RC Smalltalk

I just read a fascinating book about the history of Xerox PARC from when it was started until the late '80s.  As most Smalltalkers know, this is where Smalltalk originated (along with a number of other technologies we take for granted today, like laser printers and ethernet, to name a few).

Michael Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age is a fascinating look at the people of Xerox PARC and what they were able to accomplish.

I found myself amazed, inspired, and sometimes wistful for what could have been while reading the book.  The author concludes with an interesting epilogue discussing the popular conception that Xerox had all this technology and let it all slip away to others (Steve Jobs and Apple being one of the main beneficiaries).

The video of the first part of my Fit presentation at Smalltalk Solutions has been posted here.

At Key, we've used a family of extension methods on VisualComponent for a long time.  Travis Griggs urged me to split them out and publish them to the public repository so that others (likely him :-)) can make use of them.  They are in the package SampleView.

What SampleView allows you to do is open an ApplicationWindow that displays any VisualComponent in it.

The main API is sampleView: anExtent named: aString, but there are variants that allow both of these parameters to take on default values.

An example usage:

(Label with: 'Hello World!') sampleView: 400@50 named: 'This is a sample view'

This opens a window that is 400 wide by 50 tall; the title bar reads 'This is a sample view' and the main part of the window displays the label.

We find these methods extremely handy for testing small parts of our UI in isolation.  We'll often have an example method on the class side that sets up some state in the VisualComponent, and then displays it in a sample view.

The audio and video recordings of my CruiseControl presentation at Smalltalk Solutions have been posted.

Audio is here.  Video is here.

One of the tools that I've worked on (and still maintain) is the VW Smalltalk port of Fit, Fitnesse, and FitLibrary.  I've presented on this work at Smalltalk Solutions in 2006 and 2008, but haven't really written about it here.  That will change when I get more time.

For now, I've added some information about the Smalltalk version of Fit et al at www.fitnesse.info, which is a community wiki that was set up to discuss Fit and Fitnesse.  I've also added the necessary example code for the Fixture Gallery that is available from the same site.  The code is shown in classic fileout format in the documentation. 

If you grab the downloadable version, there is a 7.6 runtime image plus parcel files for running the examples (you'll need to edit the SmalltalkExamples page to point to the correct VM for your platform).  In addition, the code is available in the public repository as FixtureGallery-DomainCode and FixtureGallery-Fixtures (which are also part of FitBundle).

If you want to get started with Fit, Fitnesse, and/or FitLibrary in VW Smalltalk, the best place to start are the package comments for Fit and Fit-Subsystems.  I do plan to provide a more thorough introduction here, but that'll have to wait until I can finish some other projects.

Thanks to Gojko Adzic for allowing me to add the Smalltalk code and information to the site.

At Smalltalk Solutions, I also did a brief presentation on Cruisecontrol and integrating that with VW Smalltalk.  I've written about that topic in this blog, so you can look at the archives (from September and October, 2007) for more information.

The slides for the talk are here.

It was the only session in its timeslot, and though a few people had already left for the airport, it was really well-attended (I'd guess 60 or 70 people, but I'm bad at estimating crowd sizes).  There were some really good questions at the end.

I expect video and audio from the talk to be posted at stic.st at some point in the near future.

Last week, I attended Smalltalk Solutions 2008 in Reno.  I enjoyed the conference very much.  Lots of interesting presentations and offline discussions.  I had two presentations there.  The first was a half-day tutorial on using Fit, Fitnesse, and FitLibrary from Smalltalk.  The second was a 45-minute talk on using CruiseControl to automate Smalltalk builds.

The slides for the Fit tutorial are here (PDF).  I didn't actually use Powerpoint during the presentation.  Instead, I had the information directly in a Fitnesse wiki.  I just put the information into a Powerpoint document for easier access for those who want to download the slides.

Because I didn't use Powerpoint, I was able to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time.  There was a story in Wired several years ago about some high school kids from Phoenix who entered a college-level underwater robotics competition.  The article is very entertaining, and I highly recommend reading it.  As part of the competition, the teams had to give a presentation to the judges about their design.  These kids used simple flip charts.  When one of the judges asked where their Powerpoint slides were, one of the kids (Cristian Arcega) replied: "PowerPoint is a distraction. People use it when they don't know what to say." 

I used this quote at the beginning of my presentation.  When I copied the information to Powerpoint, it seemed ironic to include the quote there, so I left it out.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how the tutorial went.  It was in an out-of-the-way room, and so I was concerned that no one would bother coming.  However, I had 6-8 people for most of the time, and it went really well.  There was a lot of good interaction and discussion, and the audience asked lots of really good questions.

There should be a video of the first half of the tutorial posted on stic.st at some point.  The second half was mostly just the group working together on an exercise, so it was not recorded.

Thanks to all who attended for making it a very enjoyable afternoon.

I recently read The Art of Agile Development by James Shore and Shane Warden and thought I should write up a brief review here.  Full disclosure: I participated in review draft chapters of the book as it was being written, and as a way of saying thanks, I received a courtesy copy of the book.

As I understand it, the book began its life as an updated, second edition of Warden's (a.k.a. chromatic) Extreme Programming Pocket Guide, but quickly grew in scope to become its own book.

There are many variations on agile development these days, and even variations on the Extreme Programming (XP )practices.  The authors cut through all of that to choose a good, solid set of practices and present them as a way to get started with agile development that will work well enough to get to the point where you can start to learn and adapt on your own.

After presenting the case for agile development in Part I, the authors move into the meat of the book in Part II, where they present the various practices.  For each practice, the authors explain the practice and how to do it, answer common questions about the practice, discuss the expected results of following the practice, and then discuss "Contraindications" - things that might be true in your situation that may make it difficult or impossible to introduce the practice.  Often, they present alternative practices to work around these cases.  Part III of the book is for the more experience agile development team.  Once you've gotten good at the practices, you need to start learning and adapting to make agile development really work for you.  Part III gets people started down that road.

While I don't agree with the authors on every point, I found the book very good overall.  It gives an excellent introduction to the current wisdom of the agile development community, and there are lots of ideas to consider and think about here.  I recommend it for any team that is doing, or thinking about doing, agile development.