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Closed 10 years ago.
Is there anyone working solo and using fogbugz out there? I'm interested in personal experience/overhead versus paper.
I am involved in several projects and get pretty hammered with lots of details to keep track of... Any experience welcome.
(Yes I know Mr. Joel is on the stackoverflow team... I still want good answers :)
I use it, especially since the hosted Version of FugBugz is free for up to 2 people. I found it a lot nicer than paper as I'm working on multiple projects, and my paper tends to get rather messy once you start making annotations or if you want to re-organize and shuffle tasks around, mark them as complete only to see that they are not complete after all...
Plus, the Visual Studio integration is really neat, something paper just cannot compete with. Also, if you lay the project to rest for 6 months and come back, all your tasks and notes are still there, whereas with paper you may need to search all the old documents and notes again, if you did not discard it.
But that is just the point of view from someone who is not really good at staying organized :-) If you are a really tidy and organized person, paper may work better for you than it does for me.
Bonus suggestion: Run Fogbugz on a second PC (or a small Laptop like the eeePC) so that you always have it at your fingertips. The main problem with Task tracking programs - be it FogBugz, Outlook, Excel or just notepad - is that they take up screen space, and my two monitors are usually full with Visual Studio, e-Mail, Web Browsers, some Notepads etc.
Go to http://www.fogbugz.com/ then at the bottom under "Try It", sign up.
under Settings => Your FogBugz Hosted Account, it should either already say "Payment Information: Using Student and Startup Edition." or there should be some option/link to turn on the Student and Startup Edition.
And yes, it's not only for Students and Startups, I asked their support :-)
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with FogCreek and Joel did not just deposit money in my account.
When I was working for myself doing my consulting business I signed up for a hosted account and honestly I couldn't have done without it.
What I liked most about it was it took 30 seconds to sign up for an account and I was then able to integrate source control using sourcegear vault (which is an excellent source control product and free for single developers) set up projects, clients, releases and versions and monitor my progress constantly.
One thing that totally blew me away was that I ended up completely abandoning outlook for all work related correspondence. I could manage all my client interactions from within fogbugz and it all just worked amazingly well.
In terms of overhead, one of the nice things you could do was turn anything into a case. Anything that came up in your mind while you were coding, you simply created a new email, sent it to fogbugz and it was instantly added as an item for review later.
I would strongly recommend you get yourself one of the hosted accounts and give it a whirl
In addition to the benefits already mentioned, another nice feature of using FogBugz is BugzScout, which you can use to report errors from your app and log them into FogBugz automatically. If you're a one person team, chances are there are some bugs in your code you've never seen during your own testing, so it's nice to have those bugs found "in the wild" automatically reported and logged for you.
I use it as well and quite frankly wouldn't want to work without it.
I've always had some kind of issue tracker available for the projects I work on and thus am quite used to updating it. With FB6 the process is now even better.
Since FB also integrates with Subversion, the source control tool I use for my projects, the process is really good and I have two-way links between the two systems now. I can click on a case number in the Subversion logs and go to the case in FB, or see the revisions bound to a case inside FB.
I think it's great that Joel et al. let people use FogBugs hosted for free on their own. It's a great business strategy, because the users become fans (it is great software after all), and then they recommend it to their businesses or customers.
Yea FogBugz is great for process-light, quick and easy task management. It seems especially well suited for soloing, where you don't need or want a lot of complexity in that area.
By the way, if you want to keep track of what you're doing at the computer all day, check out TimeSprite, which integrates with FogBugz. It's a Windows app that logs your active window and then categorizes your activity based on the window title / activity type mappings you define as you go. (You can also just tell it what you're working on.) And if you're a FogBugz user, you can associate your work with a FogBugz case, and it will upload your time intervals for that case. This makes accurate recording of elapsed time pretty painless and about as accurate as you can get, which in turn improves FogBugz predictive powers in its evidence-based scheduling. Also, when soloing, I find that such specific logging of my time keeps me on task, in the way a meandering manager otherwise might. (I'm not affiliated with TimeSprite in any way.)
Related
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Closed 10 years ago.
Suppose you spent the last six months on a legacy system project, large corp obsolete web platform, integrating alien data structures.
Now you are finally off and you can go with a brand new startup project in Ruby.
The application will be built from scratch and is up to you to decide which gem you are going to use.
The question can be extended to the various aspects of building a brand new web application, but for semplicity, just suppose you need an authentication system.
Now, the last time you put in place that in Rails, was "authlogic" and it was so cool compared whith "authentication_fu", but while you where "in the cave" you just heard about several other way to authenticate, something like clearance, device, omniauth, warden, sorcery, twitter-auth, open_id_authentication and may others.
Even worst, suppose you can "just imagine" Ruby community is not sleeping and in six months, she was blowing up new ideas and paradigms about "authentication pattern" but you didn't find the time to be updated.
You just want to go outside there, having a look at what's going on, finding all the new gem arising and deciding what fill better your next project.
How do you do it ?
Thanks in advance
Luca G. Soave
UPDATE Sep 18 10:36
Ruby toolbox compares gems in the same category by the metrics described - by Andrew Grimm
UPDATE Sep 17 02:09
Several people tried to clarify the process to discover and choose the right Ruby gem for "the next brand new Ruby project". I'd like to summarize what I learned from everyone by listing what in my comprension are the main steps :
About the process of deciding between gems in the same field:
try a few of them yourself - by semperos
give them each a test drive, make sure there is heavy activity on github, watching last
commits - by ealdent
choose the the Loosely Coupled Gems vs Monolitic Frameworks, giving priority to agile and fast implementation and continuous refactoring - by Craig Stuntz
getting expert of a gem/domain field, in order to be able to decide between gems - by james_schorr
don’t choose “WOW-things and Cool Fresh releases” for your production client projects, but test it daily on minor and private testing projets - by mikhailov
About the process to discover & choose the right gem, the last one by jeremiahd, is a deep, clear and very useful description of the process :
search around for what seem like the most commonly installed libraries that cover my use case
take a look at their documentation, to see how complete and readable it seems
look at the activity in their community : updates - mailing lists - wiki -
IRC - commits - mood
look at their code : test suites - clean code - documents - useful comments -
use their code
quality of the community and code
do it as a learning process, get a better programmer and give back to your community
END UPDATE Sep 17 02:09
Feel free to add more, ... share your point of view.
What I do (when this problem rears it's head in any language) is I search around for what seem like the most commonly installed libraries that cover my use case. I then take a look at their documentation, to see how complete and readable it seems.
Next I look at the activity in their community -- are projects actively updated? Are there easily accessible mailing lists / a wiki/ IRC? How active are they? What's the general tone?
Next I look at their code. Are there test suites? Are they test suites that help me understand the library? Is the code clean? Documented? Commented usefully? Does it look like a ridiculous mess, or like it's had thought put into it at every point?
Next I use their code in a simplified, but similar, manner to how I actually need to use it. Did I run into any major stumbling blocks?
Screw flipping a coin and sticking with it. Sooner or later, whatever lib you're using isn't going to serve your needs, and you'll want to modify it's behavior. When that time comes, the quality of the community and the quality of the code are what make libraries stand out from one another.
This is, of course, a bit fuzzy. And it can be a challenging thing to do, but you'll be a better programmer for it, and assuming you do it enough, you'll probably be contributing back upstream to the libraries you use at some point, which is pretty awesome.
Pick one and run with it. The important point is not what you choose right now, but how hard it will be to change your mind six months down the road. In short, your efforts should not go into making one, permanent decision which will bind you for the lifetime of the project, but on isolating the dependencies on the authorization system to a single (as much as possible) small and easily swapped bit of code.
In my opinion, you should try a few of them yourself.
It seems that Devise has become somewhat of a de facto choice, with mechanisms to support a variety of authentication styles. That might be a nice place to start, but you should obviously try to make it do what you want, and if it doesn't work, try others of the gems you mention.
Rails does not have a "default" authentication mechanism pre-built because authentication tends to be specific to each project. Try several out, see which one fits your needs and programming style best.
I mostly agree with Craig Stuntz, you should just pick one and run with it (and build your app so that it can be swapped out, if possible).
I will suggest, however, that doing that means you give them each a test drive. Perhaps you don't do that in your main project, but really, until you actually use the thing, you will never know just how messed up it is. And no matter how much love the community is throwing at a gem today, you can be sure there are serious issues with it.
For relatively new gems, you also need to make sure there is heavy activity on github or whatever, so that the gem isn't going to stagnate any time soon. If I don't see a commit in the past few weeks, it makes me really uneasy about using a gem that isn't already mature.
I spent a lot of time looking at authentication gems and landed on Devise. It's been great. All of the above tips are great.
I wrote a blog post on this very question - How to pick the right Ruby Gem?
http://www.railstutors.com/blog/how-to-pick-the-right-ruby-gem
The main idea - First check if really need a gem to do what you want; Then some consideration on how to evaluate a Ruby gem. I also happened to use an Authentication as use case so you may find that interesting.
It is my daily choice, what is the way we go tomorrow to satisfy our clients needs. How to be on the edge and keep users happy with stable and reliable system?
First off, we do not accept WOW-things and Cool Fresh releases. We will use new things in 0.5 year, as a tesing period. Yes, we still on Rails 2.3.10. Upgrade to Rails 3 will be next month for us. We have codebase with Core covered by tests, Rspec do great job for us, there is about 94 tests.
But, we try modern gems during daily development and do small projects to see how they work. It's easy and free, take the time only. Railscasts satisfy interest in cool stuff too, it's important to see each of them.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm a Ruby on Rails newbie. I'm learning Rails in my spare time (my day job is C++ developer) and I like it. I would like to be paid to do Rails development full-time instead of C++.
How can I find a job in Rails when most job offering requires 2-5 years of Rails experience? What is the most effective strategy to get some credibility as a Rails Developer?
Thanks in advance for your answers.
I can't tell you how to get hired. I can give you the story of how I got hired, though. It may be helpful. Rather than putting the summary at the bottom, it's quite the long post:
Have a pet project
Learn all the time
TATFT: Test all the fucking time
Attend the local user groups
Share all the cool shiny things you come across
Contribute back to open source
Be active, helpful and constantly visible in the community
I got started with Ruby on Rails in September of 2006. My first project was not a blogging system like was cool at the time, but a forum system. I remember one of my first questions in the #rubyonrails channel was asking why I was getting an undefined method find on Thread, not knowing Thread was already a class.
In June 2007, I was hired at my first Rails job. I didn't know much then, perhaps a smidgeon more now. So as you can see, the process wasn't instant. Very few processes are.
What happened during this interval though was (aside from PHP contracting, being a checkout bitch and studying) that I continued asking questions in the #rubyonrails channel and refining the forum system until I got something I was happy with. In April 2007 the first official user group meeting of my home town begun and I attended that, mentioned I was doing PHP work whilst toying around with Ruby and was offered three business cards on the spot. I basically did cards.rand and picked a job that landed me an 8-month contract which I enjoyed.
I learned a huge amount during this job, as you should with any job. I applied what I learned to my forums, refining it using the techniques I was learning on the job. I've been refining it further and further since then and in its current incarnation it's probably my Open Source Magnum Opus.
After I left that job I was quickly picked up at another company where, again, I learned new things and applied what I had learned to my open source work. One of the greatest things to learn was automated testing. If you're not writing tests, you're at a huge disadvantage to those who are. I know of many prospective employers who are looking for people who can write good tests for their code.
Now that Github's about, I have a nice central location to share all my work where prospective employers can look. The only feature I crave from Github would be a list of all the projects I've ever contributed to, since this is what lures most employers. So far the "Big Three" in my mind would be: RSpec (better Hash diffing + other changes), Cucumber (That list of failing scenarios when Things Go Wrong(tm)) and Rails (documentation such as the Querying Guide and the in-progress Initialization Guide as well as bug fixes).
It also doesn't hurt to keep a blog of the technical (and not so technical) things you come across. If you provide useful information, you'll get noticed for that too. I got noticed enough that I was recruited to write a book.
I also attended the second Railscamp event in November 2007 where I met one of my future bosses and made a lot of "connections" with people in the Ruby community. I then went on to run a Railscamp in Adelaide (#4), and assisted with the ones following that in varying degrees.
I'm also very active in the community, helping out on of course here and the IRC channels on Freenode. Helping out is definitely one of the ways I've learned how to be a better Rails coder. You can witness other people making mistakes and suggest fixes, and also watch other people suggest fixes that you may not have thought of.
Currently, I'm teaching people Ruby on Rails and when there's nobody to teach I do development work. That's my day job. The night job is writing the book. I would advise you to only have one job, because over-work can lead to burn outs. That's what weekends are for, or so I'm told.
The best thing that you can do is have a live web application that is being used and is providing a useful service. Bring your laptop with the source code along on interviews and walk through it, demonstrating your mastery of and passion for the technology.
Contribute to open-source Ruby-on-Rails projects. You'll find lots of them on Github.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I'm considering Prestashop for a new project. It seems to be younger than Zen-Cart and osCommerce. Since I just found it by Google, I'd like to gather comments and experience and comparison of Prestashop to established "brands" like Zen-Cart and osCommerce
I work daily with PrestaShop. I think that it's the perfect solution for an average project. If you need something extremely fancy (but also extremely difficult to configure/use) you should go for Magento. I'm a programmer and I've had difficulties setting it up like I wanted. The learning curve is too steep. Of course it brings other advantages, but the project has to be big enough to make up for the time lost in learning to use the the platform.
The thing I like the most about PrestaShop it's the ease of use (for both the developer and the shop admin). Its modular system completely demolishes osCommerce. Everytime I have to work on an osCommerce shop, I cringe. It's outdated and it's not a good option, by any means. If you need to change the layout of the store, you just drag modules around in the Back Office. There's no cutting and pasting code in PHP files. The same for installing new modules.
In my opinion, PrestaShop is mature enough at this point. There are hundreds of modules you can use to customize it to your liking (just do a google search or try their forum). The template system is also top-notch and easy to use. Take a look at what you can do: http://www.templatemonster.com/prestashop-themes.php
I also messed around with VirtueMart. It's not a bad solution if you want to integrate your shop with a CMS (Joomla). There's also TomatoCart, a new-comer (they still don't have documentation for developers) that's based on osCommerce 3 alpha, but from what I've seen it's a major improvement. The Back Office is amazing.
Summing it up, I think PrestaShop is excellent if you need something that's easy to use, easy to configure and flexible. Magento is better for LARGE projects because there's a lot of overhead. If you are planning on configuring more stores in the future, the time lost learning Magento might be acceptable.
We install and review all open source eCommerce solutions as a matter of course. So we have looked in depth at all the one mentioned here. I prefer osCommerce to Prestashop. Prestashop is too immature and simply does not have the in-built functionality or breadth of Add Ons. It is not a "lite" version of Magento by any means.
As to the other poster's comment about osCommerce and Magento. Magento is an out of the box solution which is very difficult to customize. You need to be a programmer to work with it and even then the learning curve is steep. And if you do customize, you then are buying out of their upgrade path. Which is why the average site does not customize and why so many Magento stores look so much alike.
Unlike Magento, osCommerce has and always will be intended as a core eCommerce solution on which you build you own unique eCommerce solution.
Two different approaches to building an eCommerce site. One is cookie cutter then other is fast track to custom solution.
As one that love working with Magento i just wanted to show you this article.
If i were in the works of setting up an site for online commerce, i wouldn't choose ZenCart or OSC. They are both old and doesnt update at all. But thats just an personal opinion. And i work a lot with these things.
My Prestashop knowledge is limited though, but if its anything like Magento i would recommend it. Cuz Magento is by far the leading commerce platform atm. Also just my 2 cents.
Magento vs Prestashop
More reading OSC vs ZenCart
PrestaShop is an impressive new entry to the field, with a very attractive user interface and impressive product option/variant capabilities (like Zen Cart attributes). One downside is that it's much harder to modify; there is nothing like the Zen Cart "templating " capability so you're always changing core files. This gets hard to manage with the frequent release schedule PrestaShop is using. But you should definitely install it and spend some time testing it and evaluating its suitability for your shop.
prestashop is much easier than zen cart, oscommerce and magento. the easiest thing to do is try to install them as they are all free.
#Arta incorrectly stated, with regard to ZenCart,
They are both old and doesn't update at all.
ZenCart IS maintained, IS updated frequently and DOES have a decent roadmap into the future along with a robust community.
Here is a recent (March 2011) update from the ZenCart Team:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=175569
Personally, I have installed, configured and maintained no less than 3 ZenCart shops, having found ZenCart subsequent to using "Selena Sol's" and Gunther Birzniek's Perl-based eCommerce app creatively named, "WebStore" for several years.
I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when I found ZenCart because I am not a programmer - I'm just a plugger who pushes hard enough on something to make it work.
With ZenCart, the community help is excellent. The "Getting Started" documentation got me started and got my websites running.
I've looked at Magento (too da*n complicated) and just about every shopping cart that's out there.
Maybe I'm just getting old but things that are shiny and new still do not compare to my OLD ZenCart for the key features I need:
Secure.
Integrates with Authorize.net & Paypal, among others.
TRUE Quantity Pricing.
Price based on Options.
Categories.
Fine, granular control over Product page Title and Keywords.
Easy to update when updates are released because I don't muck with CORE files (and I've never had to).
Thriving, responsive community.
Open-source. TRULY open-source.
I do have one complaint, though. I WISH the folks at ZenCart would reorganize their add-ons page to make it easier for ppl to find an add-on and know when the add-on was last updated. But as you can see, this is not a complaint about the Shopping Cart software itself.
Hope this helps.
I agree with Val booth. Zen cart is the best and easiest. It has just about any option you can imagine, the templating is easy to install and adjust, and help comes very quick for questions posted in the forum.
My only beef with Zen cart is that the control panel the user logs into is a little complex for any changes if you are a computer newbie. This is only because setting are located in different places instead of one area only. There are many features in some cases located in multiple places. Say you want to add features to your homepage, you might have to go to one area to check a box to enable the features on the homepage, another area to defind the features, and another area to list the features. Meaning you have to bounce around. I have been using zen cart for several years and have it installed on many of my clients websites. The control panel always takes a little training for my clients. With that being said the reason for this is because this program has any feature imaginable. That means more complexity (Not it's not that difficult you just have to bounce around to make big changes).
As far as features this is the main reason why you should use Zen Cart. Let me give you a recent example. One of my clients charges tax for Ohio and California. Two different rates it wasn't a problem (just a little help from the forum and a couple of changes in the control panel). Next, they wanted free shipping to the USA only. Not a problem worldwide shipping for a charge (USPS) and free shipping within the USA. They also have lots of options for each product. No problem. I tell my customers: "With Zen Cart you can grow into your carts features years down the road." The structure is already there even if you don't think you need certain features now. Instead of having to install a different cart, we just enable a new module or feature. It's common for the needs of a business to change. As your website (business needs) change the zen cart features are already there waiting for you.
Don't overlook the fact that has been mentioned in these posts about zen cart updates. When you make changes to any core coding it goes in it's own folder named after your template. When you update the cart it does not mess up any of your past changes. This is very powerful because updates are common and easy and you don't need to re-modify your past changes! With other large programs this is not the case and puts a lot more work on you for each new update. Look in forums all over the web and you will see that Zen cart is the most flexible, the easiest to use, and has the most features.
No I have no affilaite with Zen cart at all, I am just a regular webmaster who installs shopping carts onto my clients websites and has been asking questions in their forums for years. I can tell you from my experience Zen Cart is the bomb!
I found prestashop more powerful but to customize it you must have knoeledge on CSS , smarty template and php. For me it is better than Zen and Os
Having used oscommerce, zen cart and more recently prestashop I would say prestashop is probably one of the easier solutions for building a relatively simple, attractive looking site. My main site is zen cart but I'm considering changing to prestashop. Unless you are an experienced designer / developer then I'd stay clear of oscommerce and go for zen cart or presta. Zen Cart is in a way a simpler version of oscommerce. Prestashop just looks more tidy and less like an "out of the box" solution to the untrained eye than os and zen. Some of the free templates are pretty tidy, and with the odd change to a few images it's relatively easy to customize the feel. Function is another story. As stated before there's limited documentation and community with presta - which i'm sure will grow steadily over the next year or so, which might make a beginer go with another solution.
Ive been using OSC these past few years and recently i started exploring Prestashop. I find presta harder to modify compared to OSC.
I think if you are more of a visual designer, it is easier to use OSC. But if u are more of a businessman, u should go for presta. The interface can be customizable but it'd take more time compared to OSC.
i have used Oscommerce and yesterday i have just installed prestashop....and i found presta a bit harder than osc because it is fully object oriented and uses smarty template.
i think it is harder to modify presta than osc.
Prestashop has been growing and improving extremely fast, both in number of users / forum members, and in development / features added.
A good resource to start with is the new book "[PrestaShop 1.3 Beginner's Guide]", it goes though all the important features in Prestashop and guide you towards getting your shop online and having your first sale in one week.
In addition to doing technical review for the book, I am also an English Moderator on the Prestashop forum, and I see people with no programming or website development background manage to install and customize their own shops, add themes, modules and modification with little or no help.
The [Prestashop forum] has been growing rapidly as well, it reached nearly 90,000 members, and is by far the best place to get help or questions answered, usually within a short period of time.
Make sure you search the forum first, because many questions have already been answered…
Speaking as a representative of the company:
For a small business or anyone without a massive dedicated server, PrestaShop is probably the best choice. Any of these options will have a steep learning curve, but I would have to say that PrestaShop is the easiest to get up and running compared to the rest.
Also, we've really made a commitment to customer service, and the forums have become a much better place to get answers since we opened an office in the United States.
The prestashop as good as it looks has still very little or no documentation and or ridicilously complex written smarty templ. stuff, driving us "open source" fanatics, like cattle into bottleneck traps forced to buy our way out.
Don't forget it's a company! they are even hiring at the moment. and we will be caught.
and imho, "open source" by a company?
reaping all the benefits of community development, organising predators and game refuge paths for a nice game hunting season.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Apologies if this has been covered frequently, but I was wondering about how other people approach personal task management.
I've read (parts of) GTD, proceeded to get excited, installed a tonne of plug-ins all over the place, then let it all fall by the wayside. I've used todoist, outlook, google calendar, project. I've tried writing lists in a notepad, in 'notebook', on post-it-notes and in spreadsheets etc. None of it lasts.
Why is a simple and effective todo application so difficult to find? Because the application is so frequently used, I find that any small niggles with the application become overly exaggerated after a few days use.
So far, my favourite application is a variation of todo.txt called task
What do you use?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but a "simple and effective todo application" is so hard to find because you are using the tool as a substitute for self-discipline and commitment. Statements like 'I've read parts of this and tried that and that and that but minor interface issues cause me to drop it in a few days' imply that you are looking for magic bullets and excuses.
Minor issues with the tools are a poor excuse to abandon the effort.
Pick a system and a tool and stick with it
No tool will give you the self-discipline and commitment necessary to change your habits
personal time-management is about changing your viewpoint and habits, not finding the "right" tool
caveat: some systems are more suitable than others for your personal work requirements. If you're a developer, a calendar-based system like Franklin Planner is probably not going to work, while a list-based system like GTD probably will.
Suggestion: google and review the various systems, pick one, and commit to it for at least a month. Try GTD and pen-and-paper, for example, then get fancy once the system is a habit. Once you know how you need to work the system and are committed to it, look for the perfect tool. In the meantime, the perfect tool is the enemy of the good practice, to mangle a quote ;-)
I use text files. Each contains a list of projects, separated by blank lines. Each line of a project's space includes syntax like:
'-': Item of interest
'*': TODO's
':': Code changes
'AWT': (Awaiting something external)
Text files live together and projects move in and out fluidly:
work.txt: Current work / active projects
deferred.txt: Stuff to do someday
done.txt: Finished; archived for records
The text file system is fast, effective, globally compatible and loads in a fraction of a second.
I think I'm like you (were, 2 years ago): too lazy to do anything until I find the perfect tool for it..
Yes, folks saying tools should never be mistaken to be a substitute for executing the plan, are absolutely right...
That said, one tool that seems "perfect enough" for me to drop thoses excuses for GTD: org-mode for Emacs. I really hope so, anyway.
I think this is almost a duplicate of How can I apply David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” as a programmer?
See also:
What Can Someone Do to Get Organized Around Here?
Time management tricks, tools & tips
What do you use to keep notes as a developer?
ToDoList is also an alternative
This is related to Task/issue tracking system with command-line interface which also mentioned todo.txt
Personally, I use the to do list on my Palm PDA, which syncs with Apple iCal.
I'm experimenting with better managing my time. I like starting out simple and building to complexity as it's required, rather than implement some behemoth bollocks that's hard to maintain.
To that end, i use simple lists.
http://tadalist.com
it's stupidly simple, free, and internets based so it follows me everywhere. winner
In our company we use Google Docs Spread Sheet - it's great beacuse you put all tasks into cells and you can share and coedit this document with others. It's very easy to use and doesn't require you to fill a lot of forms.
I use a sticky notes program called NoteZilla
Just scratch your task/idea/notes and forget about it. This is why I like sticky notes. No need to categorize, group. All that can still be done in NoteZilla.
I use TiddlyWiki. It's simple to use, all in one html file (so very portable).
It works great for me.
I'm echoing the above comment to some degree. For me, the tool is pretty much secondary to establishing the mindset and habits that would allow me to incorporate GTD principles in a consistent fashion. I really do love it, when I can get it to go. There's a nice sense of control and direction that comes when I can be disciplined about doing the small stuff - weekly sweeps, periodic reviews and all that.
My next GTD challenge is to get out of the trees so I can see the forest. :-) David Allen talks about the 50,000 foot, 30,000 foot, 10,000 foot views relating to goals. It's all very high-minded, but I have to get above 500 feet yet.
If you're familiar with GTD, there's a nice summary deck PDF over at DIY Planner:
http://www.diyplanner.com/diyp_official/diyp3cl/diyp3_gtdref_cl_2up.pdf
If you're a paper planner junkie (I am) the site's like crack :D
Hope it helps.
I use myLifeOrganized. The bottom line is you just need to start documenting the next thing you have to do on each task. MLO lets you easily and quickly do that.
It has a handy rapid task entry dialog and you can quickly enter data into it. You can document as much or as little as you want. This software, because of the ease of adding stuff to it, has saved my butt many times. It has helped me remember things that I had forgotten. I now wonder how many things I've forgotten over the years and didn't realize it.
I run it off a usb stick and I have it on my phone. I even use it to help me outline code.
As others have said, GTD is all about discipline: actually doing the things on your list. But, be sure to prioritize.
For my task list management, I currently use Remember the Milk, which is fairly handy with its IM integration (it sends IM reminders). My biggest challenge has been remembering to add the tasks, but I'm getting better at it, since somebody pointed out I could make a recurring task to remind me :P.
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What are some solo developer programming methodologies for smaller projects?
Just about any development methodology will work in a solo environment except for those that explicitly require a team (such as side-by-side programming). But even then you could get around that by just creating some imaginary friends/teammates or developing a multiple personality disorder.
Even as a solo developer you can use methodologies applied to large development teams.
Write a Spec.
Layout a UML.
Do pencil-and-paper UI design.
Hallway testing: If your expect a large crowd, ask Mom if it's easy to use.
Peer review: You can build ad-hoc review teams with other solo developers.
Keep an up to date schedule.
and so on...
I solo develop all the time, and these practices keep me in line with my own work and give my bosses a great resource to know what I've done and how far along I am. And they keep me on track, to boot!
The rubber duck methodology comes to mind:
http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174.html
Many agile techniques work great solo:
User interviews and stories: If you don't know what your users want, why would your software be useful?
A simple spec: Or even just be a mission statement. "Let people broadcast short messages to their subscriber lists." "Use in-degree to sort internet search results." "Let people collaboratively answer programming questions." Whatever.
A strictly-ordered todo list: Helpful to keep you from drowning in thoughts.
Tangents log: A good to-do list has a "to-don't" component, so you don't obsess over things you aren't going to do (yet).
YAGNI: Stay on target. This is very important when working by yourself, because no one is there to tell you "No! Don't reinvent dynamic typing in Java! Get back to the project." To-don't lists help with this.
Test-driven development: Writing tests forces you to think about the end result, rather than getting bogged down in implementation details. You'll get bogged down enough anyway; no need to make it worse.
Frequent releases: Make yourself stick to deadlines. "We'll have a feature-complete version that includes user stories 1-4 by Friday. It won't connect to the network or save data to disk, but XYZ..."
User testing: Have your buddies look at what you're making on a decently frequent schedule -- maybe once a month, maybe every week, depending on how many friends you have and how much beer/pizza you want to feed them. Pay very close attention to what they say and do and think when using the software.
And other things that only seem like they make sense in big projects can help a lot:
Source control: Install git. It's bone simple. Use it. Don't obsess over it.
Off-site backups: Y'know. In case of house fires or floods.
A blog: But you're only allowed to write there when a release comes out. ;) Also helps you build an audience for your product before it even ships.
Hope this helps! Solo programming on a large project can be very daunting.
Follow what is laid out in this Stack Overflow question:
What Tools/Techniques can benefit a solo developer?
Also. Use Source Control. You wouldn't believe how many times I've been bitten by that on personal projects.
There's this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Software_Process
It's probably overkill
The issue is more a question of what you are comfortable with and what problems you hope to solve. Most methodologies are used by a solo developer at some point (pair programming is a notable exception). The issue is are you actually alone, or just working by yourself? I have found that it is invaluable to have people I can bounce ideas off of. Furthermore having someone else to look at you code (peer review) is a great way to find issues that you just cannot "see". So to agree with Aiden Bell "Programming on your oen is uncool."
I would try and connect to a community (like SO) where you can bounce ideas off of others. Then you need to build your methodology in such a way as to allow for interruptions when you send an idea out.
Does that make sense? Why are you programming alone?
Pat O
Not really an official methodology, but I have done a lot of solo development (independent consultant and ISV), and here are the things I have found to be important:
Find an online organization (like
oisv.com) to share thoughts and
ideas
Make sure you take time to interact
with actual people in the real world
Set project goals, deadlines, and
milestones
Take time to do appropriate up-front
design and project planning
Set aside working hours are stick to
them
Don't work too much and burn yourself
out
Nothing is ever perfect, so strive
for good code that works, not
perfection
Get some non-programming hobbies
This is more of trick than a methodology. When you're debugging, explain the bugs out loud to yourself as though you were trying to explain it to a co-worker. It feels silly, but forcing yourself to articulate the problem out loud often reveals what the problem is.