http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2009/07/23/software-development-engineering-or-craftmanship/.

Just one final thought: "Waterfall" is called that way because rivers never flow backwards... contrary to softwre development.

Thanks for reading!

Don't you love Continuous Integration?

Done right, Continuous integration (CI) can make your software development efforts to be more fun and enjoyable. Some bassic thought we should keep in mind about it:

• Avoid any guess work by using an authoritative version control repository. Don't leave anything to the mind of any person. They may not be with us tomorrow.
• Stop doing tedious tasks manually (stop wasting time)... Instead, automate, automate and automate all you can. Automate compilating, testing, code inspections and installers creation.
• Think in deploy since the first day.
• Be sure to have trustworthy and frequent feedback about your code base.

But also! Don't forget the human touch of manual testing. After all the code has being compiled, tested, inspected and deployed automatically, use the software as a real user will do. Check the layout, images and the stuff that real users will pay attention to.

I've being reading a lot about CI lately, so, I just wanted to make a brief about what I should keep in mind while designing a new CI environment.

Finally, you may want to take a look at this funny but clear video about CI. Got any comments?

New book! The art of unit testing

Hi, I just read the post from Roy Osherove where he anounces that his book "The art of UNit testing" is published and you can purchase it on PDF or print book.

He says that he wished he could haave had this book when he started writing his firts tests. When Roy published his first chapter on PDF for free I gladly downloaded it and have used it to start teaching developers on what unit testing is. So, I am sure his book is really useful for anyone who likes unit tests or works with Test Driven Development.

Wanna give it a try? I will!

Check this brief from http://www.manning.com/osherove/ where you can buy it:

Unit testing, done right, can mean the diff erence between a failed project and a successful one, between a maintainable code base and a code base that no one dares touch, and between getting home at 2 AM or getting home in time for dinner, even before a release deadline.

The Art of Unit Testing builds on top of what's already been written about this important topic. It guides you step by step from simple tests to tests that are maintainable, readable, and trustworthy. It covers advanced subjects like mocks, stubs, and frameworks such as Typemock Isolator and Rhino Mocks. And you'll learn about advanced test patterns and organization, working with legacy code and even untestable code. The book discusses tools you need when testing databases and other technologies. It's written for .NET developers but others will also benefit from this book.

You can also preorder it on Amazon.com.

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Unit Testing in VB.NET – with Typemock Isolator (with a free license offer)

Programming Visual Basic applications?

Typemock have released a new version of their unit testing tool, Typemock Isolator 5.2. 
This version includes a new friendly VB.NET API which makes Isolator the best Isolation tool for unit testing A Visual Basic (VB) .NET application.

Isolator now allows unit testing in VB or C# for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such asSharePoint, ASP.NET MVC, partial support for Silverlight, WPF, LINQ, WF, Entity Framework, WCF unit testing and more.

Note that the first 25 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Full Isolator license (worth $139). If you post this in a VB.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 25 submit) during the first week of this announcement.

Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

_

I'm giving a try to Online / Offsite backups

When my sister's Macbook harddrive crashed a year ago, we learned the leason. Backups are vital! So, we bought an external harddrive and upgraded to Mac OSX Leopard, that has Timemachine built-in (an in-site backup solution from Apple). Timemachine is cool, but what happens if my backup drive crashes too? Now, I want to try-out an off-site solution.

Now Im giving it a try to Mozy. Mozy has a free account type that lets you use 2GB for backups. Its cool since it runs on my Mac and I configured it to backup every night. Since I "only" have 2GB of online storage, I'm using it just for my personal pictures (got 1.6 GB already only in pictures from 2007 and 2008!).

It runs unattended each night and it feels nice having my data on a server (or servers) somewhere in the world. If my Mac's harddrive crashes some day, I'll have my backup Harddrive, and if that crashes too (hey, disasters happen!), I can have my Mozy backup ready for restoring. The unlimited space account is just $5 per month, and I think that's a good deal.

If you want to be nice to me giving me 256MB of free storage on Mozy, please, click on the next link and subscribe to Mozy:

https://mozy.com/?ref=M7G7DF

On your first backup, I'll be given my free additional storage! Thanks if you want to do that!

30GB Zunes Failing worldwide!

Wow, just read some posts stating that Mirosofts Zunes (30GB HDD model) are failing all over the world... It seems that they are rebooting by themselves and then freezing. How weird is that?

Sorry for my friends who own a Zune :-) No cure yet...
And for making things worse, Microsofts support lines aren't open today! What can I say? Get a Mac :-)

What will happen this New Year switch from 2008 to 2009? Better be far from a Zune!

And what do you think will bring New Year for you? Are you sure you will be alive the whole year? Please visit www.goodpersontest.com

Bye!