It's all going XP in Yorkshire, UK!

I couldn't belive it when I found that the XP 2005 conference is in Sheffield Uni (18th June -> 23rd June)!

I'm just down t' road in Leeds, and really really really would like to go to listen to people such as Kent Beck, Robert C Martin, Micheal Feathers and Ian Sommerville! I'm almost embarrassed to admit I've read books by all those guys, it would be amazing to hear their wisdom in the flesh!

Unfortunately I'm not sure if my fledgling business can afford the fees and time off work, so I'll be sat at home crying on those days!

It's all going down in Copenhagen

On Monday I fly off to Scandinavia, and will be getting down to Copenhagen on the 9th of June. There's some interesting events going on for those who are there...

1. Reboot 7 (10th/11th June) - This is the main reason I'm going 8-) Hoping to meet some interesting folk and learn a bit. Also, listening to some knowledgeable people will be fun (Robert Scoble (Microsoft), David Heinemeier Hansson (37Signals), Skype, Nokia, BBC etc)!

2. Codegarden (8th/9th June) - The guys at Umbraco are offering a FREE 2 day workshop that should be fun for anyone into .NET & CMS, and of course, the Umbraco system!

3. 37Signals Basecamp Workshop (9th June) - Commercial workshop for Basecamp. Looks like a fantastic line up of topics.

Unfortunately I don't get down to Copenhagen till the afternoon/evening on the 9th, so can't do the latter two 8-(

Anyone around to hook up for beers on Thursday night 8-)?

Skype really is revolutionary

Yesterday I made my first Skype phone call. I just happened to be messaging another developer in Denmark (Olle), when he asked if my Skype was set up. I said sure. Within minutes we were chatting away over the "phone". I'd only set the mic up that morning, but not used my Skype set up yet.

Lol, as an aside, you should see my Mic setup (see previous 2 blog posts). It needs sorting. I've plugged in an SM58 vocal mic into a JoeMeek VC3Q compressor/exciter/equaliser. Then this whole lot gets fed into my laptop mic input. I need to buy a bluetoothe headset - but until then this will have to do 8-)

The quality was *ace*, with no lag at all. I noticed that if I distracted my CPU with GUI tasks, then things could slow a bit, but this was to be expected.

There was something a little odd about talking to Olle via phone. We'd been chatting about random nerdy topics via messanger for only about 3 days - and you really get used to a certain anonymity that a text medium gives.

Suddenly switching to voice mode with a virtual stranger makes things very different. Olle certainly doesn't feel like a stranger at all anymore! We also covered a lot of ground in our 20 minute chat. The first thing I discovered is that I'd pronounced his name wrong!...

To me this new medium is big. I realise that other messangers have had the ability to do voice channel also, but I've found them jerky and not that user friendly. Skype seems to be totally focused on voice communications, and that makes the difference.

IRC, MSN, AIM etc have all been great ways of networking and discussing issues with other folk around the globe. I think Skype has taken this to a new level by giving us reliable voice communications delivered with the ease and FREEdom of a messaging client. I wonder if the internet community is ready to really "talk" to each other!?...

My Desk with "Skype Phone" (TM) at the far end 

SM58 + JoeMeekVC3Q. My Skype Phone 8-) 

Sexy Ruby Rails Revision Control

Rails keeps me in awe. I recently stumbled across the Rails "Source" section. From my 10 minute visit I found some amazing stuff in there (for me, at least!). There revision control tools look like the dogs bollocks, much prettier than the SourceForge/CVS/Subversion stuff I've seen to date.

Each time someone update the code, you can see a "changeset" or that update (example). This shows a list of atomic change sets.

You can view then go and view each change set, which reveals a really neat way of showing the files affected and the individual changes to the files like this. It's fantastic! I want it for my own development environment!

It's nice to see that a typical change-set includes an update to a unit test script, a change to the class itself, and then a change to the CHANGELOG file.

There's also a funky timeline showing change tickets coming in, being resolved and change sets being added.

Extending Ruby Types (as seen in Rails)

I was looking through some of the Rails source code today, and saw something that I simply love. "David" had added some nifty features to the number class. For example, with these extensions you can now write super-verbose code such as:

puts 1.hour.from_now
>Wed May 04 15:15:53 GMT Daylight Time 2005

puts 2.weeks.from_now
>Wed May 18 15:15:53 GMT Daylight Time 2005

puts 10.minutes.ago
>Wed May 04 15:05:53 GMT Daylight Time 2005

This stuff is great! It's easily achieved too, in fact, you can even open up the interactive shell and extend classes right there. It just involves redefining the class with the extra functions you want. See the Rails Fixnum example I was looking at, which show how the above examples work.

Killer Sun Gosling Quote

"The average software developer spends more on lattes than they do on tools."
Gosling, Sun Microsystems [taken from this great article)

I thought this was brilliant 8-)

I've just done my first years accounts and I'm ashamed to admit that, for me at least, Goslings statement holds true! It's amazing how I expect so many "bread and butter" tools to be available for free. What? Pay for an enterprise class database management system? You must be kidding. Surely they should be available for FREE! Hehe, it's really screwed up, but it's the way I think. And that's the way things are going.

I like the idea of comparing these software tools to supermarkets and utility companies. Having a database server for a business application is a bit like having electricity for your home. It's mandatory, but it's also a pain to buy, if not mundane. You just want to find a cheap provider and get on with the interesting stuff. From where I'm sitting it looks like a lot of software is falling into this category.

I'm currently a solo contractor who often thinks about launching a product or getting into something with more leverage than my hourly rate. Staying on the right side of the commodotisation line seems like *really* good advice. It seems like bespoke and custom software is a safe place to be these days. If I read this post (#11) correctly then I think Database engines, email clients, web browsers, CRMs, CMSs etc simply don't provide enough competitive advantage to justify huge expendature.

On a complete tangent, I think about Resharper (www.jetbrains.com/resharper). This is a tool I love, it offers so many great features for refactoring in Visual Studio.NET. But, I wonder if this class of tool is becoming commoditised? Will I expect to be paying for .NET refactoring tools in 2 years time? How will JetBrains be able to convince people to buy their products when refactoring utilities are built right into the IDE? What happens when a good Open Source refactoring tool emerges for .NET?

Ok, enough mindless rambling for one day!...