To delete a user in Windows 7, don’t use the UI (the postgres installer complains that the user still exists). Instead run the following command:

NET USER postgres /DELETE

My company has the dream that we could create such a team. How? Starting is simple:

• Get a bunch of people who want to work together
• Find a name

Now comes the hard part:

• Make sure they can actually ship code in production every two weeks

So I embark on a journey with PyXtreme. We already know each other, a few of us have worked together. During next few weeks, we’ll do everything we can to form a really productive team. And there’s only one way we see to achieve it: we’ll work together and execute a project.

According to Tuckman, a team can only be productive once it goes through the following steps:

Forming – unclear role and responsibilities, vague objectives, no purpose
Storming – decisions are hard to make, cliques, factions and power struggles
Norming – strong commitment and unity, clear role and responsibilities, respect, constructive criticism is possible
Performing – shared vision, focus, autonomy, productivity

Every team goes through all these steps for each project. By hiring a team, you can go through the first three phases and have a performing team as fast as possible. Each project has at least one new team member (the client) that forces the team to go back to the forming phase. We can work on a standalone project. Or we could be part of a bigger team to bring your collaborators up to speed with Agile methods and engineering practices. Collaboration through immersion.

Technology is not the main challenge of a project, forming the right team is. By learning to work together beforehand, we believe we can quickly attain greater productivity.

We know each other. We trust each other. We have a common vocabulary for our project and technological environment. We’re a real team and we’re eager to find a project to work on.

What do you think about our approach? Contact us and we’ll talk.

PS: Thanks to Nicolas for helping with this post

I especially love gemsets. They allow you to completely separate your various development environments for each of your projects. Gem conflicts are a lot less common.

You can even automatically change to a gemset for each of your project by using the an .rvmrc file. I use ruby 1.9.2 by default but I have one project that uses ruby 1.8.7. I use a separate gemset called ‘mygemset’.

# create the gemset if it does not exist
rvm_gemset_create_on_use_flag=1
# switch to default ruby version when exiting directory
rvm_project_rvmrc_default=1
# use ruby 1.8.7 with a specific gemset
rvm ruby-1.8.7-p302@mygemset

Pretty neat. Since this file is committed, it also means everyone on the team has the same setup.

String[] args = new String[2];
args[0] = "param1";
args[1] = "param2";
MainApplication.main(args);

Whenever I write in this kind of code, I always prefer to create an array instead:

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
list.add("param1");
list.add("param2");
MainApplication.main(list.toArray(new String[list.size()]);

It’s a bit more verbose, but I find it offers a lot more flexibility as adding new parameters is simply a matter of adding a new element to the list. In the first example, adding a new parameter requires two steps : 1) modify the size of the array and 2) initialize an element of the array to the desired value.

I do whatever I can to remove a step, as small as it seems.

Modifying all the indexes is also a lot less fun when you need to add an element at index 0. And of course you’ll eventually copy/paste one line of the array and forget to modify either the size of the array or the index.

Using a list is a small improvement but in the long run, small things make the code a lot more maintainable.

PS : a friend noted that if you already use Google Collections (now Guava), you can get even more elegant code with

list = Lists.newArrayList("param1", "param2")

That’s basically what my friend forced me to understand by harassing me to ship an application online (or so my deranged mind remembers from our last conversation ). Now I can thank him because it’s done.

I give you the The Pomodoro Assistant.

Since I use the Pomodoro Technique at work, I went with a simple app that allows me to manage my pomodoros. The design is ugly and it’s still lacking many features. However it’s online and available for you to use if you desire. And I’m already using it at work so it must be kind of useful.

I’m eagerly waiting for comments and feedbacks.

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Then point browser to http://localhost:8000
This blog shall become an extension of my brain…

How can I say that I’m installing rvm for ruby 1.8.7 + 1.9.2, rails 3 and postgres on a brand new Ubuntu installation?

“Daddy is playing on the computer.”

Don’t you just love it when the line between work and play is so thin?

I just bought a new computer. For the first time in ages I didn’t feel like spending hours deciding which parts I wanted, so I went for a big brand PC. Of course it came with Windows 7 installed.

Like any self-respecting geek, the first thing I did was… to install Starcraft. No problem there.

The second thing was to install Ubuntu. Then things started to get hairy. I could reboot to Windows once. Then the Master Boot Record. In case you don’t know, the MBR is a very important part of your disk that tells it what to boot. I was stuck.

Time for google. Fortunately I came across this page. It basically says “Some programs write to the MBR, overriding Grub 2′s boot code”. It then goes on to explain how booting from another drive (not an option for me), using LILO or reverting to Legacy Grub. The last one worked for me.

The Point of the Story

Anyway that got me thinking about a golden rule of software development : keep your code where it belongs! (Most likely, it does not belong to the boot sector.)

I can’t remember how many times I saw software fail because someone decided it seems to be a good idea to modify the internals of a framework/platform and commit it. Then the day comes when you want to use a new feature – and all hell breaks loose.

There is always a better option. If you think your project is different, think again. 99.9% of the time you’re wrong. If you think you’re in the .1% – so does everybody else. Otherwise you end up with an unbootable PC, a Tomcat that cannot render .jsp (yeah I saw that) or an application that is stuck with an obsolete, unmaintained version of a library that you can’t get rid of.

Keep your code out of the framework. You’ll stay sane a lot longer.

• Reading (12 books)
• Blogging (40 posts)
• Coding (4 projects)

What did I learn about setting objectives? What do I need to improve? These questions will be answered in a few moments… and if you care you might even hear how I fared.

The results (drum roll)

Overall I’m happy with what I accomplished. I read more books than what I planned (16 books that I remember plus tons of blogs), and I blogged as planned (*exactly* as planned if I include this post and another I posted only on the Pyxis blog). However I wanted to code a lot more than I did. I’m still pleased with the small projects that I worked on but I envisioned something bigger. I mostly did prototypes, katas and experimentation with Rails. No big projects, nothing on github (yet).

I did learn a lot about setting objectives for the future:

Lesson #1 : Never write about goals other people set for you

My wife convinced me to put something about losing a bit of weight. Fail. It wasn’t my goal, it should never have made the list

Lesson # 2 : Keep your objectives focused

For me, three goals was one too much. Very early on I could see that it was easier for me to write blogs or read books than it was to code – books were feeding me for blogs, blogs were giving me questions to read about. Coding felt lonely. Next time I’m going to go with two goals max to start with – and coding is going to be one of them.

Lesson # 3 : Do it gradually

Setting goals is definitely something that allowed me to improve. When I did it in the past, I usually started with a big goal in mind. I suggest you try it with small objectives at first and grow more ambitious as you go. Get started, have habits in place. Then think big.

Lesson #4 : Think about your next goals in advance

Especially if you plan on blogging about it on time. Shame on me.

I have a few ideas but I’m not fixed yet, so I’ll set a few very short term goals for now.

I am rediscovering ERB though for something else completely – Java code generation.

There is a lot of boilerplate code in most Java projects. A good IDE can help you alleviate some of it but most (if not all) applications will have additional boilerplate very specific to your application. Using ERB, you can easily create cut down on mindless typing.

For example, let’s suppose you are writing many Java listeners. Just create a script that will do it for you. I’ll make an exemple with a ContactListener class that is notified when a user is added, removed or blacklisted from your contact list.

require 'rubygems'
require 'erb'
 
# setup - could be initialized from script arguments
classname = "Contact"
listener_methods = ["added", "removed", "blackListed"]
 
# create file based on 'listener.java.erb'
content = File.read('listener.java.erb')
template = ERB.new(content)
File.open("#{classname}Listener.java", 'w') { |f| f.puts(template.result) }

If I run this using listener.java.erb:

public interface <%= classname %>Listener {
  <% listener_methods.each do |method|  %>
  void <%= method %>(<%= classname %>Event event);
  <% end %>
}

Then I generate this file:

public interface ContactListener {
  void added(ContactEvent event);
  void removed(ContactEvent event);
  void blackListed(ContactEvent event);
}

That was easy – and it’s not that useful I admit. I’m sure you can create your own listeners just as fast in your own IDE. Probably even faster.

However here comes the fun part – the same script can be used to create lots of other classes:

• The ContactAdapter class
• The ContactEvent class
• The ContactController
• The Contact model
• The ContactRepository (maybe even with a few methods to add/remove/retrieve a contact by id)
• The ContactView through which users will be able to trigger ContactEvents (maybe with a simple UI – even buttons to trigger each events on the ContactHandler)
• Registration of the ContactHandler and the ContactView by your favorite IOC framework
• Registration of the ContactView so it is accessible from your application’s menu
• Test classes for all of the above (including failing test cases that you’re going to have to write)

And probably other bits here and there to glue everything together.

Your mileage may vary, but code generation might be a great way to make your path shorter.

Can your IDE do that?