Getting From Requirements to Code

It’s Monday morning, and you have just completed a grueling meeting with your supervisors, who had a difficult time understanding your explanations of how your development team will implement the latest business requirements. They really started to glaze over while reading the latest specification that was laced with too much of what they call jargon and references to industry standards that simply aren’t of interest to them. Read more at http://www.ftponline.com/special/modelpatterns/msawicki/

Great books from Bruce

If you read the book “Thinking in C++” by Bruce Eckel before, you should know Bruce Eckel is a very experienced teacher and excellent communicator who is able to present the concepts in an understandable way. His book “Thinking in Java” provides a useful perspective on mastering Java for those with previous programming experience. You can find his free electronic books online from here http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~sharms/programming/

Transfer Putty settings between computers

PuTTY is tops on the short list of applications I install first on any Windows machine. Over the years I’ve used PuTTY, I’ve installed it on a huge number of computers but I’ve always had one complaint; There isn’t a configuration file I can backup or move to a new machine.  Here it the answer:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/02/01/howto-transfer-your-putty-settings-between-computers/

Agile Documentation Strategies

Documentation is an important part of every system, regardless of the paradigm followed to develop that system. Although agilists are sometimes maligned for what is perceived to be their cavalier attitude towards documentation, the fact is that we take documentation very seriously. Agilists adhere to the philosophy that your team’s primary goal is to develop software, a message that sometime drowns out its sister philosophy that a project team’s secondary goal is to enable the next effort. Because the “next effort” typically involves running, supporting, operating, and maintaining the system, chances are incredibly good that you’re going to need to write some documentation along the way. It’s possible to do so in an agile manner, and this month, I explore strategies for doing exactly this.

Read more at http://www.ddj.com/dept/java/197003363?pgno=1