Hedley Finger

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since Sep 20, 2007
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Recent posts by Hedley Finger


I have now retired and it is time to clean out the cupboards and burn the bridges behind me.

If you are a beginner or even with some experience, you might like to browse to all my eBay books to see the titles I am selling under the vendor name hedleyfinger:

@ Objects first with Java: A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ, 3rd edn [BlueJ is an educational IDE]
@ Effective Java: Programming Language Guide
@ Java Cookbook, 2nd edn
@ Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java with JUnit

... and many more.

Regards,
Hedley
14 years ago
This message originally appeared in the 'Pair programming sucks' thread.

I have posted it here as a completely new topic as it is my experience that discussions of XP/Agile development never include that other important development activity -- producing user documentation. Read on ...


Can anyone comment on the effect of XP/Agile development on the technical writers producing the user procedural and reference documentation? A programmer pair can make changes in an hour or so that takes the technical writer days or weeks to update in the documentation source.

This typically involves taking new screen shots, updating the reference material supporting those shots, adding new procedures, rewriting, moving content from one chapter to another, etc. Most documentation applications (Word, FrameMaker, etc.) produce binary files which cannot be merged so when major restructuring is required, one writer has to check out and own all the source and destination files to make the changes.

This situation is somewhat eased by using XML-based content management systemts for the doco source, which allow diffing and merging like code, but are not the complete answer.

Most discussion of XP/Agile focusses on developing functionality. But, hey, the on-line help, web interactive help and FAQs, and printed documentation are part of the product too! Do XP projects find themselves moving the release date because too many iterations mean that unfinished documentation is holding up release?

Can anyone comment on the effect of XP/Agile development on the technical writers producing the user procedural and reference documentation? A programmer pair can make changes in an hour or so that takes the technical writer days or weeks to update in the documentation source.

This typically involves taking new screen shots, updating the reference material supporting those shots, adding new procedures, rewriting, moving content from one chapter to another, etc. Most documentation applications (Word, FrameMaker, etc.) produce binary files which cannot be merged so when major restructuring is required, one writer has to check out and own all the source and destination files to make the changes.

This situation is somewhat eased by using XML-based content management systemts for the doco source, which allow diffing and merging like code, but are not the complete answer.

Most discussion of XP/Agile focusses on developing functionality. But, hey, the on-line help, web interactive help and FAQs, and printed documentation are part of the product too! Do XP projects find themselves moving the release date because too many iterations mean that unfinished documentation is holding up release?
When you are really hot, in the zone, going with the flow, to have a partner interject to suggest another (not necessarily better) way of doing it completely derails the train of thought.

How do people on this topic who claim to be successfully using pair programming deal with the distraction factor?
How do you keep a rein on new requirements and features being introduced at every iteration that blows the budget out of the water? I have seen client and developers almost at blows as late requirements cause large amounts of code to be refactored to the point of bug explosion.
Our lecturer and tutor encourage us to make all our methods public initially, just so we can test them interactively (very easy to do in the BlueJ educational IDE). But, when everything is working well, we are expected to make public methods private if they are not called from other classes.

It can be quite a chore if you have a lot of classes with many fields, and setters and getters largely there to help set up tests. Does anybody know of a workaround, utility or plug-in that will list all methods not called from any class other than their home class?
16 years ago
Our lecturer and tutor encourage us to make all our methods public initially, just so we can test them interactively (very easy to do in the BlueJ educational IDE). But, when everything is working well, we are expected to make public methods private if they are not called from other classes.

It can be quite a chore if you have a lot of classes with many fields, and setters and getters largely there to help set up tests. Does anybody know of a workaround, utility or plug-in that will list all methods not called from any class other than their home class?
16 years ago
Firefox 2.0.0.7, Windows XP Pro SP2

I just went to the Firefox options and set the default sans-serif to Letter Gothic 14 pt, which sort of solved the problem.

Except that Firefox's conception of 14pt looks about 9 pt in BlueJ, OpenOffice.org, Internet Explorer, etc. On those other apps 9pt looks about right and 14pt LOOKS MONSTROUS.

Oddly enough, the width of the text box is tied to the font size. Bigger font, wider box. It would appear to make more sense to make it a proportion of the browser windows's current width whatever the size of the font, unless there is some compelling reason I haven't thougut of.
16 years ago
Why is the font in the message textbox so tiny? Are you trying to save pixels to reduce global warming? Come to think of it, why is this text box so narrow? My browser is currently occupying the full width of the monitor but this textbox is only a quarter of the width of the browser window.

Are there any preferences where this can be altered to one's liking?
16 years ago
I am a beginning student of Java using the textbook Objects First with Java by David Barnes and Michael Kolling, with the educational IDE BlueJ.

BlueJ provides a visual representation of classes and objects. You can click on an object on the Object Bench and select any of its public methods to run. Dialogues pop up to let you enter arguments and another dialogue shows you return values. It's very good for beginner;s to test their work as they go.

I give all this background information so you can understand why we are encouraged to make all our methods public initially, just so we can test them interactively. But, when everything is working well, we are expected to make methods private if they are not called from other classes.

It can be quite a chore if you have a lot of classes with many fields, and setters and getters largely there to help set up tests. Does anybody know of a workaround, utility or plub-in that will list all methods not called from any class other than their home class?

Thanks, Hedley

P.S. How can you make the tiny typeface in the Add New Topic form larger? I can barely read it!
16 years ago
I tried to download a file using the Sun Download Manager. First, I downloaded the *.jnlp file in Firefox. Then I double-clicked the JNLP file, only for a console window to open briefly, flash some text across the console, then exit before I could read the text.

I have used Sun Download Manager before but don't what's gone wrong after updating to a new edition. By the way I donwloaded both the WebStart plugin for Firefox and the standalone version.

Also, what is the correct mime type or Windows file association for *.jnlp files?

Window XP Pro SP2, JRE 1.6.0_02.
[ September 20, 2007: Message edited by: Hedley Finger ]
16 years ago