Transformation Priority Premise Applied
At SCNA 2012 I entered into a kata battle against Aaron Bedra. The idea was that we'd both perform the Coin Changer...more.
Micah Martin
Servers in Source Control
8th Light has accumulated a lot of servers, the cloud kind, over the years. Each one configured by the team that was building our internally...more.
Apprenticeship Over College
I interviewed a bright young woman today who is graduating from high school this spring among the top of her class. Despite having several...more.
Software Craftsmanship Manifesto? Duh!
"The Manifest for Software Craftsmanship is obvious!" "How could you not agree with it?" "Duh!"
On Consultancy Acquisition
If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said that purchasing a service company makes very little sense.
A service...more.
MMEmail: My First Clojure Open Source Contribution
While working on website for my sister, I was perturbed that there were no libraries on Clojars for sending email. I was...more.
Limelight 0.5.0 Released
Today we released a new and exciting version of Limelight. Just a reminder, Limelight is a user-interface framework for Ruby.
Included...more.
Reflection on Hangman
Last week concluded the Hangman Ruby Sparring Tournament. Unlike the previous Battleship Tournament, I put the effort in to write a competitive...more.
Hangman Tournament
Several months ago, I hosted the Ruby Battleship Tournament. It was an all-round fun event where craftsmen sharpened their claws and pitted...more.
Copyrights Conundrum
Here’s the situation. You’ve spent days working on an open source project. Your sweat, blood, and tears have been poured into thousands of lines...more.
Kata: Langston's Ant in Ruby
I’ve recorded my Langston’s Ant kata for all to see. This particular kata, with slight variations, has been in front of an audience...more.
Simon
You remember the classic Simon game, right? The one where the electronic devise will blink a color and make a sound that you have...more.
Ruby Battleship Sparring Tournament
Yesterday in my talk at RubyConf2008, I announced the commencement of the Ruby Battleship Sparring Tournament. This is an open tournament....more.
Limelight 0.3.0 Released
This release of limelight contains many new features and stability. Perhaps most notably, Limelight will no longer eat 95% of your CPU (ouch)! I’m...more.
Agile in Buenos Aires
Last week I attended Agile 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was a fun, high energy conference. The highlight was a heated panel...more.
Software Craftsmanship Group
I'm pleased to announce the inception of the Software Craftsmanship Group. http://groups.softwarecraftsmanship.org. The first meeting is October 13th at 7pm in 8th Light's...more.
Fidelity Life Case Study
As craftsmen, we're proud of our work. Yet it's rare that we get the opportunity to show off what we do for clients. Fortunately...more.
Definition of Software Craftsman
Craftsman Clarification: There has been some discrepancy in the use of the term “Software Craftsman”. Rather than going into details about various uses of...more.
Tag! I'm it!
David Chelimsky has tagged me with this “chain-blog.” I have enjoyed reading other peoples’ stories and I thought I would take the time...more.
Announcing Limelight
I’m pleased to announce the open source Limelight project: A thin client and application framework written in Ruby (JRuby). Check it out at
Limelight at RailsConf 2008
Back at RubyConf 2007 I prepared a 1 minute presentation, well…more of a teaser, about an application framework called LimeLight.
What...more.
Micah's General Guidelines on Ruby require
Ruby files have to require other files. There’s no avoiding it. Techniques to manage require statements are numerous and varied. Having tried most of...more.
Ruby DSL Blocks
There’s a common pattern I’ve seen for developing DSL in Ruby. It’s used in RSpec, the Statemachine Gem, and Unclebob’s Clean...more.
Chirb Statemachine Talk
Last night I presented the Ruby Statemachine Gem to the Chicago Ruby Users Group (Chirb) Below are links to download the slides and...more.
Understanding Statemachines, Part 4: Superstates
Often in Statemachines, duplication can arise. For example, the vending machine in our examples may need periodic repairs. It’s not certain which state the...more.
Storing Binary Data in Postgres? Beware!
If your situation matches the following conditions, beware!
- You’re working in rails.
- You’re using Postgresql.
- You’re storing binary data in the database.
...more.
Understanding Statemachines, Part 3: Conditional Logic
If you’re doing any significant amount of work with statmachines, you will most certainly encounter some conditional logic in your Statemachines. Take our vending...more.
Clean as You Code
In my younger days I was a Line Cook at the Olive Garden. In case you’ve never worked in the food industry, Line Cooks...more.
Three Reasons to Use FitNesse
Using FitNesse allows you to communicate with the customer up front. Before a line of code is written, you can have all the...more.
Understanding Statemachines, Part 2: Actions
Part One demonstrated how to build states and transitions. If you go ahead and add some actions to that and you’ll have a truly...more.
Understanding Statemachines, Part 1: States and Transitions
I consider Statemachines to be a programming gem. An invaluable tool for the software craftsman’s toolkit. It’s not everyday that a Statemachine comes in...more.
BOC
BOC is a testing pattern that Unclebob briefly mentioned on fitnesse.org shortly after it was published. It describes the typical steps taken in an...more.
Got Real?
I heard about the Getting Real workshop from a good friend who is a web designer/developer. We used to talk some time ago about...more.
Getting Real Review
This past Monday my colleagues and I went to 37 Signals’ Getting Real workshop. Overall I give the workshop a thumbs up. They...more.
Craftsmen are like Babelfish
Show me a software craftsmen and I’ll show you someone who can program in any language if they had to. From time to time...more.
Software Apprenticeship
David Hoover asked me a few questions about my experiences as a software apprentice. I was happy to answer his questions and pleased...more.
Smalltalk Bowling
I’ve been meaning to learn Smalltalk for years now. Recently Dave Astels and I have a had a few discussion on the topic. They...more.
Prelude to the Mock Off
David Chelimsky puts it gently…We’ve actually had some heated arguments about these mocking frameworks and it’a all kinda silly. In the end we’re writing...more.
Paper Bullet
Work has me visit lots of software teams around the world. This past week I visited a particularly fun team. They worked in a...more.
Jack and Jill
Once upon a time there live a young girl named Jill and her next door neighbor Jack. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. When Jack...more.
IList, IComparable, ICarumba!
This IConvention is an interesting one: “Let’s prefix all interfaces with a capital I.” Who thought of this? Why did they think it was...more.
Delegates Vs Command Pattern
Delegates: one of the few unique aspects of .NET. How useful are they? Here’s a delegate declaration. The syntax can take some getting used...more.
Building a City
What is building software like? The common belief is that software is like engineering. Most people seem to think that building a software system...more.
Buffer to the Rescue
Recently I was working on FitNesse to solve the problem of large file uploading and downloading. Previously when a file was downloaded FitNesse would...more.
Beware the Freebie
It is unavoidable. Every story must go through these milestones of life in order. A story cannot be estimated if it has not been...more.
Apples and Tigers
Tiger Tech Talk, Chicago. This was a free, one day, conference held by Apple. The intent was to give developers a preview of...more.