Tue, 22 Feb 2005

Next Big Thing: Craftsmanship

"I, for one, hope there isn't a next big thing. Or rather, I hope the next big thing is the big thing that we've needed for the last thirty years and haven't had the guts to actually say. I hope the next big thing is professionalism. Perhaps a better word would be Craftsmanship."

[/links] permanent link

Sun, 20 Feb 2005

Emphasize Learning

"At the rate that content and knowledge are developed today, I think we must emphasize the process of learning, rather than content delivery."

"In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students -- and adults -- become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society that emphasizes learning instead of teaching." p. 100

[/links] permanent link

Sat, 19 Feb 2005

The Quest of the Apprentice

Having no formal training in computer science, or anything close to it, like say, math, physics, or electrical engineering, I was at a loss for how I was ever going to get ahead in the world of programming. The concept of craftsmanship, though, gave me hope. It's simple: software developers are not scientists or engineers, they are craftsmen and craftswomen...um, craftsfolk. Regardless of whether that is true for you, it is true for me. Because dude, I am not, nor will I ever be, a scientist or an engineer. But I could be a craftsman.

The fundamental learning situation is one in which a person learns by helping someone who really knows what he is doing. --A Pattern Language, p. 413

[/craftsmanship] permanent link

Wed, 16 Feb 2005

The Journey of a Blog Post

StickyMinds asked me to provide them with a head shot and a bio. As I was looking at the other columnists for the site, I quicky became aware of my relative lack of experience. My first instict was to get sarcastic...

Dave Hoover has been developing software for 15 minutes. He used to have a respectable job as a family therapist. Dave still wonders how he got here.

Look for more blog posts under the general category of craftsmanship. I'm going to start by focusing on the concepts of beginner's mind, humility, and the search for a master craftsman. If you're a blogger, blog on those topics so I can steal your ideas. Or at least link to them. ;-)

[/craftsmanship] permanent link

Sun, 13 Feb 2005

Unfavourable Conditions

"If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come." p. 60

[/learning] permanent link

Fri, 11 Feb 2005

Test interactions, Not state

"This is evidence of a serious misunderstanding of how you should be writing tests: they should be based on behaviour and function.. not state. An object’s state is simply an implementation detail, and should not be exposed to, or relied upon by, other objects. Guess what.. that means no getters & setters, either. But that’s a discussion for another time."

[/links] permanent link

Thu, 10 Feb 2005

How to Stifle Creativity

"If you want to stifle participation and creativity focus on threats obligations and punishments in your communications with others. Make sure they are much more afraid of doing the wrong thing than they are of eager to do the right thing."

[/links] permanent link

Mon, 07 Feb 2005

Quotes Manager Project -- Day 13

As I explore my solution, I see that subsequent calls to add a new quote actually append the entire document to the previous document. That's obviously not what I want.

Ah, solved the problem I found yesterday. The hasText method in PersonPanel was messed up. Just an annoying firstName.getText() != "" vs. !"".equals(firstName.getText()) issue. I didn't think I would need to write a test for something that trivial. Stupid mistake.

Now for the second problem... Before the XML output is generated from the Document, I need to somehow empty the file. Not sure how to do that off the top of my head with only an OutputStream. Exploring...grrr, can't do it. I really don't want XmlQuoteListener to have to use files becauses that makes the testing harder.

I'm feeling stuck, so I'll write a failing test...

    public void testShouldWriteDocumentToFileWhenUpdatedMultipleTimes() throws Exception {
        Document document = parseStub();

        ByteArrayOutputStream output = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        QuoteListener listener = new XmlQuoteListener(document, output);

        assertEquals("", output.toString());

        listener.update();
        listener.update();

        String expectedOutput = documentToText(document);
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, output.toString());
    }

How about a factory to provide OutputStreams? That way we could get a new one with every call to update...

    public void testShouldWriteDocumentToFileWhenUpdatedMultipleTimes() throws Exception {
        Document document = parseStub();

        ByteArrayOutputStream output = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

        Mock factory = mock(OutputFactory.class);
        OutputStream ignored = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        factory.expects(atLeastOnce()).method("newOutput")
               .will(onConsecutiveCalls(returnValue(ignored), returnValue(output)));

        QuoteListener listener = new XmlQuoteListener(document, (OutputFactory) factory.proxy());

        assertEquals("", output.toString());

        listener.update();
        listener.update();

        String expectedOutput = documentToText(document);
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, output.toString());
    }

public class XmlQuoteListener implements QuoteListener {
    private final Document document;
    private final OutputFactory factory;

    public XmlQuoteListener(Document document, OutputFactory factory) {
        this.document = document;
        this.factory = factory;
    }

    public void update() {
        try {
            Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
            Source source = new DOMSource(document);
            Result result = new StreamResult(factory.newOutput());
            transformer.transform(source, result);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        JFrame frame = new JFrame(TITLE);

        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();

        final String xmlFile = "play.xml";
        Document document = builder.parse(xmlFile);

        QuoteListener listener = new XmlQuoteListener(document, new OutputFactory() {
            public OutputStream newOutput() throws IOException {
                return new FileOutputStream(xmlFile);
            }
        });

        QuoteManager manager = new XmlQuoteManager(document);
        manager.addListener(listener);

        QuoteManagerPanel quoterManager = new QuoteManagerPanel(manager);
        frame.getContentPane().add(quoterManager);

        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

So let's look back at the initial goals and see where we are...

• I want to change the quotes page to be sorted by quoter author. DONE. There should be a list of all the quoters at the top. NOT DONE. Their names should link down to their quotes on the page below. NOT DONE.
• I want to use a simple Swing application to manage the quotes. FIRST RELEASE: ADD QUOTE
• The Swing app will store the quotes in XML. DONE. The app will have the ability to transform this XML into HTML via XSLT. NOT DONE.

If anyone is interested, I'll post the final source code when I'm finished.

[/projects/quotes] permanent link

Thu, 03 Feb 2005

Screw the A-List

I learned this lesson while I was at AYE. I have Alan to thank for my time there. And today I'm thanking Alan again for posting this snippet from The Age:

"Australian managers are good at making clear to men that any worker who modifies his schedule to accommodate new fatherhood will be struck off the A-list for the crime of being inadequately 'serious'."

[/links] permanent link

Wed, 02 Feb 2005

More on Ignorance

"At work, it's not well seen to voluntarily uncover whole zones of our own ignorance."

Taking this lesson with me from one career into another has served me well. I've actually grown attached to feeling ignorant on a daily basis, it lets me know I'm in the right place.

"Everybody on an XP team should feel like an idiot regularly." --Extreme Programming Applied: Playing to Win, p. 62, Ken Auer and Roy Miller

[/links] permanent link

Quotes Manager Project -- Day 12

I am almost finished with the task of adding a quote to an XML file. I have the GUI. I have the class that updates the XML Document. Now what I need is a class that loads the file into a Document and writes the updated Document back to the file.

But how does this class interact with XmlQuoteManager? It should probably be listening for calls to XmlQuoteManager.newQuote in order to know when to write to the file. Maybe I'll just start with that...

    public void testShouldInformListenerOnCallsToNewQuote() throws Exception {
        Mock listener = mock(QuoteListener.class);
        listener.expects(once()).method("update");

        QuoteManager manager = new XmlQuoteManager(parseStub());
        manager.addListener((QuoteListener) listener.proxy());
        manager.newQuote(new Quote("ingored", new Person("joe", "schmoe")));
    }

public class XmlQuoteManager implements QuoteManager {
    private final Document document;
    private final Collection<QuoteListener> listeners = new HashSet<QuoteListener>();

    public XmlQuoteManager(Document document) {
        this.document = document;
    }

    public void newQuote(Quote quote) {
        Node quoteNode = document.createElement("quote");

        quoteNode.appendChild( createTextNode(quote) );

        if (quote.source != NO_SOURCE)
            quoteNode.appendChild( createSourceNode(quote) );

        for (Person author : quote.authors)
            quoteNode.appendChild( createPersonNode(author, "author") );

        if (quote.quoter != NOBODY)
            quoteNode.appendChild( createPersonNode(quote.quoter, "quoter") );

        document.getDocumentElement().appendChild( quoteNode );

        for (QuoteListener listener : listeners)
            listener.update();
    }

    public void addListener(QuoteListener quoteListener) {
        listeners.add(quoteListener);
    }

    ...
}

At this point I could actually code the rest up in the main method. I think I'll do that just to see everything in action...

package com.redsquirrel.quotes.gui;

import com.redsquirrel.quotes.xml.QuoteListener;
import com.redsquirrel.quotes.xml.XmlQuoteManager;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.Result;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;

public class MAIN {
    private static final String TITLE = "Quote QuoteManager";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        JFrame frame = new JFrame(TITLE);

        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();

        final String xmlFile = "play.xml";
        final Document document = builder.parse(xmlFile);

        QuoteManager manager = new XmlQuoteManager(document);
        manager.addListener(new QuoteListener() {
            public void update() {
                try {
                    Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
                    Source source = new DOMSource(document);
                    Result result = new StreamResult(new FileOutputStream(xmlFile));
                    transformer.transform(source, result);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });

        QuoteManagerPanel quoterManager = new QuoteManagerPanel(manager);
        frame.getContentPane().add(quoterManager);

        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }
}

Starting with an empty test, I pause for a moment to consider what this listener will need in order to do its work... Oh, that's easy, just check for which variables had to be declared final in the main method...the file name and the Document. But I don't want to use a file name, I'd rather stick with streams. So I'll do it like this...

package com.redsquirrel.com.quotes.xml;

import org.jmock.MockObjectTestCase;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import com.redsquirrel.quotes.xml.QuoteListener;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;

public class XmlQuoteListenerTest extends MockObjectTestCase {
    public void testShouldWriteDocumentToFileWhenUpdated() throws Exception {
        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document document = builder.parse("stub.xml");

        ByteArrayOutputStream output = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        QuoteListener listener = new XmlQuoteListener(document, output);
    }
}

package com.redsquirrel.com.quotes.xml;

import com.redsquirrel.quotes.xml.QuoteListener;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;

import java.io.OutputStream;

public class XmlQuoteListener implements QuoteListener {
    public XmlQuoteListener(Document document, OutputStream output) {
    }

    public void update() {
    }
}

    public void testShouldWriteDocumentToFileWhenUpdated() throws Exception {
        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Document document = builder.parse("stub.xml");

        ByteArrayOutputStream output = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        QuoteListener listener = new XmlQuoteListener(document, output);

        assertEquals("", output.toString());

        listener.update();

        String expectedOutput = documentToText(document);
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, output.toString());
    }

public class XmlQuoteListener implements QuoteListener {
    private final Document document;
    private final OutputStream output;

    public XmlQuoteListener(Document document, OutputStream output) {
        this.document = document;
        this.output = output;
    }

    public void update() {
        try {
            Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
            Source source = new DOMSource(document);
            Result result = new StreamResult(output);
            transformer.transform(source, result);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

[/projects/quotes] permanent link