So i've been asked to demo a windows service to customers, but i'm clueless on how to go about doing so.
I've demo'd a web/windows based ap before by just bringing up the application and going through each screen, but with a windows service it isn't the same.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
All the service does is downloads a file from an ftp site and imports the file data into a db every half an hour.
Thanks
Do you have some way to trigger it? eg Does the service download on startup? Can you change the clock to trigger the download? Is the download interval configurable?
What about some way to view the results? Can you see the results over time, or is it only the latest version that's kept up to date?
Your demo could very well be:
Start the service
Examine the results
Wait for new results (if you can set the interval low enough)
Stop the service
You can demo both that you have have a windows service (Start / Stop commands can be demoed here), and that it performs the required function updates db every X minutes).
According to my view first you need to explain why you use a windows service. If your audience is non technical people you may need to tell them what is a windows service as well; plus why don't we have nice GUIs :)
And then you can have a sample FTP site with access to it. Then reduce your time period into something feasible like 1 or 2 mins. Then make some changes to FTP site and show the changes using a database access tool like DB visualizer. It would be nice if you can create a sample web page that loads some "nice" data from database so the viewers will see the changes in more 'interactive' manner... :) I don't think creation of such a page is a waste of time because it will be a more easier way to show them the change over time. Otherwise you will need to tell them about technical stuff related with the database that would be a waste of time...
With Web page : Hey!! See.. This is the change... Its indicated on web page huh..
Without the web page : Now you can see a new row added to this database's this table.. bla bla... ;)
Good luck..
You should spend time explaining what is going on. Detail the things you had to do to get it to work the way you wanted. Talk about things other people can do that are wrong. Tell them what you did that's better. Explain to them that the end result might be the same but security this or overhead that.
Looks like you need to sell your product a little.
I would also suggest some sort of flowchart if you don't have one already. They love those diagrams.
Talk about other possible solutions and why this is better. They want you to tell them things they can vaguely remember and parrot to other people. They don't know what you're talking about. They don't care how it really works.
A little bit of this, done right, goes a long way. People can and have bullshitted their way into millions of dollars like this, but it catches up with them and their reputation is ruined. Don't blatantly make stuff up. There's a difference between telling them you kept security in mind when developing this service, and telling them that it's bulletproof and this will be sitting next to the cockroaches after a Nuclear War.
First of all ask yourself:
Who am I demoing this to?
What do they want to get out of the demo?
Regarding "who", are they technical people? Business people? Smart people? Clueless people? Those are important things to understand before deciding how to demo the product (and shame on some of you readers for assuming the technical people are also smart and the business people are also clueless ;-)
If your audience knows what a windows service is, how they work in general, and roughly what yours is supposed to accomplish, you can jump in and explain the finer points of your solution. If that's not the case, you will want to start out by explaining that you have a solution to show them that is running all of the time waiting for new work to arrive, then automatically starts processing when that new work arrives... or whatever your windows service actually does. If this is what you're facing, try explaining it to your mom (assuming your mom isn't a programming wizard).
Regarding "what they want" from the demo, ask yourself if they want to know technically how the service is written and functions (what events trigger new work items? Does it have a DB back end? How is the service monitored for 24/7 availability?).
Do they care more about the business function? "OK so it can process time cards for employees as they are submitted. Can it also process time cards for contractors?"... that sort of thing.
Once you have figured out WHO and WHAT, look over the advice from the other posters and see what is a good match.
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I've been a developer for 10 years (non iOS), and working for a large company have never created applications end to end. Just worked on very large applications, on pieces.
I'm starting to get into iOS for fun, and have an app in my head that I want to create. I've wireframed the entire thing using the iOS app 'interface'. Since then, I've begun to start coding. I have about 15 scenes in storyboard (the total app will probably be 100+), and right now I'm just using hardcoded 'fake' data.
However, I've recently begun to think that maybe I should be creating the database and some initial data there instead of using all this hardcoded fake data.
Does anyone have any suggestions and reasons why one way is better than another?
Should I create the back end before the front end? If I do, then each new scene I add I can work the real data in from the beginning instead of having to replace fake hard coded data.
Also, I know little about creating back ends. The application I'm creating is nothing like twitter, but for data access and for this example, let's say it is. It's main view of the application is something like twitter. The user can hit refresh and get many new data points ('tweets' in twitter) from the server. So the application could be very data intensive. Am I best off using something like Parse and paying for their services, or creating something in LAMP, or something else. I've worked with SQL and database a lot in my last 10 years and am very comfortable with that aspect of the back end.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks!
I'd say you have 3 options here :
Front-end first, back-end afterwards
Good thing is while developing your front-end, you may understand what's really relevant and what isn't. You probably won't do anything unnecessary on the back-end part. A bad thing though is that bad stuff may happen when you try to connect you back-end to your front-end, and involve some code refactoring on the front-end side, if you don't make sure they at least can work together.
Back-end first, front-end afterwards
You may here not really see where you're going while developing the back-end. You'll see (you may even know it already) that what you'll create for the client-side may not really be as it looked in your head.. You'll probably have to rework a lot on the back-end.
Front-and-back-end together
This is how I usually work. Start the front-end just as you did with hard-coded data, and start asap to work on the back-end. Move your boilerplate data on it, just so you can make sure they communicate well. Then, try to work on both simultaneously. That way, if you change your mind about something on one side, you won't have to redo much code on the other side.
Regarding the back-end solution, pretty much all I can say is that I used Parse.com services, and it's really good. In my case, I was not ready to create an entire back-end by myself. If you can, maybe you don't need them. But, (and it's a big one), Parse's SDK can take care of the whole communication between your back-end and your front-end. You don't have to manage network availability, caching stuff, and every thing you have to think about when you develop for a mobile OS. This is very nice.
Their free plan lets you run 1M queries every month, which is quite a lot. But if you want to go further and reduce the number of requests to Parse, you can combine your own back-end and theirs. It may not work for your specific case, but you can have the user access your server to check if new data is available, and only then query Parse. For example, for a news app, have the news on parse.com, store the most recent news date on your server, save the last update date on the client device, and before accessing parse, compare the dates with your server. If needed, query parse, if not, go to the cache (handled by parse's SDK). That way you can limit the number of queries and stay in the free plan.
You should probably try to estimate the number of queries you'll have per month and the monetary impact before choosing.
Just my own opinion :]
I would suggest you to add new features to your app with the smallest possible complexity. Like e. g. "The user can see a list of all registered users." - This example might not fit perfectly well for your case, but I hope you get the point: build one small thing at a time.
But for these small things: make the full trip front and back. Since it shouldn't take you too long to complete such a feature, it doesn't really matter if you complete the frontend or the backend first. So for this part: basically what #rdurand already said ;)
Regarding the backend I see two options:
Either you create some REST-Services yourself. The choice of technilogy should depend on what you know already. I am a big fan of JAX-RS, but if you don't already have some java experience you might have hard time with this.
Use some kind of SAAS-API. I've heard some good things about http://www.apiomat.com/, but never used it myself...
Good luck ;)
There is Ruby on Rails (1.8, 2.3.2) project. First version of project was made by some organisation. I will implement next versions of this project without any help from this organisation. I will be able to talk with developers from previous development team during meeting (1-3 hours).
Project statistics: ~10k LOC, 1.0/0.6 code to test ratio, rspec
What questions about project can you recommend to ask?
First review the entire project and to figure out as much as possible so you have context and can actually understand what they tell you.
Ask
If you can record the conversation
For an architectural overview
Why they made certain architectural decisions over another
A complete list of dependencies (if you can't figure that out on your own)
What the biggest problems are
Which parts of the projects are always / never being fixed
What the Achilles' Heel of the project is
What will cause the biggest headaches
What security issues are there and what the constraint is to fixing it
What would you do next if you were me?
What you should know that you didn't ask (most important question)
Also, don't be judgemental, you want them to reveal any problems they know about. There are probably tons of things wrong with the app that they are embarassed about, which you need to know sooner rather than later. They're not going to open up to you if they don't trust you.
I would ask for a code walkthrough. Not line-by-line, but more for the overall structure of the project, relationships between individual modules, etc.
Find out the Why's. How is easy enough to see in the codebase, but the why is sometimes impossible to figure out, and will bite you in the ass.
For instance...
Which parts of the application were the biggest performance issues? Which of those issues were resolved? Which are still issues?
Why did you opt for pattern / tool / library x? What other things did you consider? Why?
This will hopefully. (Hit some wood.) Help keep you from having to trudge through the same learning curve and mistakes that the first team had to deal with, and should give you good insight into where the first team actually made a poor choice, instead of making a choice based on factors you have not accounted for yet.
Ask if the new features will cause any major changes to the existing code (architecturally) and what the implication of that will be with other dependent parts of the application.
Also get their emails, as you will have more questions.
One of the most important things, in my opinion, is to get as much technical documentation as you can prior to meeting with them. You should try to go into the meeting as informed as possible, so that you not only know what areas you need to focus on the most, but also to have a preexisting knowledge of how some of the subsystems relate to each other.
Also, do not be afraid to ask what they would have done differently, if given the chance. Some of the best ideas come too late in the development process to be implemented - be it from library availability, change in requirements, change in team, etc.
Bring cookies (or pizza, beer, or wine as appropriate); you will want them to have positive memories of you for when you call with questions.
Edit: to put my answer in the form of a question: "May I offer you a home-baked cookie?"
Perhaps you have done this already, but I would make sure you can:
Checkout the latest version
Run all the migrations
Run all the tests
Deploy (even if to a staging server)
Run the application locally
Before you go to the meeting, so you can make sure you can by the time it is over.
Other things that might be useful
data model
UI wireframes
bug tracker data / issue tracker data
who are the customers / people representing customers
development environment configuration
source control locations, etc.
explanation of special configuration settings
Wow! All great answers, right down to the cookies.
My contribution assumes that this is your one and only chance to access the old dev team, therefore you need to kick it up a notch:
Agenda. Split the meeting into several parts, for instance:
A quick (15 min) introduction and arch overview
One on one with team members.
Design review as a group, etc.
Positive Energy. Especially if the relationship is inherently difficult, keep a positive focus by postulating: what improvements would you put into the next version - (rewrite is not an option, right Joel) - capture every nuance, and drill down past their comfort level only nearer the end.
Facilitator. Use a trained design meeting facilitator. They can help prep for the meeting, conduct pre-meeting interviews, design the agenda. During the meeting they can drive the intensity, and keep the focus. They can also suggest forms of capturing what can be a fair amount of information.
Also, I would try to id all design artifacts beyond the code, if any, and come to an understanding of how accurate it is. This may include doing design reviews of key elements of these documents vis a vis the as-built system.
Don
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At a place I used to work they typical response to any problem was to blame the hardware or the users for not using the system perfectly. I had adopted the philosophy that it's my fault until I can prove otherwise prior to that job (and so far, at least 99 times out of 100 it's correct).
One of the last "unsolvable" problems when I was there was an abundance of database timeouts. After months of research, I still only had theories but couldn't prove any of them. One of my developers adamantly suggested replacing the network (every router, switch, access point) but couldn't provide any evidence that the network was the cause; it was, however, "obviously the cause" according to my manager (no development/IT experience) so he took over the problem. One caveat and Fog Creek plug: He couldn't account for the fact that the error reporting via FogBugz worked perfectly and to the same SQL Server as the rest of the data.
A couple, timeout-free months later, my manager boasted that he had fixed the timeouts ("Look, no timeouts!"). I had to hold back from grabbing a rock and saying "Look, no tigers!" but I did ask how he knew they would have occurred to which I got no response. The timeouts did return (and in greater numbers) a couple months later.
I'm pretty content with how I handled the situation but I'm curious how the SO crowd would have responded to letting a superior/colleague implement a solution you know (or are very sure) is wrong and will likely waste thousands of dollars?
Let them, but at the same time continue searching for the real cause.
A couple thousand dollars is money well spent if it keeps me from going against that kind of thinking (which is futile).
Well, if the problem is upper management, then I would do as you have done - lodge your complaint, then follow instructions. If it turns out they were right (it happens every now and then) then you look like a good employee despite your misgivings. If it turns out you were right, then they might be more willing to listen to you given that you allowed them their turn.
This is, of course, optimistic.
In the case of a colleague, take the problem up a level and consult your superiors for advice on how to approach the subject. Be fair to both your perspective and that of your colleague's, then follow the advice you're given.
Sometimes it's best to leave a manager be. If you think about his pressures and responsibilities he had to be seen to be doing something, rather than "nothing". After enough time "investigating" resolves into nothing to outside parties that need the timeouts to stop.
By taking an action he creates an opportunity to keep researching. The trick is to find a way to put your solutions in his context. Here is something we can do now, and here's what we can continue to do. For example, "We can replace the networking gear as a precautionary step, and then look at the version control logs to rule out that possibility."
This gives him something proactive so he can look productive up his chain while achieving the solution you want which will ultimately be successful.
In the long term you should look to work for someone who trusts your technical decisions implicitly, you can talk candidly with and who well help you help him navigate the politics in a way you both know what's going on. If you manager isn't that person, move.
Is this a big problem? Its not your job to save your company dollars other than that you would like your company to remain solvent so you get paid.
If its just one manager, he will be weeded out sooner or later, if your entire company culture is like this, maybe it would be time to move on.
In the mean time, see if you can see this from your manager's perspective.
I'd consider you're manager's intent to be a good thing. It's the people that don't want to bother that I find more difficult. It's just best to find a way to use that energy to be helpful.
One common problem for lots of people (occasionally myself), is that they flail around when trying to diagnose a problem. If you're wildly guessing at it, then particularity with modern computers, you have only the slimmest possibility of being right. Approaching this type of problem with that type of attitude, generally means that you'll never fix it.
The best way of handing complex debugging, is by divide and conquer. In this case, first think up a test, them implement it. Did that test act as expected? Depending on where you are with your tests, you are getting closer or farther away from the problem. The key, is that ALL of the tests must result in some concrete (objective) behavior. If the results are ambiguous, then the test is useless.
If you're getting a disconnect in part of the system, but some other part is not, then you have a huge amount of valuable information (it also shows it's not the network). What's the difference between the parts? Just start descending until you get somewhere ...
Getting back to your manager. Whenever I encounter that type of personality problem, I try to redirect the energy into something more useful. The desire is there, it just needs some help in getting shaped. If you can convince your manager to make sure the tests are concrete, then if they do enough of them, they'll produce enough information to correctly guess the bug. Sure, a more consistent approach might be faster, but why turn down some free assistance. I generally feel that there is some useful role for anyone on any project, it's all about making it possible to harness their efforts ....
Paul.
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I work as a PHP developer, and my boss is driving me crazy. He calls me every now and then, gives me tasks even when the previous tasks haven't been completed. Forbids me from meeting with clients and tells me incomplete specification verbally or over the phone, and expects to have working applications from the first deployment. Can any body suggest a way to curb this guys enthusiasm?
document what you are spending your time doing.
document requirements as they come in (through whatever channel)
provide both of these to your boss as frequently as necessary in order facilitate conversation about missing requirements or prioritization of your time
Start looking for another job and give him a pre-notice. This will curb his enthusiasm. Some people are to be avoided at all costs.
//Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
Talk to him about the communication problems. It's usually a two-way problem. If he's giving you incomplete specs, why aren't you asking for more complete ones?
If you just want to stick it to him, then find a better job. If you're committed to making it work, then put some serious thought into the root of the problems you're having, and get him on board with helping you solve them.
I'd suggest having some sort of task list somewhere so that when your boss adds something to this list, he can see what you are doing and have estimates for how long some things will take.
As for the requirements being incomplete, this is why some like Agile approaches where you would get your boss in to test something regularly to verify that it is acceptable before putting something into production.
As others have mentioned who can type faster than me, one thing you can do is to try setting up some type of project management/bug tracking system for him to use. I've used FogBugz with success which requires no installation and has a free plan for small teams. You can setup an email account that he can send requests to.
When proposing this to your boss, do it in a way that will show that your goal is to help keep track of your tasks and priorities. But also be prepared for additional work. If he is agreeable to it he may want to see frequent status reports and where you are spending all of your time.
If you can get more complete specifications this can help drastically. It'll help you understand the project better. It'll help you estimate time for completion. And my favorite -- it'll help prevent double-work. There's nothing worse than getting incomplete requirements, building something wrong, and then finding out that you need to redo it.
If you can I'd try to find a good way to suggest this to your boss without stepping on any toes. If he understands the benefits he may be more open to the idea of being more thorough with you. What it'll really do is make you more efficient at your job.
Oh, and you may want to take a look at my answer to this question relating to time estimation:
How am I supposed to know how many days something will take?
The other suggestions of keeping things in writing at least for yourself are valid. However, for the kind of boss you describe with which I have some familiarity, it may not work.
Some bosses just never learn or already know what they are doing is wrong and do it anyway because to them, saying "yes" to the client and getting a signoff on a bigger contract today is more important than programming methodology that could delay a payment for 3 weeks (testing? why do we need to test? you tested it, right? two weeks for function X?! all you have to do is add a button, right?).
To many bosses, programming is just one of the tools needed to run their business. To them, it's a business to make money and programming methodology/quality is secondary.
What you do to keep yourself sane and safe if you want to stay with this boss is at least keep written records of every request and when problems come up, remind him why they happened. If possible, ask that all specs be delivered at least by email instead of verbally.
You always have the choice of going somewhere else if things don't improve.
Good luck.
I have struggled with this same problem at a few jobs.
I've observed that there is a type of programmer who can survive in this environment: one who simply works on whatever the boss says is the priority of the moment, and doesn't worry about deadlines at all. Just keep putting things on the back burner, and resume working on them the next time the boss asks for it. Endure the occasional tirade from your boss when something he asked you to start 12 months ago isn't done yet, because you've been working on whatever he gives you.
If you aren't comfortable with that sort of existence (and I would not be), then the best strategy I can suggest is that you have an open conversation with your boss about it:
It's important to me to do a good job,
but I feel like the work requests are
coming in faster than I can complete
them. I know that priorities
inevitably shift, so I'd like some
help from you to understand when this
happens, and how to balance my time
among the tasks to best meet your
needs. Can we talk about how to stay
in sync about priorities?
If the tasks can't be prioritized,
then I need you to understand that I
can't be productive on so many tasks
at once. It's just not humanly
possible. Have you considered hiring
additional programmers so we can
balance the workload and get it all done
in a timely way?
If he tries to stall or contradict or tells you to "work smarter, not harder" then you can escalate:
Let me put it another way: if you continue to give me tasks at the rate you have been, but don't prioritize them clearly, then you are going to hire another programmer. Whether this hire is your second programmer, or else my replacement, is up to you.
Basically, communication is good. Start by being diplomatic and phrasing everything in terms of how you contribute to his success. But increase the degree of bluntness until it sinks in.
I took a data structures class in C++ last year, and consequently implemented all the major data structures in templated code. I saved it all on a flash drive because I have a feeling that at some point in my life, I'll use it again. I imagine something I end up programming will need a B-Tree, or is that just delusional? How long do you typically save the code you write for possible reuse?
Forever (or as close as I can get). That's the whole point of a source control system.
-1 to saving everything that's ever produced. I liken that to a proud parent saving every single used nappy ever to grace the cheeks of their little nipper. It's shitty and the world doesn't benefit from it's existence.
How many people here go past the first page in google on a regular basis? Having so much crap around only seems to make it difficult to find anything useful.
+1 to keeping code forever. In this day and age, there's just no reason to delete data which could possibly be of value in the future. Even if you don't use the B-Tree as a useful structure, you may want to look at the code to see how you did something. Or even better, you may wish to come back to the code someday for instructional purposes. You'll never know when you might want to look at that one particular sniblet of code that accomplished a task in a certain way.
If I use it, it gets stuck in a Bazaar repository and uploaded to Launchpad. If it's a little side project that pitters out, I usually move it to a junk/ subdirectory.
I'll use it again. I imagine something I end up programming will need a B-Tree, or is that just delusional?
Something you write will need a B-tree, but you'll be able to use a library for it because the real world values working solutions over extra code.
I keep backups of all of my code for as long as possible. The important things are backed up on my web server and external hdd. You can always delete things later, but if you think you might find a use for it, why not keep it?
I still have (some) code I wrote as far back as college, and that would be 18 years ago :-). As is often the case, it is better to have it and never want it, than to want it and not have it.
Source control, keep it offsite and keep it for life! You'll never have to worry about it.
I have code from many, many years ago. In fact, I think I still have my first php script. If nothing else, it's a good way to see how much you have changed over time.
I agree with the other posters. I've kept my code from school in a personal source code repository. What harm does hanging on to it really do?
I would just put it on a disk for historical sake. Use the
Standard Template Library - one mistake people make is assuming that thier implementation of moderate to complex data structures are the best. I can't tell you how many times I have found a bug in a home grown B-tree implementation.
Keep everything! You never know when it will save you some work. About a year ago I needed some c code to parse an expression, tokenize it for storage, and evaluate the results latter. Ugly little piece of code.. But is seemed familiar, as it should have- I had to do a post-fix evaluator in college (30 years ago)- and still had the code. Admittedly it needed a little clean-up, but saved me a couple of days of work.
I implemented a red black tree in Java while in in college. I have always wanted to find that code again and cannot.
Now I do not have the time to recreate it from scratch since I have three kids and do not develop in Java.
I now keep everything so that I can relearn much faster. I also find it fascinating to see how I did something 1, 5, 10 years ago. It makes me feel good because I either did it right or I am better now and would do it differently
If I ever go back to college to give a lecture to future students it in on the list of things to do:
Save everything...
I'm a code packrat, for better or worse, but I guard it, because sometimes it's client-confidential.
On occasion, this has been really useful, like if a client lost their stuff, or their documentation.
I lost a lot of old code (from 10 years ago) because of computer failure that wasn't backed up but in fact I do not really care because I do not really want to see code that is programmed in very old language. Most of this code was written in VB5...
I agree that now it's easy to keep everything but I think sometime it's good to clean up our backup/computer storage because it's like in the real world, we do not need to keep everything forever.
Forever is the beauty of the electronic medium. That's one of the most attractive aspects for me.
But, the keeping of it depends on your coding style, and what you do with it.
I'd suggest tossing your code if you're the type that...
Never looks back.
Would rather re-write from your memory to improve your craft.
Isn't very organized.
Is bothered by latent storage to no end.
Likes to live on the edge.
Worships efficiency of memory.
Logical reasons for tossing could would be...
It bothers you.
It disrupts your workflow by getting in your way.
You're ashamed of it.
It confuses you and distracts you.
Like anything that takes up physical space in life, it's value is weighed against it's usefulness.
All my code is kept indefinitely, with plans to return to it at some point, reflect, and refactor. I do that because it's fun to see my progress, and provides very accessible learning experiences. Furthermore, the incorporation of all my code into a consolidated framework is something I work towards all the time.
Forever...
Good code never dies. ;)
I don't own most of the code I develop: my employer does. So I don't keep that code (my employer does - or should).
Since I discovered computing, I wrote code for devices that no longer exist in languages that are no longer worth. Maybe there is some emulator but keeping that code and running it would be nostalgia.
You can find B-tree information (and many other subjects) on Wikipedia (and many other places). There is no need to keep that code.
In the end I keep only code that I own and maintain.