Tag Archives: agile

Weekly linkage

This week’s internet cruising:

  • How to keep someone with you forever – "You create a sick system." I wanted to cry when I read this.
  • Looking Back — Discord&Rhyme – "To be successful at bootstrapping, you have to cut every feature except those you think are absolutely necessary. Then you cut some that you thought that you absolutely had to have. You compromise your design because you need to get the product to market. You ignore automated testing and documentation because your code is too unstable to be held back by rigorous processes."
  • Launching beta, or “How to decide when and where to cut corners” –
  • 200+ Seamless Patterns Perfect for Website Backgrounds – Pretty! They're a bit busy, but I think they could be used tastefully.
  • Statement by Apple on App Store Review Guidelines – Courtesy of Greg. Apple seems to be getting off their high horse with regards to development tools. I'm not sure yet if this means I'll be springing for Plants vs. Zombies on the iPhone.
  • These Dance Moves Are Irresistible – ScienceNOW – Courtesy of Michael. "The most important factor to the women was how much the man moved his head, neck, and torso, the researchers will report online tomorrow in Biology Letters." This is a really cool-sounding study. Thinking about the types of dancing I like to watch and see done well–hip-hop, even bellydance–I like fancy foot-work, but tight (pop and lock) torso and head movements do draw my eye more. Flailing arms are just hilarious.
  • Action Not Words: The Difference Between Talkers and Doers – Wonderfully (and miserably) timely for me. The last few weeks for me have been very slothful (as evidenced by the lack of posts here), with correspondence and projects piling up while I squander my time. I've taken to returning to my 3 Most Important Things per day. If I get nothing else done in a day, I will get whatever those three things are done. I know from experience that having the 3 MITs builds momentum so that I'll rarely only ever get those three things done.
  • We’re Not Paid To Write Code – This is a really well-written article on how we're paid to deliver a product, not sling code. This is a hard-won lesson for every comp sci major worth their weight I've ever met in their first 2 years out of college, myself included. I'm still not great at balancing quality vs. out-the-doorness on personal projects, but I've learned a lot more about what's acceptable business-wise.

“Pursuit” posted and character sheet news

Chapter 9 of Witches, “Pursuit” is live. Actually, it went live yesterday, I just neglected to post here for it. I was busy having my ass handed to me by some type of hydra. Damn D & D 4e hydras. It had seven heads by the end.

“But how do we get you out of here without anyone noticing?” Robert asked absently. Satisfied that her hand was fine, he pulled his hands back out of the attached gloves.

Hardi tamped down a grin of victory. “Nice and easy. You’re going to create a distraction, and we’re going to slip out.”

A small smile played on his lips as he asked, “What kind of distraction?”

No links this week. I’ve been planning hard on the Geist Character Sheet Manager, working with Greg to come up with and prioritize requirements. I’m playing around with the Agile “story” idea. It seems like a good informal way to gather reqs, though I’ve done most of the generation of the ideas. Greg should really be doing the bulk of them, since he’s a prime example of a user on both the game manager and character sheet user sides. He’s been great about helping come up with cases that fit World of Darkness games I don’t play and giving specific examples of things I have to account for.

I’ve got a preliminary feature set for my first iteration of the game manager side, and boy, did it break my proposed timeline. Depending on what my priority cut-off is, it may be late September to mid-October before it’s ready as an alpha. Some things may turn out to be simpler to implement than I’m currently estimate. For instance, either in this iteration or the next, I’ll need to write a rules system to allow the game manager to put in everything from prerequisites to conditional dot cost changes. I’m looking forward to designing and implementing that.

And so I keep moving.

Unit testing — staring at a blank screen

2 Comments

For all the brouhaha about unit testing and Test Driven Development, I have yet to find a guide — book, website, anything — that actually discusses how to write unit tests.

There are nUnit-specific articles that talk about the foibles of each and how to have testing run constantly and so on and so forth, but how do I know how to compose a unit test? How low-level and nitty-gritty do tests need to be so that they’re useful without making me want to stab myself in the eye from maintenance? What’s the best way to test controllers vs. models?

Maybe I’m just not cool enough with Uncle Google to find what I’m looking for, and I certainly don’t mind experimentation, but I’d be interested in hearing how the “experts” approach TDD.