Manage It!

Manage It!: "Your project can't fail. That's a lot of pressure on you, and yet you don't want to buy into any one specific process, methodology, or lifecycle.

Your project is different. It doesn't fit into those neat descriptions.

Manage It! will show you how to beg, borrow, and steal from the best methodologies to fit your particular project. It will help you find what works best for you and not for some mythological project that doesn't even exist."

Dr. Dobb's | Pragmatic Software Testing | June 28, 2007

Dr. Dobb's | Pragmatic Software Testing | June 28, 2007: "There are a number of philosophies that drive testers these days. Do you test based upon a catalog of risks, automated everything in unit tests, employ a model? In the risk-based camp, few are authors are more influential or prolific as Rex Black. In his new book, Pragmatic Software Testing: Becoming an Effective and Efficient Test Professional, Black explains his approach to risk-based testing and the techniques needed to accomplish it."

Coding Horror: Supporting Open Source Projects in the Microsoft Ecosystem

Coding Horror: Supporting Open Source Projects in the Microsoft Ecosystem: "In my company's commercial application we depend upon DotNetNuke, Nant, log4net, NUnit and other open source tools. Those open source projects help support us. In fact, without DNN, we would probably be out of business because our developments costs would be too high. In turn, my company helps support Microsoft through the purchase of licenses and MSDN subscriptions. Yet Microsoft does not complete the circle by financially supporting any of those open source projects."

Two Fixes for Bad Backs - TIME

Two Fixes for Bad Backs - TIME: "In your own hands exercises to stretch and strengthen, plus rest and anti-inflammatories may fix a bad back, without having to go under the knife."

An Earth Without People -- [ environment ]: Scientific American

An Earth Without People -- [ environment ]: Scientific American: "It’s a common fantasy to imagine that you’re the last person left alive on earth. But what if all human beings were suddenly whisked off the planet? That premise is the starting point for The World without Us, a new book by science writer Alan Weisman, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Arizona. In this extended thought experiment, Weisman does not specify exactly what finishes off Homo sapiens; instead he simply assumes the abrupt disappearance of our species and projects the sequence of events that would most likely occur in the years, decades and centuries afterward."

How to Write a Software Specification

How to Write a Software Specification: "This document provides a format or checklist for writing a technical specification, particularly for computer software, although the format may be suitable for any number of similar uses.

The material presented here can be of help to both the software contractor and his or her client. It is not technical, but is sufficiently precise to aid a common understanding between client and contractor.

The specification is divided into two parts.

* Part I - Concepts and requirements
* Part II - Methods and details of implementation"

Painless Functional Specifications - Part 2: What's a Spec? - Joel on Software

Painless Functional Specifications - Part 2: What's a Spec? - Joel on Software: "This series of articles is about functional specifications, not technical specifications. People get these mixed up. I don't know if there's any standard terminology, but here's what I mean when I use these terms.

1. A functional specification describes how a product will work entirely from the user's perspective. It doesn't care how the thing is implemented. It talks about features. It specifies screens, menus, dialogs, and so on.
2. A technical specification describes the internal implementation of the program. It talks about data structures, relational database models, choice of programming languages and tools, algorithms, etc."

Painless Functional Specifications - Part 1: Why Bother? - Joel on Software

Painless Functional Specifications - Part 1: Why Bother? - Joel on Software: "The most important function of a spec is to design the program. Even if you are working on code all by yourself, and you write a spec solely for your own benefit, the act of writing the spec -- describing how the program works in minute detail -- will force you to actually design the program."

Painless Software Schedules - Joel on Software

Painless Software Schedules - Joel on Software: "Use Microsoft Excel. Don't use anything fancy like Microsoft Project. The trouble with Microsoft Project is that it assumes that you want to spend a lot of time worrying about dependencies. A dependency is when you have two tasks, one of which must be completed before the next one can begin. I've found that with software, the dependencies are so obvious that it's just not worth the effort to formally keep track of them."

Kanban in Action

Kanban in Action: "Earlier when I described my approach to managing and leading software engineering at Corbis, I mentioned that I was introducing a kanban system for our sustaining engineering activity. Since we introduced it, we've released new versions of our IT systems and business application software twice per month. However, sustaining doesn't run on a traditional agile two week iteration (or sprint) type system. It uses a kanban system to pipeline change requests (CRs). When a CR is complete it sits in the Release Ready state until a scheduled release happens on every second Wednesday."

InfoQ: Incremental Software Development without Iterations

InfoQ: Incremental Software Development without Iterations: "David Anderson described how his team is using a kanban system for their sustaining engineering (maintenance and bug fixing) activities. Iterations have been dropped although software is still released every two weeks. Work is scheduled, monitored, and run via a 'kanban board' and daily stand-up meetings. "

Códice Software: Linus Torvalds on GIT and SCM

Códice Software: Linus Torvalds on GIT and SCM: "I just finished watching the speech Linus Torvalds gave some days ago at Google, basically talking about GIT and Source Control Management. He has really strong opinions but I think the video is really worth watching.

To be honest I was very shocked by some of the statements he made, like the following:

• Subversion has been the most pointless project ever started. Well, I'm not a big Subversion fan either, but I find it a bit rude.
  
• Subversion used to say CVS done right: with that slogan there is nowhere
  you can go. There is no way to do cvs right. No comments.
  
• If you like using cvs, you should be in some kind of mental institution or
  somewhere else. Again I think he is playing the showman role...
  
• Get rid of perforce, it is sad, but it is so, so true.... No comments."
  

Dr. Dobb's | Dynamic Programming In Action | June 2, 2007

Dr. Dobb's Dynamic Programming In Action June 2, 2007: "A problem-solving technique a LISP programmer learns is divide-and-conquerA problem-solving technique a LISP programmer learns is divide-and-conquer"

Dr. Dobb's | The Power of LISP for C Programmers | June 3, 2007

Dr. Dobb's The Power of LISP for C Programmers June 3, 2007: "The two best-known LISP properties are symbolic processing and list processing. Both concepts can be developed in other languages with a set of generic functions or procedures that operate on appropriate data structures and by developing a proper mental attitude concerning the abstraction.
In this article, I address generic list-processing procedures in C. The same concepts can be adapted for other high-level languages and assembly language. "

Network Connections folder empty

Network Connections folder empty: This problem afflicted my machine. Following is a fix:

"Fix
Start, Run. cmd.exe

regsvr32 netshell.dll
regsvr32 netcfgx.dll
regsvr32 netman.dll

Hitting enter after each one. That should do it.
The dynamic libraries are hashed, likely due to some 'Free' spyware search or crap program.
Enjoy!"