Linkdump 6

• Agile Operations in the Enterprise. The article contains some fairly interesting points related to introducing agile methodologies to enterprise world. The main point appears to be that in order to gain benefit from agile way of thinking, you truly have to accept it as a part of corporate culture and values. Makes sense.
• Start In The Middle. Focus on the core and make it work well. The rest is just necessary tedium. Better focus on the interesting part first, no?
• How To Think? Too bad brains don't come with an instruction book.
• Simple Kanban tool. It's one HTML file, just like TiddlyWiki. I suspect it might be most useful even in local setting to help one to manage tasks and to focus on the essential.
• CSS Layout Generator. If you ever happen to need a quick and dirty CSS layout, that tool seems like a decent pick for the job. I'm sure there are plenty of others around as well.
• Sass. A sassy alternative for good old CSS syntax. Doesn't it just look spiffy? I like particularly the YAMLish version of the syntax.
• Haml. Proper replacement for tedious HTML markup, finally! Notice how terse yet functional it is.

Book Preview - Django 1.2 E-commerce

I will be reviewing Django 1.2 E-commerce by Jesse Legg soon. The sample chapter provided looks fairly basic in terms of Django. As I haven't dabbled with e-commerce before, I expect the book to fill this gap in my knowledge to some extent. I'm particularly interested to see how to handle aspects of e-commerce such as payments, product catalogs and pricing.

Django - ModelForm and FileField gotcha

I use Django's ModelForms a lot as they tend to save a lot of time. As can be guessed from the name, they provide means to generate forms based on models. Furthermore they provide validation and save functionality. Utterly cool, ain't it!

They are not without their issues, however. I bumped into one recently. It appears that the default widget by a FileField does not allow modification of the field if some data is provided to a ModelForm initially! Fortunately there's a workaround for this issue.

Linkdump 5

Here's my linkdump this time:

• codepad, online compiler/interpreter. Want to try something out but don't have language set up? Codepad to rescue.
• Agile Architecture - Oxymoron or Sensible Partnership? Agile doesn't mean there should be no architecture by default.
• Big Ball of Mud, anti-pattern of all architectures. Just lump it together and be done with it!
• Moving Remy in Harmony: Pixar's Use of Harmonic Functions. Some insight to the math that powers Pixar's blockbusters.
• Fabrik - A Visual Programming Environment. Interesting looking paper from '88.
• Color Scheme Designer. Useful tool for coming up with a nice color scheme for your website/whatnot.
• HTML5 & CSS3 Readiness Chart. Note the speed of progress.
• Git Workflow as described by Yehuda Katz of Rails fame.
  

Book Review - Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher, Packt Publishing.

This time I will be taking a look at "Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging" by Karen M. Tracey, PhD. There is a sample chapter available for those interested. The book has been clearly oriented towards those that are already familiar with Django and wish to enhance their skills further. During the book a simple survey application will be constructed. It is used to highlight several techniques along the way.

I will summarize my main findings next using "the good, the bad, the ugly" model to keep the review brief and compact. Let's see how this review format works out. :)

The good:

• Fluent writing.
• Valuable information, especially on deployment. I wish there had been more information about that particular subject.
• Debug part (especially debug toolbar and pdb). To get some idea of this, take a look at these two articles: [1] [2]
• Very few errata (I spotted just three).

The bad:

•  A bit uneven at times. Especially part of chapter discussing how to get outside help felt a bit redundant (ok, perhaps it's good information for those new to OSS).
• Not a word on acceptance testing. Perhaps that went out of the scope of the book but I still would have appreciated broader approach to testing. Also the way several features of the example application were implemented felt a bit backwards to me (perhaps it would have been nicer to use TDD a bit?).

The ugly:

• The narrative felt a bit tedious at times. I would have preferred more straightforward approach showing possible issues to keep in mind (ie. checklist for deployment, testing).
• The approach used is a mixed blessing. It's hard to just jump into some specific part of the book without understanding the example case so far. This makes the book less valuable as pure reference. It probably should be treated more as an introduction to the subject.

Verdict
The book clearly had its highlights. As mentioned above, I'm not entirely sure if the approach chosen is the most fitting possible. It did help to illustrate some possible problems one may encounter during development but I think there were times when a different kind of approach might have worked better.

If you are willing to dig through the book properly, you are bound to find useful techniques to use in daily development. Overall it's a fine effort on a demanding subject and manages to complement the official documentation adequately.

Linkdump 4

• Sustainable Test-Driven Development, a presentation by Steve Freeman, author of Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests. There are some good points about how to structure your tests.
• jQuery 1.4: What you need to know, presentation (HTML5 website). The presentation contains some live examples you may try. Highly recommended for jQuery fans.
• JavaScript: The Bad Parts. Excerpt from Crockford's excellent book. Prepare for some real horror.
• yUML, a quick way to whip up those UML diagrams. It uses nifty little syntax based on which it renders the actual diagram.
• GUIMark 2: HTML5 vs. Flash benchmark.
• latexlab, LaTeX for Google Docs. Yes, it's great!
• Algorithmic Graph Theory, free book.
• Khan Academy, free education. Plenty of math.

Color Coding to Help Organize Development Work?

I just came by an interesting article at InfoQ. It introduces the concept of color coding for software development. I will explain the concept next briefly. I recommend checking out the original article of course in case you find the concept interesting.