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We do a lot to put data into a shape we find most comfortable to deal with. What if we forgo this comfort a little?

Can we get better performing systems?

Today I went to another Cogent Eazy Access Training session. This EAT was on Ruby and Rails. More about the training and Cogent here.

Steve Hayes introduced the Ruby syntax and the interactive Ruby shell (irb). He then moved onto Rails and some of the tools associated with it. As usual, Steve’s speaking style moved things along smoothly and with a clarity that I haven’t seen with many other presenters.

The only hitch during the presentation being that the Apple remote control would consistently jumped around the presentaton because of it’s sensitivity. I was assured that this wasn’t a common Apple product behaviour from Steve and 50% of the attendies who were also using Apple MacBook Pro’s. I’m thinking that to start doing Ruby you need to have a Mac!

Ahbi took over presenting to describe the very handy database schema migration tools in Rails. We tried db:migrate in an exercise using rake. It’s one of the many must see features. Well, all of Ruby / Rails is a must see, even if just to plunder the approach and tools for use or creation of a similar tool for another environment.

Steve re-took the reigns after lunch and we dug deeper into Rails. The presentation then moved onto more of the core Rails and we did some Railing of our own in an exercise or two. Each of which were nicely detailed for a Saturday tour of this subject.

As with most Cogent EAT presentations there were helpers on hand like Marty, Rob and Ahbi to help with tool setup, working through the exercises and ad-hoc questions. This is a very nice touch and keep us all moving and feeling like we were learning.

Once again Cogent delivered a very useful training session at a very Easy Access Training price, just $AU200. If you get the chance to do Cogent EAT I highly recommend you do.

Test First development is a staple in Agile XP Practice, or at least how I practice it. It changes the way you approach coding and helps manifest good practices. A great explanation of how Test First changes your coding practices is described here in yet another great Object Mentor Blog post.

For the most part, TDD forces you to start doing the things you always should have done, though it signals a change in values that should be reflected in your coding standards.

If needed I could dispense with some of the Agile XP practices, but I would not dispense with Test First development.

Ever wondered what Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 is really all about? Then wonder no more and come along to the Web 2.0 Melbourne User Group. I hope to see you there.  The group details are here.

The first meeting will be held between 6:30pm and 8pm on Tuesday 24th
of July at the Aegeon office, Level 5 / 10 Queens Road, Melbourne.

To get things started we’ll have an introductory presentation to set
the scene for the group which will be followed by general discussion
to get feedback about what everyone would like to get out of the group.

Pizza will be provided between 6:15 and 6:30.

Hope to see you there,
Rob Monie

I have been using Virtual Appliances for quick setup of Continuous Integration servers for a while now and I think they make the whole process a lot quicker and simpler.

When starting a new project, make a copy of the appliance and your good to go, no fiddling with configurations, just set a host name and your there, in minutes, not hours or days. If the clients IT department want to host the development environment elsewhere, no problems, just give them the virtual machine image and your running again.  Your clients will appreciate the agility this brings.

While the Continuous Integration part of the appliance I had to setup myself, I believe there is one in the works from Virtual Appliances and you should contact them to find out more about it and their offerings.

If you use virtual machines, you should use Virtual Appliances !

Virtual Appliances Goes Ubuntu

We have just released build 150 of the VirtualAppliances.net
LAMP server. At just 157MB to download this is smallest
and easiest Ubuntu based Virtual Appliance available.

http://VirtualAppliances.net/products/lamp.php

1000s of Applications

Ubuntu’s package and patch management system is included which
makes installation of the thousands of Ubuntu Linux applications
a snap and OS updates painless. Simple as running apt-get
or aptitude.

Aegeon (the best company I have worked at in my 23 years of work) are hiring !

I thought long and hard about putting this in my blog but the enjoyment I get from working in such a great atmosphere of empowerment, trust, learning and teaching have swayed me. We also have a great laugh or two. It wouldn’t be right for me to keep all this to myself; would it?

Aegeon do in house product development, in-house and on-site consulting, mostly in the Web 2.0 space. We are passionate about our culture, learning to improve our craft and to teach others. We are also active in our development communities and support user groups and open source.

We mostly use (but are not limited to) Java, Spring, Spring MVC, Hibernate, Groovy and Ajax toolkits. We practice Agile XP, Test Driven Development and use Continuous Integration tools. We focus on delivery and we routinely deliver solutions we are proud of.

Management at Aegeon rocks !

So if your interested in knowing more then contact me directly at Aegeon:  james dot ladd at aegeon dot com dot au

At the recent Melbourne XP users group Erik Petersen gave an introduction / discussion of Agile Retrospectives based on Diana Larsen’s and Esther Derby’s great book (in the top 10 tech books for 2006). This was a great session with 22 attendees and I’ll have to remember to order more pizza for next time.

One part of the discussion I would like to share and record here is a sort of manifesto for communication with which we should all be able to achieve communications with positive outcomes:

Focus On

• Inquiry
• Dialog
• Conversation
• Understanding

Focus Off

• Advocacy
• Debate
• Argument
• Defending

So rather than debate we should try dialog, rather than defending we should try understanding and so on.

10 Common Misconceptions about Grails

This is well worth a read to dis-spell those fears you may have and to get to know more about Grails.

Recently I had to write a domain class, map it to the database and write some tests around it. Of course the tests came first but anyway this is how I did it in grails …

1. Create and edit a domain class.
   Eg: grails-app/domain/Job.groovy
   class Job {
   String title
   }
2. > grails generate-integration-test
3. Edit the test class and add some tests (ok the example test won’t win me any awards).
   Eg:
   def job = new Job(title: ‘test job’)
   job.save()
   assert Job.get(1) != null
4. > grails generate-all
   when asked, enter the name of your domain object, for example Job.
5. > grails test-app
   And watch all the magic happen as grails takes care of mapping your domain object to the database and running all your tests.

Notice that there was no XML file editing or SQL fiddling?

I did a quick survey / questionnaire to describe my “personal DNA”. The results are:

I answered the questions honestly but I’m not 100% happy with all of the report. Your mileage may vary.

If you know me and feel that some of the report details are way off, then please let me know.

The full report is here.

My personalDNA Report