It's about 10,000 lines of C. Much of the C is focused on "framework" issues -- logging, synchronization, parsing the parameters and that kind of thing. In this case, it appears to be 30-50% of the original C code is stuff that is available in Java and can be removed …

What I knew was this: I had a program, and I was supposed to make it work. I went to a meeting, the responsibility was duly handed off to me. "Alex has it mostly done, you just need to pitch in and help finish this by Friday."

Okay.

I listened …

TC writes:

I’m sitting in the corner, considering SOA from various perspectives:

• What sized company?
• When you sell/license the tech, what are you actually trying to sell? The initial implementation, individual services, ???
• Chicken vs. egg – implement first or align the culture first?

What is our company's approach?

Has …

Centuries ago -- it seems -- Jim Coplien facilitated a session for us at ChiliPLoP . Eventually, I figured out that patterns are a solution to a problem in a context which resolves various alternative forces, and has some understood consequences. Context - Problem - Forces - Solution - Consequences.

In this month's CACM, the article on …

See So What Are Requirements? in Dr. Dobb's.

I've seen requirements done badly. I've seen some notable failures of the use case technique: almost entirely because people refuse to actually apply the technique; they refuse to write use cases from the actor's point of view. I've whined about this before …

We wind up in this situation from time to time.

Customer:

[X] is broken, what will it cost to fix it?

Us:

Depends, but put $$$ in your budget.

Customer:

I can't afford $$$, I can barely afford to Keep The Lights On™!

At this point, the conversation is usually over. There …

In Object Modeling , I repeated a procedure for object identification that comes from the classic Object-Oriented Modeling and Design (Rumbaugh, et. al.)

Objects are characterized by their state change. Therefore, to distinguish among classes of objects, we need to determine if two objects have the same states and state transitions …

Today's entry in Scott Berkun's blog (Asshole driven development ) is brilliantly scathing. The comments are also handy for identifying the key dysfunctionality in an organization.

A couple of years ago Mark Grand shared with me a number of things that seem to make software development needlessly clumsy and complex. Indeed …

First, the confusion. A couple of comments asked for code, offering to "fix" the problems. Specifically, offering to optimize or improve the PL/SQL. The code was already posted, but I failed to make that clear. Here's a recap of the various blog entries on this subject.

1. PL/SQL vs …

There appear to be four responses. Two were numbered, the third is a rambling thought on scalability, and the fourth is a thought on management's discomfort with the truth.