Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design Elden Nelson interviews Kent Beck, the founder of the Extreme Programming method and author of “Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change”; and Alan Cooper, the prime proponent of interaction design and author of “The Inmates are Running the Asylum”. The interview is well worth the effort of navigation through the horrible interaction design of FTPOnline. Beck’s analysis of interaction design and “Inmates” expresses exactly how I felt about the book when I read it: Interaction design has a lot of really powerful tools to really important questions.

Yes! The first thing that strikes me about Eric Evans “Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software” is how it seems to bring together the ideas that have resounded the best with me during the last few years. The central thesis of the book is that that enterprise software should to be built around the model that (non-software) experts in the field has of the problem domain. The shared understanding between the software developers and the domain experts and users facilitates communication.

I was recommended “The Art of UNIX Programming” by Eric Raymond (esr) from Joel Spolsky’s “Joel-On-Software” blog. The recommendation in it self warrants some comments, as Joel Spolsky normally is very much a Windows-kind of guy. Despite the title, the book definately has much to offer people who never touch UNIX as well. esr focuses on the cultural aspects as much as the technical aspects. For organisations that are migrating into Unix infrastructure the ramifications of the Unix culture can be hard to grasp.

Oh No! DTO! Should DTOs have public variables? Or should they have private variables with getters and setters? [via Artima Weblogs] Finally someone with a little sense on the subject. Notice that this fits in with the idea of “accessors considered harmful”. (Which, just for the record, I noted before Holub) A final observation by Dave Astels: “Sometimes a data structure is just a data structure.”

I have been looking for a while for a refactoring tool that could improve the encapsulation of my code. More specifically, I want to be able to analyse a closure of code (like what JDepend does), and make methods private, package protected or protected as much as possible. Of course, if it is to be useful, there has to be a good way of defining root classes and methods, ignored name patterns (getters/setters for those who are still addicted to those) etc.

Martin Fowler has an excellent piece about MDA on his blog. Also be sure to check out Fowler’s link to Dave “Bederra” Thomas’ article on UML. It seems like quite a few people who are knowledgeable about MDA dislike Fowler’s article quite a bit. I thought it was time someone who knows MDA and is not starry-eyed about it chipped in. Yeah, that would be me, your humble host ;-). I have worked quite a bit with Compuware’s tool OptimalJ, and presented this tool in many forums.

I have been real bad about writing in my blog lately, but I am finally back. It’s been a crazy few months, including a new job, which of course takes up some time. I have now officially stopped working as a consultant, but I still take some projects on the side when time permits. My next interesting event will be Software 2004, where I am both a speaker at the .

Note: This term is also used about mixed economies. Central dogmas: The purpose of government is to work for a vision of a good society A good society is one where wealth is distributed in such a way that no-one suffers and everyone is given incentives to produce at their fullest capability. Distributed control is superior to central control Monopolies hurt

It is funny how little incidents reminds us of more general principles… Today, when I went to the store, there was a baby that was crying, and it’s mother kept going, “be quiet now!”, “sit down!”, “hush!” in a real angry voice (the dog-peed-on-the-rug-voice). The whole thing just reminded me of two funny things from cognitive science: Punishment is actually a very ineffective way of teaching. Indeed some researchers believe that punishment is purely counterproductive.

If a beginning programmer was to read just one book, this would definately rank high on a list of candidates. (But then again, why should a beginning programmer only read one book) “Agile Software Development: Practices, Principles, and Patterns” is in many ways Robert C. Martin’s magnum opus. After having read much of his papers on Dependency Inversion Principe, the Open-Closed Principle and other object-oriented methods, as well as Extreme Programming, Agile Software Development puts it all together.