When I was a kid, reverse engineering a legacy application was a challenge. Tools were non-existent, and even a civilized practice like unit testing didn't really exist. Now that we have test driven development, I think we can apply this to reverse engineering the billions of lines of legacy software …

This is not a Python to the rescue story. This is a true, deeply horrible situation. I was rescued by a reframing technique I'll call Extraction.

First, the function had nested if's without enough else's -- the kind of thing that handles two of the four possible conditions.

if( a ) {
    if …

Why Python, indeed?

"It's clear that you find it easier and quicker to use Python, and that's fine. It's often quickest for people to use the tools that they know best."

As they say on Fark.com, "This".

However, the Python advantage doesn't stem from knowing Python better than Java …

I find the value proposition for a Service Oriented Architecture to be agility and simplicity.

See Linthicum's Real World SOA blog postings, specifically "Core Value of an SOA... " Here's the interesting quote: "this does not mean that reuse is not a core value of SOA, but its value is much …

My experience is that an SOA has the potential to be cheaper and simpler. However, cheaper and simpler may not be the only value proposition.

Kontrawize says: "there is only something to gain with SOA for the parts of your software that genuinely have re-usable functionality, and are expected to …

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 …

Michael Shermer's column, in the July 2007 Scientific American , "The Prospects for Homo economicus ", notes that we all impaired when it comes to making economic decisions.

Also, see Kathleen Melymuka's article in the July 23, 2007 Computerworld , "Boiling the IT Frog ". Harwell Thrasher suggests that simple ROI calculations don't work …

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 …

Recently , I found out that my HTML parser was only a mere shadow Beautiful Soup . I invented what is -- essentially -- a similar core structure. I didn't carry it to the same level of completion. From what little research I've done, my invention predates Beautiful Soup.

It's one of those "collective …

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 …