Rails 2.3+ template for creating new projects

I’ve been working with ruby on rails for the last few months and it’s been lots of ups and downs to me. It’s a learning curve and you just have to stand tall through the first frustrating weeks cursing the magic behind that you don’t understand. At least for a hard core java, spring, hibernate developer like myself, spoiled with great IDE support, which ruby lacks (It’s improving, with RubyMine, which I’m using,  a “clone” of IntelliJ IDEA). But then it becomes better, a lot better!

Templates

Kind of what AppFuse was supposed to provide the java maven community (what’s happening with this? I like the initiative!), the template runner of rails (version 2.3+) is supposed to help you set up your project with useful libraries, as authentication, test frameworks etc. No need to talk to much about it, I’ve created one that you can see for yourself, http://github.com/oma/rails-templates !

Sharing files and folders in windows should be easy

And, yes, it is (sometimes). In XP, right click a folder, select “Sharing and security” (no: Deling og sikkerhet), then check the box “Share this folder on the network” (no: Del denne mappen på nettverket”, select a sharename. Everything seems fine. But when other try to connect, typing \\mycomputername\ in the file explorer, it times out. wtf?

It should have been obvious to me, but I don’t consider myself a windows user. I run Win XP on my Mac OS X through VMware, which works fantastically. Solution; you probably have a firewall blocking port 445. Probably not the windows firewall as I guess it opens this port automatically. Check your anti-virus software firewall!

A basic GIT guide for the SVN user

I know there’s been written a lot about this, but either way I’ve found it so hard to switch from subversion and keep mixing stuff! I still consider myself a git newbie, not even liking git too much yet. I guess it’ll grow on me, though. Having spent too much time struggling, I’ve finally learned to master some simple techniques, as undoing changes, undeleting and removing new files not yet under source control. I’ll show these after the following desparate attempt to explain how the repository concepts differ fundamentally. This you must understand:

Jeg leier bolig, men ønsker IKKE kollaps i boligmarkedet!

Et innlegg utenom det vanlige fra denne ellers så tekniske bloggen min. Dette er et unntakstilfelle, jeg føler altså så mye for temaet at jeg ikke klarer å la være. Jeg leier bolig og ønsker ikke kollaps i boligmarkedet! Jeg skal forklare hvorfor, samt trekke frem noen interessant tall og begrunne min frykt for at vi er på vei ut stupet.

Bilde, advarsel rasfare

Bildet: Rasfare! Boligpriser med stor fallhøyde.

En kollaps i boligmarkedet får ringvirkninger langt utover at det blir billigere for meg å kjøpe bolig. Kjøpekraften vil også kollapse, deretter sliter bedriftene med inntjeningen og jeg, og mange andre, risikerer å miste jobben.

En vis mann sa en gang “det er ikke farten som dreper, det er bråstoppen”.

Jeg har alltid følt prisene var høye i Oslo, men gud jeg skulle kjøpt da jeg kom hit i 2001! Jeg hadde selvsagt ikke råd som fattig student uten mulighet for økonmisk hjelp hjemmefra, men det er lov å være etterpåklok og tenke “om at og hvis at” så jeg hadde tjent masse. Siden 2006/2007, når jeg endelig hadde råd til å kjøpe selv, har jeg spådd snarlig boligprisnedtur. Historien viser at jeg har tatt grundig feil til nå og prisene er idag tidenes høyeste! http://www.dn.no/eiendom/article1733294.ece

Downloads of my burndown excel sheet have exceed 400

I’m proud to say that there have been over 400 downloads of the burndown and burnup graph excel sheet I published about a year ago. I didn’t clean up nor explain much, just threw it out there. Download the (unmodified) excel sheet here: http://blog.omaconsulting.no/BurnDown/burndown.xls

Here is the post I publish about a year ago 18th June 2008 http://olemortenamundsen.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/sharing-my-burndown-and-burnup-excel-sheet/

What disappoints me, is that I have received no feedback. NO FEEDBACK!? Why not?

Strategies for separating unit and integration tests, using Maven, Eclipse / IDEA, cobertura

What I have

• Maven2
• Eclipse/IntelliJ IDEA
• Fast tests (unit tests)
• Slow tests (integration tests)
• Test coverage maven plugin (Cobertura)

I wish to

• run my fast tests (unit tests) from my IDE
• run my slow test (integration tests) from my IDE and maven
• run them all before committing code.
• create test coverage reports combining unit and integration tests
• create test coverage reports from unit tests only

Is agile easy or hard, simple or complicated?

I’m giving a lightning talk Wednesday, 11.feb, on SW2009, Oslo. It’s on a day-track called “Future development processes in a post-agile world (Effective software development)”. What’s your thoughts about that title? Clever? Needed? Provoking? Sad? Happy?

My thought? – Are we even agile yet? I think we’re far away from post-agile, but it’s probably good for us to discuss the subject.

Anyways, my lightning talk title is “You have yet to have success with an agile project” (Du har til gode å ha suksess med gjennomføringen av et smidig prosjekt). Switch You with I and it’s partly true as well, because how do we measure success? Well, that’s a whole other discussion, all I know is that I felt we had a potential to do much better, given the resources and information available at the time.

The objective of my lightning talk is to affect the attitude I feel many people have towards agile. So, is agile easy or hard, simple or complicated?

Most agilists would claim “Agile is simple!”. Maybe they’re right, but herein lies the problem, I think. When we sell simple to the customer (and the developers for that sake!), we risk that he’ll take too lightly on the process. Perhaps key elements are forgotten or simply ignored? The customer plays a big part in both waterfall and agile, but in agile his role is very different. We need the customer (product owner) on-site, continuously providing feedback and steer the project in the desired direction according to the newer information obtained. Sounds feasible, and easy, but this person needs both domain knowledge and the executive rights to guide the projects. Who can spare such a vital person to a development project? It would certainly be an easier decision if the customer new the project would fail dramatically if not.

So, from now on, sell “Agile is hard, but you get the better product”. Then, maybe, agile will become easy

The only good branch is a dead branch

edit: so kill them fast

Eclipse keyboard shortcuts or shortkeys

I’m not gonna excuse my shortkeys. Or did I just do that? Here are some Eclipse shortcuts that I use regularily and some that I keep forgetting as I don’t use them…

Stars	Shortkey	Function and Description
¤¤¤	ctrl+1	Suggest Fix (TDD tool)
¤	ctrl + shift + i	Inspect
¤	alt + ↑ ↓	Move selected lines up or down
¤	alt + shift + L	Extract local variable
¤	alt + shift + M	Extract method
	alt + shift + X, t	Run as test
¤	alt + (shift +) k	Find next match of marked text in file, up/down.
¤¤	ctrl + (shift +) 7	Comment/uncomment
¤	ctrl +d	Delete line
	ctrl + o	Outline
¤	ctrl + (shift+) T	Open Type
¤	ctrl + shift + R	Open Resource
¤	ctrl + shift + G	Find all references
¤	ctrl + shift + O	Organize imports
¤	ctrl + shift + F	Format
	(ctrl +) F11	Run or debug last test
	ctrl + shift + Y/X	UPPERCASE or lowercase marked text
New!	ctrl + shift + L	List all shortcuts. Find your own!

Now you propably know more than me… Please inform me of my lackings!

Smidig2008 – smidig gjennomført

Smidig2008 was a conference about agile methodolog, as was Smidig2007. I participated in organizing them both and we repeated our success from last year, expanding from 300 to 450 participants. I’ll continue this in norwegian as this is the language spoken at the conference.

Smidig2008 gikk av stabelen 9. og 10. oktober i Oslo Kongresshus. Vi hadde lært masse fra fjoråret, og bytte av lokale samt bedre registreringsprosedyrer bidro til en smertefri gjennomføring. Foilene ligger nå ute! Senere kommer også videoene. Jeg skriver her litt om konferansen generelt og mine opplevelser.