Thoughts on Software Development

Now Using DasBlog

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 21:14:04 GMT

My blog now uses DasBlog at http://www.reliablesoftware.com/DasBlog/default.aspx. Please point your RSS Aggregators there. I will keep the existing blog files available so all existing links still work.

A Software System is Not a Tree and Why Service Orientation Can Be a Good Thing

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 04:37:34 GMT

Viewing the world as constrained objects in a hierarchy is not the way. The world is relationships in a semi-lattice.

The Truth is Not Always on the Wire

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:46:57 GMT

Semantics, or the real world effect, of a SOAP message is what matters.

Risk Based Software Development

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 05:04:24 GMT

Using risk mitigation to guide you software development process is better than relying on any software development methodology.

Looose Coupling for Service Oriented Applications

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 23:17:09 GMT

Building service interactions as opaque XML Messages, instead of as remote procedure calls, allows services to handle multiple versions of messages.

Sarbanes-Oxley and Xml Schema

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 04:33:40 GMT

Defining your SOA messages with XML Schema can help you comply with regulatory mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

Indigo tomorrow, but ASMX or WSE today?

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 19:07:36 GMT

Microsoft's Indigo platform will unify all the divergent transport technologies (ASMX, WSE, COM+, MSMQ, Remoting) that are in use today. For building a service on the .NET platform this is the technology you will use. What technology should you use today?

Software Factories: Here We Go Again

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 18:30:38 GMT

Grady Booch has fired another attacking missile in the great debate over software factories, and the idea's defenders have replied. Microsoft's view of the world is outlined in a series of articles by Jack Greenfield on the MSDN site. The basic idea behind software factories is to move the production of software from a craft to an industry resembling manufacturing. This is not a new idea...

What is Simple?

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:18:36 GMT

Adam Bosworth has given a talk (discussed in his blog entry) that has received a lot of attention and comment. He argues that software programs and their tools are way too complex and should be simple.

The problem I have with his argument (and arguments similar to that) is that it posits a false binary choice: either be complex or simple. Complexity is a continuum.

Service Oriented Architecture and Reuse

Tue, 2 Nov 2004 3:45:34 GMT

David Chappell, in his latest newsletter, argues that Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) promotes software reuse far better than objects do. For him, object reuse usually fails for two reasons. First, in an evolving business environment it is difficult to come up with a good definition of a business object such as a customer. Second, software developers seem to catch the not-invented-here plague fairly easily.I certainly agree with this.

Should Software Imitate Sports?

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 16:20:34 GMT

Everybody talks about how the New England Patriots Super Bowl win last year was a team effort. Whether it was the backup quarterback imitating Peyton Manning on the scout team, the statisticians, the players, the coach, or the personnel guy, everybody contributed.Teamwork, of course, is one the perennial topics du jour in the software world. Demarco and Lister’s classic Peopleware talks about it, introducing the concept of a “jelled” team. All the variants of Extreme Programming rave about it. But what makes a team good? It is difficult...

Internet Explorer Bugs

Thu, 1 Jul 2004 2:20:34 GMT

One of the recently discovered Internet Explorer bugs allows malicious sites to install key stroke recording code on your system. This certainly has got a lot of press and deservedly so because of the widespread presence of IE as a browser. Every time this happens I wonder, does open source produce more secure code? Do “more eyeballs” reviewing the code produce better code? Looking over the...

Driving on the Information Superhighway

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 2:12:28 GMT

Driving on the highway around Boston I was wondering about its virtual counterpart, the Information Superhighway. Massachusetts’s accident rate is the highest in the country. People mutter in frustration, “You can’t get there from here” as they navigate streets that look as if cow meanderings determined their path. Yet people and commerce move with an ease and openness that can only imagined on...

Software Revolutions

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 4:17:33 GMT

Over lunch the other day, a programmer mentioned that Gamma, et.al’s book Design Patterns revolutionized his thinking about software development. He asked me what programming books revolutionized my thinking. I agreed that Design Patterns changed the way I think about software, but I did not consider it revolutionary. Thinking about this later, I realized that the most important books that I...

C# is Not the Official Language of .NET

Mon, 1 Mar 2004 1:01:58 GMT

When the speakers on the .NET track of the Syscon Edge 2004 conference got together, Carl Franklin and I were talking about why people think that C# is the "official language" for .NET. I told him that even though most of my consulting is in C#, I think that attitude is wrong. I believe it is important to elaborate why I feel this way. People who feel that VB.NET is an inferior language to C#,...