Browsing Posts published in April, 2005


This has been around for awhile, but I just stumbled on it again today. The Joel Test (by Joel Spolsky of “Joel on Software” fame) is a quick checklist of the quality of a development team. When I’m making recommendations to clients on how to improve their development process, these are the types of things that I’m looking for. I would hazard to add:

 

13. Do you develop software iteratively and incrementally?

14. Do you involve end users in prioritizing requirements/backlog items/user stories?

15. Does your team have daily standup meetings where each member communicates what was done yesterday, what will be done today, and what is preventing them from being as productive as they could be?

 

In other words, are you using agile techniques where appropriate?

 

EDIT: Tidied up some wonky formatting.

Two new tools were recently released onto the .NET scene to assist with identifying differences between assemblies. The two are actually complementary. The first is LibCheck from Microsoft, which displays API differences between two assemblies. The second is the Reflector Diff Addin, which actually displays differences in MSIL (in the language of your choice of course). The Reflector Diff Addin, of course, is an addin for Lutz Roeder’s fantastic Reflector .NET. Reflector just got better.

Have you ever wanted to publish a CS paper, but lacked one or more of the following?


  • A good topic

  • Co-authors

  • Time to write it

  • Any knowledge of computer science

If you answered YES to any of the above, then SCIgen can save the day. Generate your own personal CS paper. Share it with your friends and co-workers. Impress your boss and get a raise. Maybe even have the paper accepted at a conference!

 

I have updated ZoneStripper to v1.0.1.0. This version fixes an issue where ZoneStripper would stop processing files/directories on an “Access denied” error. ZoneStripper would occassionally encounter this error on a particular file, even when you have full rights to the file and it is not locked. Closing all open applications and/or rebooting and re-running ZoneStripper produces the same error and always on the same file(s). This version logs the issue to the console, but continues processing additional files. Previously ZoneStripper reported the error, but stopped processing additional files. Thanks to Jason Kaczor for alerting to this mysterious problem.

Don Box and Andrew Layman analyze the flow characteristics of XML streams using fluid dynamics and investigate improvements to XML compression efficiency using discrete cosine transforms.

 


 

This is geek humour at its finest. Thanks, Don and Andrew, for an enjoyable April 1st chuckle.