Here are a couple of shots from a presentation made by Harmonix founder and CEO Alex Rigopoulos in which he talks about the pros and cons they considered when trying to decide whether or not to make a guitar game:
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
The “pro” argument is all you’d need to convince me!
Update: It looks as though Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood beat me to the punch and has even more details. Damn you, Atwoooooood!
Photo courtesy of Dav Yakinuma. Click to see it on its original page.
Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood can’t help wondering if pair programming is nothing more than code review on steroids. Like me, he’s only tried code review and found it useful, but hasn’t given it a shot yet. I’ve done what you might call pair design, where another programmer and I sketched out how to tackle a problem, divvied the work between the two of us and then each went to our own machines to implement, but I haven’t done actual pair programming since Crazy Go Nuts University (and then, it was a matter of a shortage of terminals, not technique).
I understand the expounded benefits of pair programming on an intellectual level. If you view code reviews as being similar in spirit to using a compiler, then pair programming is analogous to working in an interpreting language with an interactive mode or REPL: the feedback comes at you, pronto!
It’s a harder sell on the emotional level. I consider myself a social and outgoing guy — something only reinforced by my work as a technical evangelist and from accordion busking — and even I like to “lower the cone of silence” and zone out when I’m coding. I think I could do a couple of hours’ worth of pair programming a day, but all day, day in, day out? I’ve got my doubts.
There’s also the matter of who you’d get paired up with. Would I have the patience to work with someone with less skill than me, or worse, who could code circles around me?
An unlikely pair programming team-up. But remember this: He died for your segfaults!
Click to see the site from which this image came.
Theory and practice being two different things, I should give pair programming a try.
Jeff concludes his article with a request to his readers for their experiences with both code reviews and pair programming, followed by this:
In the end, I don’t think it’s a matter of picking one over the other so much as ensuring you have more than one pair of eyes looking at the code you’ve written, however you choose to do it. When your code is reviewed by another human being — whether that person is sitting right next to you, or thousands of miles away — you will produce better software. That I can guarantee.
A number of people have been emailing me and asking when I’m going to write about my new job. If you really need to know now, feel free to ask me offline and I’ll tell you. If you can wait, I’ll start posting about it next week — my first day is Monday, November 26th.
Although tomorrow is my last day at the office (I’ve taken time off to go down to the States for Thanksgiving), I am officially Tucows‘ Tech Evangelist until 5 p.m. on Friday. I wouldn’t feel right writing about the new place until then.
Screenshot from an example app written using the upcoming MVC franework for ASP.NET.
Ruby has Rails, Python has Django and Turbo Gears and PHP has Symfony, Cake and the Zend Framework. Where is the MVC framework for ASP.NET? Scott “ScottGu” Guthrie has an answer…
Two weeks ago I blogged about a new MVC (Model View Controller) framework for ASP.NET that we are going to be supporting as an optional feature soon. It provides a structured model that enforces a clear separation of concerns within applications, and makes it easier to unit test your code and support a TDD workflow. It also helps provide more control over the URLs you publish in your applications, and can optionally provide more control over the HTML that is emitted from them.
You’ll be able to start a new MVC web app in Visual Studio by selecting File -> New Project and then selecting ASP.NET MVC Web Application template to create a new web application using it. It’s compatible with any .NET unit-testing system (such as NUnit, MBUnit, MSTest and XUnit) and its deafult directory structure features three main directories named /Models, /Views and /Controllers — you get three guesses as to what goes in them. Easy setup of new projects, support for testing, a directory structure that gives you Rails deja vu — this should be an interesting project to follow.
Take a close look at the screenshot below and note the URL: it’s of the form /localhost/controller/action/id, an URL routing scheme that Rails coders should find very, very familiar:
I’m just skimming the surface here; Scott goes into considerably greater detail. I’ll be following the project with great interest and taking it for a spin once it becomes available to Visual Studio users.
It’s official: I handed my two weeks’ notice to Tucows on Monday. After four and a half years as their developer relations guy, during which time I held two titles (Technical Evangelist, and before that, the less wieldy Technical Community Development Coordinator), worked in two departments and occupied 5 different desks spread across two floors, I have decided to move on to a new job and with it, new challenges.
Networking accordion-style during a break at BloggerCon II in Boston (that’s Mass Ave. in the background, and yes, I’m wearing a cow-print vest).
Photo courtesy of Julie Leung.
Maybe it’s the whole “turning 40” thing, or maybe it’s the programming itch, but I feel that I need a change of scenery. Life at Tucows was pretty sweet, but I came across one of those rare — if a little bit risky — opportunities that life doesn’t hand you too often. As much as I loved my job at Tucows, I’d be have to be a fool and a coward to pass up the opportunity I’m about to take on.
My first desk at the Tucows office, taken Fall 2003.
Me at my second desk at the Tucows office, taken Winter 2004.
My third desk at the Tucows office, taken Spring 2006.
The view from my fifth desk at the Tucows office, taken Fall 2007.
The decision to leave Tucows was not an easy one. In many ways, the Technical Evangelist position was a dream job. It combined a number of things I love to do: programming, writing, schmoozing, graphic design and I even got to work in a little accordion playing. I’ve worked with some of the finest colleagues I have known, I’ve reported to some excellent bosses — first Ross Rader, then Ken Schafer, and finally Leona Hobbs, and for a CEO who is admired and respected throughout high tech, Elliot Noss.
A still from the webcam broadcast (no audio) of my first annual review, Spring 2004.
A still from the webcam broadcast (no audio) of my first annual review, Spring 2004. Those are Ross Rader’s hands.
A still from the webcam broadcast (no audio) of my first annual review, Spring 2004. That’s Ross Rader on the right.
One of the best things about my job was having the privilege of wearing the mantle of Tucows, a company that’s well-regarded in the world of high-tech. Walking into a room of techies and saying “I’m with Tucows” is like traveling through Europe with a Canadian flag sewn on your backpack, walking through Boston with a Red Sox cap or being able to play Take Me Home Country Roads on accordion in front a room of West Virginians — it establishes your bona fides and marks you as one of the good guys. I hope that Tucows has benefited equally from having the “Accordion Guy” as its head tech cheerleader.
Representing Tucows at a geek function at No Regrets with the accordion.
Speaking at the “Business of Blogging” seminar at IBM’s CASCON 2005.
A still from a CTV News piece on Google.
I’d like to thank my first Tucows boss, “Boss Ross” Rader, and his boss Elliot Noss for believing in me enough to hire me, and the two bosses who followed, Ken Schafer and Leona Hobbs, for being equally terrific. I’d also like to apologize to Leona for handing in my notice while she was on vacation (you know how it is with “windows of opportunity”). I also have to thank my teammates in Communications, Hasdeep Kharaud, Kari Dykes and James “Yes, that’s my real surname” Koole; it’s been a blast working (and lunching at Pho Asia 21) with you guys. Hell, I’m just going to thank the everyone in the company for making my four and a half years there an enjoyable experience.
Playing accordion at the evening keynote at RailsConf 2007 in Portland, Oregon.
At DemoCamp. “Amber’s being unprofessional again, isn’t she?”
Talking about Windows Vista on CityTV News, early 2007.
Flying the Tucows flag at the php|works conference, 2006.
My final day at the office will be next Tuesday, the 20th. I leave Tucows with mixed feelings: happy and excited about my new position (which I’ll talk about later) but sad to leave a great workplace and the company for whom I’ve worked the longest in my entire career. It’s been a great ride, guys — thanks!
Here’s a little graphic inspiration to help you with your customers:
Image courtesy of The Triumph of Bullshit.
Although it’s relatively old news, it’s all the buzz on the tech blogs today: Accordion Hero, the accordion version of the Guitar Hero videogame:
Alas, Accordion Hero is just a parody — it’s just a clever idea that’s been given it’s own website.
However, that doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t built an accordion-style for Guitar Hero-type games. Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Oded “SoundGuy” Sharon and the game controller that he created by hacking a toy accordion. Here’s a photo of Oded playing Frets on Fire (a Free Software version of Guitar Hero) with his “Accordion Hero” controller:
You can find out more about the controller in this entry on his blog.
Oded, you’re a true Accordion Hero — I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!