Thoughts of a Thinking Craftsman

Comparison of Emberjs vs Knockoutjs

2012-01-26T11:22:00.000+05:30

Recently I am experimenting with two Javascript MVC frameworks. Emberjs and Knockoutjs. Mainly to select the framework for the new UI design of BootStrapToday. Yesterday I wrote a blog article about the experiences of using Emberjs and Knockoutjs with Django web framework. Emberjs vs Knockoujs for Django projects

Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-13T22:35:00.000+05:30

Dennis Ritchie (Creator of C and key developer of unix and author of book K&R C) passed away. It seems Oct 2011 is bad for people of computer science. World has lost another revolutionary thinker. Dennis Ritchie - RIP. We, programmer are forever in your debt. Dennis Ritchie Wikipedia page Herb Sutter on Dennis Ritchie Development of C Programming Language by Dennis Ritchie

write small functions

2011-08-30T11:24:00.000+05:30

In my team there was a rule, that maximum function size is 25 lines. Every time when a new team member joined the group, he/she expressed that it is not possible to follow this rule every time and they will have to write longer functions. So I always told them, Ok, but then they have to convince me that there is no way to break this long function in smaller logical chunks. In my 15 years of

Insights from ‘The Design of Design’ - Part I

2011-02-12T10:23:00.000+05:30

I have good fortunate of meeting/interacting with some great software designers while working in Geometric Ltd and during last two years as independent consultant. I am always intrigued by how an expert software designer thinks and how he learns. As Sir Ken Robinson says the key skill in today's world is ‘knowing how to learn new things’. I think of myself as ‘Thinking Craftsman’ (i.e. someone

Persistent Systems and Mr. Anand Deshpande.

2010-11-09T08:23:00.003+05:30

I think in last 7-8 years Persistent Systems has grown by leaps and bounds. I always wondered what is the key to Persistent's phenomenal growth. Few months back I met Mr. Anand Deshpande (CEO of Persistent) during a CSI (Computer Society of India) event. Well, I met him for 10 min but I keenly listened when he was talking to others. I also had a chance to have some informal discussion with few

Dear C# Programmers, please use 'using' and 'IDisposable'

2010-10-13T10:20:00.001+05:30

In C++ world, RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization) is a widely accepted idiom. It used by std::auto_ptr<>, CComPtr<>, CWaitCurstor and all smart pointer implementations, streams, etc etc manage the lifetime of resources (e.g. memory, files, cursors, database connections etc). RAII ties the life time of a resource to a life time of a 'local object' (i.e. a object on stack). C++ guarantees

The Design of Design : New book from Fred Brooks

2010-10-10T09:54:00.000+05:30

Some time back I blogged about the 'Mythical Man month'. Recently I have started reading the new book from Fred Brooks.' The Design of Design'. Like Mythical Manmonth this book is also a collection of essays and it also a book where you read a chapter and then you need to think and reflect on the ideas/thoughts in the chapter and your own experiences before continuing to next one. First thing

Net banking & Security and Customer Service

2010-10-04T09:50:00.004+05:30

Few days back, I was trying to make payment using Netbanking through HDFC bank. As part of internet payment process, some security questions were asked. I wrote the wrong answer. My account got locked. Now this is a good security features. However what happened next is classic example of 'how not to treat your customer'.In many cases, when account is locked because of wrong password entry, it is

How YouTube detects copies of copyrighted material ?

2010-09-23T09:19:00.000+05:30

Coding Horror Blog of Jeff Atwood usually have very useful and well written articles. In the recent article titled 'YouTube vs. Fair Use' he talks about his experience of uploading a 90 second video from a movie as reference to a blog article. The interesting part of the article is his observations about how You Tube is able to 'detect' that this 90 sec video is from some movie (a copyrighted

Rereading Mythical Manmonth - Flowcharts and UML

2010-09-13T10:57:00.002+05:30

This is a second entry about Rereading Mythical Manmonth. You can read the first one here. When I started programming, I never used to create 'detailed flow charts' while many people (usually who are not actively coding) urged it. I did create some small flowchart to get overall picture in my mind but never detailed flowcharts. Later same thing happened with UML diagrams, I always felt little

Rereading Mythical Man month

2010-09-08T10:22:00.000+05:30

Recently I started rereading Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. The book is a collection of essays about programming and software development in general. First edition was published in 1974. I am reading the 20th Anniversary edition published in 1994. So the one I am reading is also 16 years old. First time I read this book sometime in year 2000. At that time, I was a just a somewhat experienced

Students and Professional Software Development

2010-07-03T11:00:00.003+05:30

In May 2010, I conducted a workshop on 'Introduction to Profession Software Development' in Sir Padmapat Singhania University, Udaipur (SPSU). Previously I have conducted various introductory sessions for new joinees in Geometric Ltd (my previous employer). In all the projects that I worked on, usually 50% team members were 'freshers'. While working with these fresher/new joinees, I realized that

BootstrapToday

2010-03-29T21:40:00.002+05:30

In Aug 2009, we (I, Anand and Vishwajeet) started a software company. We named our company 'Sensible Softwares Pvt. Ltd.' Our first product BootstrapToday is now officially available. BootstrapToday is a Simple and Sensible Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) software. BootstrapToday is a SaaS application. There are many budding entrepreneurs in India & around the world. We believe that they

svnplot - one year later

2010-02-13T08:59:00.000+05:30

About one year back (Dec 2008) I changed job. Between two jobs I had some free time. I wrote first version of svnplot during these 4-5 days. Then I released it as 'open source' project on Google Code. Soon many people started using it. I started getting the bug reports filed on the project page. To me, this was a indication that people are really using this project. I got bug reports from

Code Analysis and Visualization Tools

2010-01-11T10:23:00.000+05:30

Since last few years, I am studying how improve the effective of code reviews. In my experience, every organization have its own 'code review guidelines'. However, ROI of time spent on code reviews varies a tremendously. In some project groups, it works very well. While in other groups, many code review comments are of 'naming convention' related issues and not serious code problems. I developed

Installing (K)Ubuntu as guest os in Virtualbox

2009-11-01T12:50:00.000+05:30

So far I mainly used Windows machines as development machines as well at home. Recently I have started experimenting with Ubuntu linux. Hence I wanted to install Ubuntu as Guest os on VirtualBox. However I faced few problems (like when maxium screen size was set to 800x600 and it took some time to figure out how enable screen size change). Hence i wrote down the steps that worked for me. This

Implementing a Well behaved Singleton - 4

2009-08-09T19:46:00.009+05:30

In part-3 of this series, I talked about implementing singleton such that construction sequence is guaranteed and the destruction is guaranteed however the sequence in which the destruction happens is not guaranteed.Sometimes one singleton object depends on another singleton object. In such cases, the technique described in part-3 will be useful to ensure that the singleton's are constructed in

Visualizing Code Duplication in a project

2009-08-01T19:46:00.010+05:30

Treemap visualization is an excellent way to visualize the information/various metrics about the directory tree (e.g. source files directory tree). I have used treemaps for visualizing SourceMonitor metrics about entire project with excellent results. Unfortunately there are very few simple and opensource treemap visualization softwares available. There is JTreemap applet which can be use to

Thinking Craftsman Toolkit on Google code

2009-07-21T11:26:00.008+05:30

I have created a project named 'Thinking Craftsman Toolkit (TC Toolkit)' on Google code. Currently it includes three small toolsCode Duplication Detector (CDD)Code duplication detector is similar to Copy Paste Detector (CPD) or Simian. It uses Pygments Lexer to parse the source files and uses Rabin Karp algorithm to detect the duplicates. Hence it supports all languages supported by

Writing a Code Duplication Detector

2009-06-10T17:36:00.017+05:30

Now that I have started consulting on software development, I am developing a different way of analyzing code for quickly detecting code hotspots which need to addressed first. The techniques I am using are different than traditional 'static code analysis' (e.g. using tools like lint, PMD, FindBugs etc). I am using a mix of various code metrics and visualizations to detect 'anomalies'. In this

Treemap visualization of Results of 2009 General Elections of India

2009-05-23T09:39:00.003+05:30

Recently I am interested in various visualization techniques. One of the technique that I find very interesting is 'Treemaps'. While studying treemaps, I found excellent Javascript visualization library "The Javascript Information Visualization Toolkit" .Using the treemap component from TheJIT and data from Election Commision's site, I made a treemap visualization of results of 2009 general

Thinking Craftsman website

2009-05-04T07:16:00.030+05:30

As you know, I am working as Consultant and teacher/mentor in the Craft of Software Development. Now I have my website Thinking Craftsman.Why the name Thinking Craftsman ???First Software Development is still a 'Craft'. We may call it 'Software Engineer' but it is really a Craft. If you compare other engineering disciplines, software is still a much more person dependant. Quality of Code depends

Book recommendations for Software Developers

2009-04-13T09:42:00.005+05:30

As I mentioned in my previous post on 'C++ Book Recommendations', I have now published a list of books for software developers. These are the books helped me in developing my ideas about Software Development (irrespective of technlogy or programming languages)Check the list at "Book Recommendations for Software Developers"

Unusual way of Performance Optimization

2009-04-06T19:26:00.050+05:30

I have done performance optimizations in all my projects. Usually it involves selecting the appropriate data structure or algorithm, caching the calculated data to avoid recomputations etc. However, sometimes performance optimizations pose unique challenges. In this particular case, the problem involved fitting a spline surface to cloud of points. To fit the final surface, a reference spline

C/C++ Book Recommendations

2009-04-01T10:26:00.006+05:30

I have prepared a list of C/C++ books which helped me in improving my programming skills. I have put the list on my website. In few days I am planning to make two more lists. These lists are books and articles which influenced my thinking on software design and programming.List of C/C++ books (published on my website)List of books on software design and development (published on my website on 13

Comparison of VSS, CVS and SVN

2009-03-24T23:15:00.005+05:30

I have prepared a comparison among the three commonly used Version Control Systems Visual SourceSafe (VSS), CVS and Subversion.The weights and scores are based on my judgement. I think this type weight scores based comparison may help you in convincing people (e.g. your project team, colleages, senior mgmt in your company) to use Subversion.Total ScoreSubversion : 251CVS : 171Visual

Leadership

2009-03-10T08:37:00.006+05:30

I found this good list of characteristics of Leader in 'C++ Coding Standard'. Well, c++ coding standard is not a likely place for finding advice on leadership. But sometimes you find get thought gems at unlikely places. So here it isLeaders: lead by exampledon't ask anything of anyone that they wouldn't do themselvesare called on to make difficult and unpopular decisions keep the team

Portable Precompiled Headers for c/c++

2009-03-02T19:38:00.000+05:30

If you are writing cross platform application which is fairly big, then one problem you may encounter is how to reduce compilation time. (Precompiled Headers)One way to reduce the compilation time is to reduce the number of #include class for the same file. Usually we add #ifndef/#endif pair at start and end of header file to avoid problems of multiple includes. However, compiler still has to

Using Social Network Analysis with Version control data

2009-01-28T08:40:00.008+05:30

As I mentioned in the last post, am experimenting about using social network analysis (sna) on verision control data. Now with SVNPlot project, I have a way of converting the Subversion logs into sqlite database. It allows me to query the data in many different ways. I used the Rietveld repository data and did some premilinary analysis. I am not an expert on SNA but Initial results look very

Social Network Analysis and Version Control

2009-01-18T07:52:00.009+05:30

Recently I came across the concept of Social Network Analysis.Given below is small introduction of Social Network Analysis is from Orgnet siteSocial network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, web sites, and other information/knowledge processing entities. The nodes in the network are the people

SVNPlot - my first opensource project

2009-01-14T08:51:00.014+05:30

During the 1 week gap between the two jobs, I finally started an opensource project. The project is called in SVNPlot. It is inspired by the excellent StatSVN Subversion Statistics generation package.SVNPlot generates graphs similar to StatSVN. The difference is in how the graphs are generated. SVNPlot generates these graphs in two steps. First it converts the Subversion logs into a 'sqlite3

changes

2008-11-15T09:38:00.008+05:30

After 12 years in the current organization, its now time for change. I have resigned and 21 Nov is my last day in the current orgnization. I am going to join another company. I will write more details after joining.These 12 years gave me tremendous amount of exposure in various parts of organization. It was great experience. I have conducted and facilitated trainings and workshops ranging from

I am back

2007-07-02T18:29:00.019+05:30

For last 2 years, I was working on the most difficult project in my professional experience. The project was a library of intelligent algorithms for designing car exterior surfaces. We developed a new way of controling spline surfaces and many new techniques/algorithms. Last three years I was dreaming of splines, control points and matrices. Effectively, there was no free time for me, updating

Body language of the Oraganization - My Interpretations : Part 2

2004-11-20T12:01:00.001+05:30

I shall try to answer few more questions on what I will look for in a company during an interview. I could not write the blog very regular for last few months, because now I am working on most challenging project of my career.Lets look at some of the questions. How much time you have to wait in Lobby ? How much time you have to wait to hear the written test result ?How much time you have

Body Language of the Organization : My interpretations - Part 1

2004-09-09T14:26:00.001+05:30

Writing a blog entry after a month. When I wrote the last entry, I was in Munich, Germany. Now I am back in India and heavily involved in a new challenging project. Last one month was hectic and I could not write anything.As I promised, this time I am going to give my interpretations of the Body Language Observations. Remember these are 'my interpretation'. You may not agree with those

Body language of the Oraganization

2004-07-28T18:02:00.001+05:30

The book 'Art of Innovation' has a interesting chapter on Body Language of Company. As you know verbal communication and communication from your Body Language can be different. Your posture and actions convey more about your thoughts than what you are speaking. In similar fashion, organizations also have Body Language the Verbal/Written communication from Organization may say 'employees are our

Implementing a Well behaved Singleton - 3

2004-07-12T19:51:00.002+05:30

Last time I showed an singleton implementation where 'User has to manage the destruction of Singleton object'. (the part-2 is here). In this part, lets see how to improve on that.class FooSingleton{ public: ~FooSingleton(void); static FooSingleton& GetFooObj(void); private : FooSingleton(void); private : int m_var;};FooSingleton&FooSingleton::GetFooObj(void){ static FooSingleton

From Ward Cunningham's interview : Simplicity in programming

2004-07-06T17:49:00.000+05:30

Someone says, "You should always check your arguments to see if they're in range." Someone else says, "Half the statements in this program are checking arguments that are intrinsically in range." Have they made the program better or worse? No, I think they've made it worse. I'm not a fan of checking arguments. On the other hand, there ought to be a fail fast. If you make a mistake, the program

Implementing a Well behaved Singleton - 2

2004-06-22T21:27:00.000+05:30

In the second part of this series, Lets look at a simple singleton implementation and see how these questions affect the implementation. class FooSingleton { public : FooSingleton(void); ~FooSingleton(void); static FooSingleton* GetFooObj(void); private : int m_var; }; static FooSingleton g_fooSingleton; FooSingleton* FooSingleton::GetFooObj(void) { return(

Implementing a Well behaved Singleton - 1

2004-06-21T19:35:00.000+05:30

Singleton is one of the simplest design patterns. It also the one most abused. I have seen developers replace a global variable with a signleton object and argue that since its a design pattern, its good without really looking at the intent of the pattern and the effects. What do i mean by a Well Behaved Singleton ? A well behaved Singleton will have following characteristics. 1. Construction

Notion of Repeatable processes

2004-06-17T19:08:00.000+05:30

From the recent discussion on PragmaticProgrammer Mailing List: (From Mail from Andrew Hunt) Here's a side question for ya'll on the notion of repeatable process: I want a formula of how to make a hit movie. Perfectly repeatable, with no consideration of the talent involved. Just turn the crank and rely on the process to work. Now replace the 'hit movie' with Software Product/Project. I

Craft Of Programming and Mentors

2004-06-13T15:17:00.001+05:30

One thing I learned from my experiences in Software Development is 'Software Development' is not 'Computer Science'. Its not a science and its not fully an art also. Sometime back I read an article where the author called it 'Craft'. I really liked the idea. Indeed, programming is a craft and a Good Software Developer is like a Master Craftsman. As Craftsman you learn the tricks of the trade by

Trust your developers (employees) and treat them as Responsible Adults

2004-06-01T19:02:00.001+05:30

This is the first lesson I learned when I become a Manager of a development. 'Treat your Developers as Responsible Adults and Trust Them'. This simple advice, gave a me big advantage Trust and Support of the Development Team. It starts with a simple ideas. Let me give an example to clarify my point.Scenerio : An Important release of your project/product is coming up and a developer comes to you

set/get functions in class.

2004-05-19T19:05:00.001+05:30

This is actually a mail trail of a question that Ashish Khare asked me. With his permission I am putting parts of the discussion in this blog entry.The question was I am looking at a class which has 4 ints declared as private and for each one there is 1 Get and 1 Set functions which is public. When all these ints are exposed ( indirectly ) to external world, why should I declare them as

Lets create a check list

2004-05-18T18:33:00.000+05:30

Lets create a check list This is Last of the 3 ideas that I posted in 'some ideas that just don't work'. Check lists were favourite of ISO 9000 (at least the ISO 9000 implementations, that I have seen). If your code is bad, customers are cribbing, create a check list for coding errors, check list for spec documents, check list for testing, check list for code review, check list for release etc

Lets use a project metric to measure individual performance

2004-05-17T19:07:00.001+05:30

'We need to distinguish between good and bad developers and promote good developers. We need an objective way to do this. We want to tie the compensation for developer to its performance. We need an Objective way to measure Developer Performance. 'A very nice and persuasive argument. Usually this ends with 'lets use a project metric to measure indivisual performance. Lets use bug/KLOC'. Remember

Illusion of "We need some more processes. Then everything will be alright "

2004-05-13T17:40:00.000+05:30

Lets look at why this doesnot work. First Processes have to be people Centric. Any process implementation that ignores people or ignores people instincts is doomed to failure. Especially when the company (or departments) starts thinking if you have good processes you can replace developer X with developr Y without any impact on project. THAT NEVER WORKS. Ususal one can define only 80% percent

some ideas that just don't work in software development

2004-05-12T15:52:00.000+05:30

"The definition of insanity is doing exactly what you did before all over again, but expecting different results this time.". I don't remember where I have seen this quote first but I really liked it. In last 7 years in Software development I have seen few ideas which are already tried and failed. But invaribale after some months or years some one comes up with the same these AGAIN. Again it

The Quotes I liked - Software Development

2004-05-11T15:16:00.000+05:30

1. Computer science is not the same as Software Engineering. 2. "First make it work, then make it right." OR "Make it work, Make it right, Make it fast"- Kent Beck (I think) 3. "In my experience, the customer doesn't know what he wants until you don't give it to" --David Brady on the XP Mailing List

The Quotes that I liked - General

2004-05-11T15:12:00.000+05:30

These are some of my favourites quotes. Usually I use one of them as signature on my mails. 1. To attain KNOWLEDGE, Add things every day; To attain WISDOM, Remove things every day. -- Lao-Tse 2. "You ordered a first-rate article and you must be content to pay the price" -- Joseph Clement (engineer, corresponding with his client, Mr. Charles Babbage) 3. "The definition of insanity

Just starting

2004-05-11T15:04:00.000+05:30

This is my first step into the world of blogging. I keep reading excellent blogs by Martin Fowler, Larry Osterman etc. Which inspired me to start my own blog. For the start at least I am using it as place to pen random thoughs, ideas, links and articles that I have found etc. For those who want to know, little bit more about me. Please check my page at http://www.geocities.com/nitinbhide