tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69272172011-07-08T02:47:34.961+02:00Literate testing, JCite, Java, Excel for Java, Mercurial, and whatever else seems to long for a tweet.Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-83103084547748198872008-01-23T15:18:00.000+01:002008-01-23T15:25:56.355+01:00

While nothing major, managing threaded conversations in chat has bothered me for quite a while. Yesterday I had an idea on how to improve matters:Works using existing chat infrastructure. Needs only augmented clients.Plays well even if other party uses a non-thread aware chat tool.Separates threads automatically based on interaction patterns.I've written an article and have created an online demo

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-37751148253940720312007-12-05T09:51:00.001+01:002007-12-05T09:54:47.983+01:00

GMail is really so cool. I think rather than just relying on quotation marks (> and such), it strips them and then diffs the message to its predecessors to find common chunks. I saw that in action when I sent an updated patch to a mailing list. In both versions, there were no quotation marks, but the second message, viewed in GMail, showed just what had changed versus the first message, the rest

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-81683693334418100212007-11-29T11:24:00.000+01:002007-11-29T12:58:28.181+01:00

When using components decoupled by queues or other intermediate data stores, it can be a pain to trace the origin of faulty data in the queue. In languages with decent support for stack traces, however, it's easy. In Java, you just add a temporary field public final Throwable createdBy = new Throwable(); to the class in question. Or, if you need to know who enqueued it where, you vary the

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-12940632195554707592007-11-24T11:10:00.000+01:002007-11-24T11:13:04.375+01:00

What I termed documentation-driven testing has before been penned literate testing, where the Python docTest people have summarized the essence very nicely indeed.

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-50440452642487593832007-04-18T07:30:00.000+02:002007-04-18T07:30:58.903+02:00

Zope Source Code Repository - markup - Zope: zc.queue/trunk/src/zc/queue/queue.txt

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-36486164109857948182006-12-27T17:29:00.000+01:002006-12-27T17:47:53.769+01:00

Time and again, when I want to break up a longish Java method into smaller parts, I find myself wishing back the by-reference parameters and access to surrounding local procedure variables of Pascal. Now, I know that the discipline of trying to always pass all required arguments explicitly, and to not rely on changes to by-ref params is often helpful. Nevertheless, sometimes it gets in the way.

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1164356613582746662006-11-24T08:47:00.000+01:002006-11-24T09:43:40.786+01:00

I googled for "Documentation Driven Development" and came up with a number of links (why the heck did I not do this sooner?). SpliceIt seem to be doing it, but don't cite tests. There is no mention of integration with use-case-level tests.Vincent Massol had the experience when writing books about frameworks - always improved the underlying code. The message is: you have to be serious about

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1163770154817054522006-11-17T14:01:00.000+01:002006-11-17T14:30:16.240+01:00

I've recently read Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries by two lead architects on the .NET Framework. A mixed experience, I have to say. The book does offer good advice, but somehow, hardly anything seemed truly new. Maybe that is because I've already read Josh Bloch's Effective Java, but, I suspect, mostly because I have accumulated a fair

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1158602417395478322006-09-18T20:00:00.000+02:002006-09-18T20:00:21.296+02:00

Because I am now reading a book about Haskell, but also because when I implemented the gist of Palo in Erlang, I was bitten by - tada! - a typing error, I decided to port the code over to Haskell. While the functional core syntax of the two languages is quite similar, here's one detail that took me a while to figure out: A case construct in Haskell always introduces new name

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1157563671717987412006-09-06T19:27:00.000+02:002006-09-06T19:27:52.390+02:00

I have been asked to review the Palo code base. This is an open-source MOLAP database server. To get a feeling for what its core C code does, I reimplemented the gist of it in Erlang. Turns out it's really just a few lines when you have high-level functional constructs at your disposal. Out of curiosity, I then went and extended it so it really mimicks the Palo cube storage more closely, binary

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1157440566692906972006-09-05T09:16:00.000+02:002006-09-05T09:16:06.970+02:00

I recently stumbled upon Diamond Wiki. This is a wiki enhanced by meta-data and navigation along meta-data dimensions. Interesting. Maybe a first step in the direction of something like an ad-hoc database. While deeply impressed with DabbleDB, I still think it should be possible to come up with something even more fluent, more ad-hoc.

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1155811893676095872006-08-17T12:48:00.000+02:002006-08-17T12:52:30.126+02:00

What JCite really is about is what I am going to call DDT: documentation-driven testing. It is a discipline that complements and, during the conception of an API, really comes before TDD: test-driven development.DDT weeds out them design bugs! :)

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1155242726542969142006-08-10T22:08:00.000+02:002007-06-14T17:30:31.381+02:00

There are quite a few articles extolling the virtues of test-driven development these days (here's one). And for good reason, too. Having done TDD for quite a while, I recently started combining it with documentation-driven design. This is what my open-source tool, JCite, is all about.With this approach, Isketch out the most important use cases,combine them into the index of a tutorial (links

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1152807323263852662006-07-13T17:39:00.000+02:002006-07-14T08:58:59.396+02:00

I finally managed to install FreeBSD 6.1 in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 with NATted networking behind a firewall. Here's how:Download the boot ISO image and mount it in the VM.Reset the VM.Run the FreeBSD setup until you have to choose the type of installation. Select "Standard".When asked to slice the disk, type A for "Auto", then Q for "Quit".When asked about the boot manager, select "Standard".

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1152605456022548072006-07-11T10:10:00.000+02:002006-08-30T09:34:21.920+02:00

RSpec Site: "RSpec provides a framework for writing what we call executable specifications of program behaviour. Since that’s rather wordy, we usually just call them specs. Some other people call these things examples."If I take a look at the examples on the RSpec site, I cannot help but wonder if just doing this (which they term "behaviour-driven development"), misses out on an important aspect

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1152258816344873262006-07-07T09:53:00.000+02:002006-07-07T09:54:25.476+02:00

Jay Fields Thoughts: Use erb to insert dynamic text: "Tonight, I was writing up some new material and wanted to mix some examples with the text. I could have just pasted the code into the material; however, I wanted the material to update automatically if I updated the code. When working with Martin on his next book I got to experience the value in this practice first hand and it wasn't something

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1151645550835904192006-06-30T07:32:00.001+02:002006-06-30T07:37:34.226+02:00

A. Sundararajan's Weblog:"As I mentioned earlier, Mustang (Java SE 6) comes with jhat - Java Heap Analysis Tool. We have added more features to jhat as of build 53 (released on Sep, 22, 2005). jhat now comes with mechanism to query the heap. jhat supports OQL - Object Query Language -- a SQL-like language to query your Java heap!"This is amazing news! It has, in fact, in one stroke returned my

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1149700751362614762006-06-07T19:19:00.000+02:002006-06-07T19:19:11.646+02:00

Source Citing: Making Examples Work - arrenbrecht.ch: "People learn best from good examples. To be good, examples need to be correct. In every release. So a test for them is likely the single most important automated test you can write."

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1145982926757407312006-04-25T18:30:00.000+02:002006-04-25T18:35:26.776+02:00

As I posted earlier, I had this idea about bookmarks that are searchable using Google. Well, they've implemented it if you have personalised search enabled. There is a new link at the bottom to a bookmarklet for easily adding a bookmark within your Google account. Like del.icio.us, but searchable with Google. Cool! (I did, by the way, tell Google about this idea. I'd love to know if that had an

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1142860782858120332006-03-20T14:19:00.000+01:002006-03-20T14:19:42.896+01:00

My new personal and professional home pages are up!

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1142598032202646912006-03-17T13:18:00.000+01:002006-03-17T13:20:32.216+01:00

Cool! I created a word that Google does not find. You probably have to be german-speaking to get it, though: Encephaloman.

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1130181209770163022005-10-24T21:09:00.000+02:002005-10-24T21:13:41.906+02:00

The following certainly rings true:"For me, the obsession is sometimes a coping mechanism -- with a job that is boring, or some other life rut. And the obsession seems to end when the boredom ends or the situation I'm avoiding sorts itself out."Greg Sewell, in The End of the Affair

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1130137007213280602005-10-24T08:56:00.000+02:002005-10-24T08:57:41.193+02:00

I have a del.icio.us account now to keep my public bookmarks at. Great stuff, especially due to the nice integration with Flock.

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1130134265640461572005-10-21T20:29:00.000+02:002005-10-24T08:20:29.966+02:00

Amongst a host of others, Flock realizes an idea I had a while ago and told Google about: a real simple way to remember a site. In Flock, it's called to "star" a site. Very quick. No folder selection. And with full text search. This is exactly right. Because at the moment I am starring the site, I am really ready to move away from it again. I don't want to bother with classification. When, later,

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1128678192224015542005-10-07T11:38:00.000+02:002005-10-07T11:51:05.690+02:00

So now I know how to call it: procrastination. And now I know I am not alone by far. My own reaction lately was to consciously start thinking and writing more again (as you can see here, at least the latter part), and I implemented a tool that monitors my activity throughout the day so at least I can, at the end of a work day, see what ate the time. Seems someone else had a similar, albeit even

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1128676026434953962005-10-07T11:03:00.000+02:002005-10-07T11:07:06.440+02:00

Just came across the site StructuredBlogging. This addresses kind of the same problem I want to address with the emergent data entry language. Make it easy for people to add structure. However, it seems that StructuredBlogging requires effort by someone to create the structure in advance of it being used, whereas the emergent approach lets non-technical people add structure of their own.

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1128326017677626132005-10-03T09:43:00.000+02:002005-10-03T13:15:07.346+02:00

One of the problems with debugging domain specific languages (DSLs) is that a single DSL construct is often mapped to a multitude of aspects in the generated code or generic implementation. Thus, the classic concept of a breakpoint is difficult to interpret.However, it seems to me that this could be overcome fairly easily. Simply allow users to set breakpoints targeted at specific aspects of the

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1128074106079502792005-09-30T11:52:00.000+02:002005-09-30T11:55:06.080+02:00

Combine a wiki with code assist, templates, syntax checking, relational technology, a query language, semantic mapping and Google Suggest. What do you get? An emergent language, that's what. A domain specific data entry language uniquely tailored to the information at hand through continued use and extension. The IDE features in the background are there to help in achieving consistency, but the

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1098178083179971452004-10-19T11:25:00.000+02:002004-10-19T11:28:03.180+02:00

I have an idea for a piece of software that would bring a lot of value to a lot of developers. However, while the idea is quite clever, implementing it does not take that much of an effort. So how am I going to protect myself against the open source community? I could probably make a decent profit from the thing. So there is the real possibility that I can spend some of my working time working on

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1097224867894726162004-10-08T10:37:00.000+02:002004-10-08T10:41:42.126+02:00

Here's a hint: Don't disable the "DCOM Server Process Launcher" service on XP SP2. It may look like one heck of a vulnerability when you really don't use DCOM at all, but, unfortunately, Microsoft Access 2003 does. It will simply open an instant message box stating "A problem occurred while Microsoft Access was communicating with the OLE server or ActiveX Control." if the service is not running.

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1089710917662641962004-07-13T11:26:00.000+02:002004-10-05T18:21:12.843+02:00

Clemens Vasters recently blogged about one of his epiphanies: "the user is just another service". Same thing here. After one of his sessions about FABRIQ, actually (in Switzerland).

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1085601751093995132004-05-26T20:50:00.000+02:002004-05-26T22:02:31.093+02:00

What an amazing experience. I just surfed over to editme.com, prompted by the link generated by this blogger here. While the service sounds exciting, what really knocked me out of my shoes is their sales rep system. You simply log into a chat and within five seconds (!) there was someone online. And that someone was truly helpful. Wow!

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6927217.post-1084194180502813052004-05-10T13:29:00.000+02:002004-05-26T20:28:59.163+02:00

Just read about Nemerle, a new .NET language. Sounds great to me: C#, ML, and Scheme united in a readable fashion!

Peter Arrenbrechthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17041051495984882287noreply@blogger.com0