yet another post...

So here is another of my very infrequent posts. Not that anyone reads them. I sometimes need to write them anyway. Recently I have been focusing a lot of time and energy toward updating and improving my testing tools & skills. In my current contract I am attempting to automate the testing of a very sophisticated web app using Selenium RC - Ruby. This app's UI is nearly all GWT and that is proving to be the biggest challenge. From my understanding, GWT does not generate element IDs by default and thus I find myself having to leverage Selenium IDE to get the xpaths for each element, and believe me they are not pretty.

On another front I am diving into RSPEC & RCOV which I find to be a double edged sword. Perhaps as my skills improve it will have a big upside but for now it is time consuming. I cannot remember where I saw it, on someones blog but the key words were "test your own code" so by default I would probably not maintain 100% coverage which contradicts most of my 20+ years of experience. The thing I really like about RSPEC is the ability to tease requirements out. Being able to have a client give me a terse rudimentary description of what an object should or shouldn't do seems like a big win. The hard part, just as with any testing, is just the commitment of doing it. It always seems that you are spending too much time developing specs and not enough time writing code. I have not broached the stories yet, the specs themselves are keeping me busy.

On a personal note, I turned 50 this past Wednesday, do I feel older? Not really but as scary as it sounds, I see more of my parents in me than I ever thought I would, both the good and the not-so-good. Nature or nurture, whatever the reason there it is.

It has been a long, long time...

It has been several months since I last blogged, so i guess I should get off my ass and put something up. Not that anyone is waiting on pins and needles for a new post from BearBlu. As the saying goes, "the only thing constant is change". So currently I am working two contracts; the bigger of the two is with AgileMind in SF. AgileMind is doing some very interesting work in the area of web based education using the SCORM statndard for Learning Management Systems. Working with them is like a re-union of sorts. The VP is Andy Felong, with whom I worked with at Walmart.com; the Sr. Architect is Dorothy Gantenbien; we crossed paths at Profluent, a start-up that never reached a full start. By the way, Dorothy is an aspiring photographer, check out her work here. Finally, the configuration and build master is Trudy Reese; Trudy and I have worked together three times previously, Calico, Profluent and MS2.

I am also busy developing a small Rails app for a long-time friend who is starting her own accounting business with two other partners. I am not sure how much I can say at this time so I won't say anything more other than it is a great project to develop in Rails 2.0 and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Speaking of Rails, I have to give a plug to Ryan Bates; he produces Railscasts and I think they are terrific. In a 3-5 minute podcast he shows me more than I could hope to learn in an hour of trial and error. If you are like me and trying to ramp-up on technique, I would most definitely recommend giving Ryan a listen.

Well back to getting my web site cleaned up and working on the Rails project. I'll try not to take so long before my next post.

What is the saying? "The only thing that is constant is change..." Sure enough. I had been working with a young start-up called BookRenter.com with a couple of really bright young engineers but alas the business wasn't generating sufficient revenue to keep me on so... I took a contract with a company in San Francisco. It feels kind of like a reunion of sorts, the VP, Andy Felong was at Walmart.com while I was there and the Sr. Architect is Dorothy Gantenbein who I worked with some time ago at another start-up. To top it off, Trudy Reese is joining them at the end of the month.

My new client is a provider of educational tools, curriculum development, assessment and not sure what else. They are re-engineering the application and needed someone to help bootstrap the QA effort, so here I go again. It will be fun and pay the bills but I haven’t forgotten that I have my own project to get back to. Oh and to make it a bit more chaotic, I am taking another short contract with a former client in Denver to help them evolve their QA process as they grow their team in Bangalore.

Today I am boning up on Xen virtualization. I want to run multiple servers on a Dell PowerEdge SC1430. Greg Joe and I experimented with this last year and now I want to roll it out for production in BearBlu's environment.

I will let you know how it goes...

The only constant is change...

Well, my one-time development partner started a "paying job" today so it is somewhat less crowded at BearBlu Software's HQ. I guess the biggest issue for me is that I have to pick up the things he was doing as well as continue the fit-n-finish of the application.

Today I am going to focus on UI Usability. Gone are the "good-old-days" of text-based client/server UIs. Today it is Ajax/Javascript if you want to have a serious web application. I have spent some time absorbing this technology and still I am just scratching the surface. In-line edits and drop-down selectors are not difficult to deploy; I even added a real-time digital clock and date field but I am sure there could be so much more given the time to explore.

But today.... Today I want to focus on the UI customization to allow users to use labels that work for them. I have looked for a Rails Recipe but did not find one. I guess I'll have to roll my own.

The Countdown Begins...

It all started harmlessly enough; I had been recently separated from the company that was paying my bills so I decided to build a new application that I felt had value... but what? As is usually the case you stick to what you "think" you know. I was a "QA / Process Guy" not a technology guru. So I started thinking about the tools I used daily and what I liked and disliked about them; could I make them better? Perhaps not but I might be able to make them more usable for the average end user and surely I had enough experience to help others. With the help of my partner in crime, we set off on this journey.

The world of developing web applications is very different from the client-server and embedded applications I developed more than a decade ago. New technologies have emerged, SOA, Ajax and the explosion of Open Source tools and applications presented me with a personal challenge to learn to program again.

In the next few weeks, my partner and I will be revealing the Beta version of our efforts. We hope you check it out and let us know what you think of it and if you can see value in it.