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Software Useful Software Specs
The other day, I was looking at a software spec from a client. This document was at least a dozen pages, three spent outlining data types, and a few whole sections consisting of paragraphs of text describing the form and function of a software project.
From my standpoint, sitting at my editor and about to write some code, this is useless. What would be awesome is a spec that just outlined the steps a user would take when using the software, like so:
Culture, Open Source COLUG at Innova Partners (8/25)
This weekend, we’ll be hosting the Central Ohio Linux User’s Group, Saturday from 1 to 3 pm.
Over the past several months, Jim Wildman has been presenting varied topics (MythDora, Xen) and perhaps most significantly… how to recover from a failed install (you mean SELinux didn’t install properly? And the shadow file wasn’t created? Whoops…). This month, it looks like he’ll be continuing his look at Xen.
It’s always a good time, and as always, we’ll have some food ready.
Software Hazardous requirements
Lately, I’ve been thinking alot about software “requirements:” At big companies, it’s rare that anything is even started without complete requirements. I think knowing what you’re getting into before you start is a great idea–but we need to be careful that we don’t leave opportunities on the table by commiting to designs prematurely.
The problem is that written requirements are a type of design, and designs can have a big impact on long-term project success. As example, consider an article written about “amputation,” the design concept of removing a class of features that would normally be included by default.
An example of amputation is the security policy in Ward [Cunningham]’s Wiki. The collaborative nature of a Wiki makes it tempting to add security: editors of a page should at least have to log in first, shouldn’t they? Once you start adding security features, though, it’s hard to see where to stop. Instead, Ward chose to eliminate all technical notions of security from the Wiki.
Where would the Wiki be without the design decision to excise every last aspect of security? We certainly wouldn’t have Wikipedia.
Writing requirements can certainly lead to “safer” projects. I just wonder how much value is being left on the table (and essentially unquantifiable) due to lost opportunities from big design decisions being made prematurely, or by the wrong people. The software community should guard against these risks by understanding that written designs carry their own hazards, together with lots of room for decisions to be changed as new information becomes understood and available.
Culture Head downtown this weekend for BeatScape/StreetSpace
Of course, if you were working at Innova’s downtown pad you wouldn’t have far to go.
Come check out (legal) street art and live DJs beginning 6pm Saturday in the Broad and Pearl area. I had a blast at this event last year, and Innova is proud to be a major sponsor to bring the event back to Columbus. Music tends toward Detroit electro and smarter house music, while art is good urban graffiti stuff.
Learn more here and here.
We’re using the event as part of our efforts to make sure developers know that Innova is the place to work in Columbus.
Continue Reading…
Culture, Open Source php|Meetup: Drupal
We held the php|meetup here last night, and it was quite an event thanks to the skills of Nathan Rambeck, principal for the Rambeck Group, who walked us through some of the basics of Drupal. For the details of the presentation, take a look at the Rambeck Group’s website, where Nathan has kindly made the slides available.
Although the presentation itself was wonderful, not captured in the slides are the questions and answers that were strewn throughout the evening. Several people brought their sites along for diagnosis, and we were able to fix some of the more basic problems while we were here. For all of that, you’ll just have to come to one of the events (the next one will be in September. Stay tuned…)
Among other things, Jay Pipes, community relations manager for MySQL, was here to talk to us a little bit about the upcoming MySQL Camp. Check out their site for all the details on that upcoming event
Innova is slated to host the next two php|meetups, focusing on WordPress in September, then Joomla in October. If they are anything like last night’s presentation on Drupal, it should be a great time.