* Posts by Nat Pryce

58 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Dec 2007

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Java and PHP to exchange sweet nothings

Nat Pryce
Boffin

That would be err.... interesting.

"Real programmers can code up most of the crap Java offers as builtins in C, C++, PHP, PERL, etc, in fairly short order"

The maintainers of thousands of apps that implement their own half-baked, incorrect implementations of distributed two-phase transaction commit would probably disagree with you.

Microsoft rejects Yahoo! rejection

Nat Pryce

There's a lot more to Yahoo than its search engine

"Does anyone even use Yahoo? Aren't they just one of the shit search engines that people used before Google built something that actually worked and then everyone used that instead?"

There's a lot more to Yahoo than its search engine. Millions of people use Flickr and other Yahoo online applications.

I suspect that the mobile space might be more of interest to Microsoft than the web space now that the latest mobile platforms are blurring the distinction between mobile and web application. The Apple iPhone integrates with Google's online app suite. Google have their own mobile platform in the works that also brings their app suite to the handset. Microsoft online applications have very few users in comparison, so bundling them with Windows Mobile would be less attractive to mobile customers.

Web pioneer hits critics with Lisp gauntlet

Nat Pryce

A more interesting challenge

To make it more interesting, run the app on two web servers, pull the plug of the web server the user is interacting with before they click the "click here" link, and show the same result.

Google Android - a sneak preview

Nat Pryce

Still immature and architecture does not seem fully thought out

I was also at that Android "hackathon". The questions I asked had no real answer.

The framework looks interesting because it lets applications smoothly share functionality. One application can take the user into another without the user being aware of the switch between applications. As far as they are concerned, they are just moving between steps in a single workflow.

However, that has implications for API, standardisation, security and testing that do not yet seem fully developed.

The capabilities of one application become an API for other applications on the device. Google seem to be relying on the market to standardise on those APIs, even for functionality that the user would expect to be core to the device (todo list, calendar, media player, etc.). The alliance members are contractually obliged not to fork the platform APIs and deploy incompatible platforms, but services provided by applications are a grey area.

The ability of applications to share functionality also affects testing. An application can expose instrumentation interfaces that let it be controlled when deployed on the device for functional testing. But if an application can seamlessly switch to functionality in other applications and back, instrumentation interfaces that correspond to intents must also be published and standardised, or it is impossible to test the application.

Cable cutter nutters chase underwater conspiracies

Nat Pryce

I blame Bacofoil Ltd.

Demand for tin foil rises. A coincidence?

How to avoid the model quagmire

Nat Pryce

How is UML useful to show the business requirements?

How is UML useful to show the business requirements?

Firstly, the business should be showing *developers* requirements, not the other way round.

Secondly, business people do not think in terms of abstractions in the same way that computer programmers do. UML does not, in my experience, mesh at all well with how business users/stakeholders think.

Thirdly, UML is far too fine-grained to express how stakeholders think about requirements. Use cases are very solution focused. Business users think at a larger scale, in terms of how many transactions their staff can turn over per month, for example, not about how little stick men interact with system components.

Nat Pryce

UML class diagrams are almost useless

They are just entity-relationship diagrams disguised with (then) trendy OO terminology. They are of no help in understanding a system composed of dynamic, communicating objects. State charts and sequence diagrams are much more helpful, as is the objects-and-interfaces notation used in the old RM-ODP documentation.

Furthermore, they have no semantics so expecting them to "stamp out ambiguity in specifications and designs" is a pipe dream.

Why simplicity starts with design

Nat Pryce

Not actually talking about modelling

"...it is not possible to test a design to check its completeness, its suitability or to validate its functionality."

This is not true. There are many tools that can model-check important properties of a design, such as concurrent behaviour, resource usage, etc.

If you choose a modelling notation that has no formal semantics, then you can't prove anything about the system from the model. But that is the point of modelling, so why even bother. If you can't actually use your model for modelling, you're wasting time drawing (not so) pretty pictures or writing gobbledigook in some worthless notation when you should be delivering software.

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