| Directions for Unified Modeling Language | 05 Nov 03 | |
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Martin Fowler has some interesting
observations on the state of the Unified Modeling Language. He has
noticed that UML users fall into three categories according to how they use
UML: UML-as-sketch, UML-as-blueprint and UML-as-programming-language. He
goes on to say that the current UML standardization process is driven
mainly by the blueprint and programming language crowd, leaving the
sketchers out in the cold.
I’ve always liked Fowlers "UML Distilled" book because it drilled down to the really important parts of UML without getting caught up in a lot of the superfluous annotations. I definitely fall into the UML-as-sketch category. Now I wonder where UML is going. comments | ||
| Deleting Code | 05 Nov 03 | |
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I am happily deleting code in the Rake project! Rake provided a Sys module
that allowed easy access to command line-like file commands (such as
copying files, creating symlinks, etc). I’ve just discovered the
FileUtils module in Ruby 1.8 and it covers 90% of what the Sys module
provides. FileUtils also uses a better naming scheme than Sys; FileUtils
names mimic Unix command line programs so they are easier to remember and
use. Sys.run and Sys.ruby aren’t represented in FileUtils, so I will
provide some kind of replacement for them.
If anyone has a heartache over losing Sys, I’ll provide an optional Sys module in a contrib directory. But for now, Sys is being deprecated. I just love it when I can delete code! comments | ||
| XP-Cinci -- November 2003 Meeting | 05 Nov 03 | |
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I haven’t mentioned the Cincinnati XP Users Group,
and need to correct that oversight now. XP-Cinci has been meeting every
month for a year! We learn XP by practicing it on a real project at the
meeting. Our project is a web-based event scheduling system for
Cincinnati’s Children's
Hospital (we hold our meetings at the hospital). One of the hospital IT
staff members acts as our customer and we usually have enough folks there
to have 5 to 6 pairs of Java programmers and a pair using Ruby (guess where
I am).
The project is moving slowly. It is very difficult to come in once a month and work a few hours on a project, and then leave it for another month. We spend a good portion of the meeting remembering what we did last month, and just as we get up to speed, the meeting is almost over. It’s a good thing that the goal of the group is more to learn XP practices than to actually finish this project. Tonight we concentrated on continuous integration. As soon as we had a new JUnit test working, we were to get the integration token and commit to our CVS repository. If you are in the Cincinnati area and want to join us, feel free. We meet on the first Tuesday of the month. You can find more information here. comments | ||
