RailsConf

As far as the sessions at the conference go, there were so many excellent talks I don't intend to review them all here but I will mention a few. Kent Beck's keynote was a highlight; I love his passion for helping people create better software and making the practice of creating software a better human experience. The Dialog Concerning the Two Chief Modelling Systems, presented in the form of a play by Jim Weirich, Joe O'Brien and Chris Nelson was a superb blend of entertainment and education. Other presentations that imparted useful knowledge included David Chelimsky's Integration Testing with RSpec's Story Runner, Aaron Bedra's De-Railing: Smashing the Rails Stack and Chad Pytel's Advanced Active Record Techniques: Best Practice Refactoring. And on a light-hearted note, Oh the Fail I've Known by Adam Keys was very entertaining.

The final session, which involved core Rails members Michael Koziarski, Rick Olson, Jeremy Kemper and David Heinemeier Hansson fielding questions about Rails from the audience, left me with a keen desire to attend RailsConf 2009.

What's new in Rails 2.1?

Next weekend the wider Australian Rails community will be converging on Kariong for RailsCamp 08. Paradoxically, I won't be able to attend due to a personal commitment.

OSDC Proposals due by 30 June

If you have something to share, or know another developer who has something to share about open source software, please do make sure proposals are submitted by 30 June.

But if you're reading this, here is a pre-Christmas professional update.

OSDC 2007

In late November I had the privilege of attending the Open Source Developers' Conference in Brisbane.

I learnt plenty, realised how much I still have to learn, caught up with former colleagues and people I'd met at the previous year's conference in Melbourne, and met more geeks with interesting stories to tell. I was reasonably satisfied with my talk (slides here) although I have to admit to being somewhat overawed by following Dr Nic Williams and Dr Paul King. But I think it made for an interesting overall discussion about Ruby on Rails, Groovy and JRuby.

The Brisbane open source geeks were very hospitable and it is probably fair to say that I consumed perhaps a little too much amber fluid. Maybe that is related to the fact that I volunteered to be part of the organising committee for next year's conference in Sydney (if we get our act together).

Ruby on Rails

I continue to be inspired by the vibrant Australian Ruby on Rails community. So much talent and a wonderful willingness to share. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to RailsCamp 2.0 but I have been a regular at the Sydney Rails Group meetings.

As far as improving my working knowledge of Rails goes, I give a big thumbs up to The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez. Although just recently published I've enjoyed following the book's progress through the beta period and thoroughly recommend it. Every time I dip into this extensive tome I discover something else to add to my Rails knowledge-base. It is not exactly bedtime reading but is an excellent resource for the professional Rails developer. Now that Rails 2.0 is out, I've found Ryan Bates' recent Railscasts very useful. So far he has four short episodes, each of which shows an improvement delivered with Rails 2.0.

Rails continues to be my web application tool of choice and I look forward to using it more intensively in 2008.

Moving On

Speaking of 2008, it will mark a change in direction for me. After nearly eight years at Cirrus Technologies in Sydney, I have decided to start my own business. Initially I will be freelancing, based from my home office, but who knows where it will lead?

I owe a big vote of thanks to the directors of Cirrus Technologies and the colleagues that I have worked with at Cirrus over the years. When I joined in early 2000, Enterprise Java was still very new. Java was still young. For any Java developers reading this, do you remember programming with Java before the Collections Framework was introduced in JDK 1.2? Or perhaps you remember when CMP Entity Beans were still a novelty and the Spring Framework was unheard of, still gestating in Rod Johnson's brain?

Cirrus has provided me with many professional opportunities for which I am truly grateful.

But the time has come to move on. Twelve years of commuting between the Central Coast and Sydney has taken its toll and I am very much looking forward to an improved lifestyle. As my endocrinologist said yesterday, "You only go around once."

Seriously though, I'm in Brisbane at OSDC and have just had the privilege of listening to Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP, give his keynote address about Exploring the Broken Web. In an entertaining style he showed how easy it is for hackers to use Javascript to exploit XSS and XSRF holes. As he said, all we have to do to use the web in a secure way is to take care in the way we use it. For example, never click on a link. Never use the same computer to use the web externally and internally.

So the web is broken and will not be fixed any time soon. I guess it's not a perfect world.

Of course it won't help me when I'm offline but maybe Google Gears will fix that?

What does our wall have to do with writing? The answer is to be found in "Weinberg on Writing", a thought-provoking book about how to write using the metaphor of building a fieldstone wall.

Jerry Weinberg addresses the problem of writer's block by showing how metaphorical stones can be continually collected. Each stone may or may not end up as part of a published work. The process of collecting stones typically contributes to ongoing work on a number of potential finished books, articles, reports or even blog entries. The trick is to always be ready to write. Carry a pen and notebook everywhere so that ideas can be readily captured. Later on the stones can be organised, perhaps eventually being crafted together in a finished wall to be admired. Or perhaps not. Stones may be thrown away during the editing process.

I think the Fieldstone Method employs a useful metaphor that keeps the writer productive. Of the many lessons in this book worth heeding my favourite is Jerry's first: "Never attempt to write something you don't care about". After all, a fine stone wall is built by a master craftsman with passion. Writing should be similar.

A few weeks ago my Dad, a semi-retired psychologist, sent a letter to help my son in his sporting endeavours. Dad related the sporting experience of 'being in the zone' to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work, in particular his book "Living Well", which uses the metaphor of 'flow'. He notes that many people have used this metaphor to "describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as being the best in their lives". Dad drew attention to the following passage:

"When goals are clear, feedback is relevant, and challenges and skills are in balance, attention becomes ordered and fully invested. Because of the total demand on psychic energy, a person in flow is completely focused. There is no space in consciousness for distracting thoughts, irrelevant feelings. Self-consciousness disappears, yet one feels stronger that usual. The sense of time is distorted: hours seem to pass by in minutes. When a person's entire being is stretched in the full functioning of body and mind, whatever one does becomes worth doing for its own sake; living becomes its own justification. In the harmonious focusing of physical and psychic energy, life finally comes into its own."

All of this had me curious. In my sporting life I have on occasions - too infrequent for my liking - experienced the exhilaration of being 'in the zone'. Steve Waugh has written that he was in "that special place called the zone" as he breezed towards his unforgettable last ball of the day hundred against England in 2003. In my professional life I know I have on many occasions experienced the feeling of flow when I have been immersed in a programming activity.

The real coincidence of this story occurred when I was checking my RSS feeds and noticed this brief blog entry by Esther Derby, leading back to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This article that Esther linked to appears to be an excerpt from Csikszentmihalyi's book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience". It's well worth a read.

So where does that leave me? With two thoughts. Firstly that it is well worth trying to create the conditions to experience flow more often. And secondly that Csikszentmihalyi is on to something. I might have to add his books to the growing list that I'd like to read one day.

I think the approach presented Diane Larsen's article, An Appreciative Retrospective, is well worth considering. It is based on the idea of looking for the best in people rather than emphasizing what went wrong.

In my humble opinion, applying this kind of thinking is more likely to bear fruit.

Via Esther Derby.

That's the question Esther Derby poses in a thoughtful post about human performance variability. It certainly resonated with me. I know that the best I can do varies widely depending on a whole range of factors.

Worth reading, pondering and remembering before you jump to criticize somebody's work contribution. Maybe you'd be better off trying to understand their circumstances first.

Earlier today I noticed Mark Watson's post about how useful Weinberg's books "The Pyschology of Computer Programming" and "The Secrets of Consulting" have been to him. Agreed. I have both and it's probably time I dipped into them again.

A few web clicks later I discovered that Jerry is now writing fiction and has realised that much of the success of his computing books has come from his story telling. Also, as the result of reflecting on his career as a writer he has more recently been helping other writers by passing on lessons from his own experience.

Readers of this blog may recall that I have referred favourably to Jerry Weinberg and his writing in the past. Like Mark, I value the view that focuses on people and communication ahead of technology.

Anyway, back to my original point. All I want to say about "Weinberg on Writing" is that I'm very keen to read it. I promise I'll review it when I have.

So I found Kevin Barnes' light-hearted article refreshing. As the following quotes show, he doesn't spare old or new approaches:

"Managers like the waterfall model for the same reasons that tourists like real waterfalls, they are simple and powerful and beautiful to look at. They are much less fun when you go down one."

"You may be tempted to believe that the added efficiency of agile processes may help eliminate the coding logjam by increasing the focus on bug fixing and increasing the chances that badly designed components will get reworked. Of course you may also be tempted to believe you can fly if you’ve just taken a hit of PCP, but that won’t keep you from falling 20 stories to your death."

And to remember that if one is going to make a living out of developing software a sense of humour is very helpful!

For web apps, a more complete test coverage has to include tests via a browser. I've used HttpUnit in the past - it comes close in that it simulates web conversations. But there's quite an overhead in using HttpUnit and it can't compete with a tool like Selenium that allows scripts to be run in a browser.

Last week at OSDC Richard Jones gave a lightning talk that presented Selenium in a very impressive light. So, it's high time I got my hands dirty. If anybody reading this has used Selenium I'd be grateful for your comments on how effective you've found it.

Talks on the last two days that I enjoyed included Richard Jones on 3D graphics using Python, Mark Rees on Agile Scripting Languages based on Mono, Tennessee Leeuwenburg on Automatic Text Generation and Weather Forecasting, Andy Todd on databases with Python, Myles Byrne on Ruby DSLs, Steve Goschnick's Multi-Agent System and Andrew Bennetts' Coding in a Distributed Team, not to mention several brilliant lightning talks.

Besides the sense of achievement in presenting a paper, I learnt a lot, discovered all sorts of things to learn more about (if I ever have the time) and generally had fun surrounded by lots of clever people. Photos (many of them thanks to Andy) are to be found on flickr.

Update: Slides and the paper for my presentation can be found here.