act:ualise | technology

I recently figured out how to use WebTest for functional testing of Grails controller actions that render JSON. That said, I’m not convinced it’s the best way – I’m fairly sure the gFunc plugin would do it nicely, though I ran into problems with it clean compiling the whole app on every run.
Custom steps
It’s been [...]

Two recently released books I’m working through are Grails In Action and Unlocking Android, both published by Manning.
Notwithstanding the unusual covers, these are very handy, intermediate level books for their respective focuses which I’ve found useful for reference and learning.
Reviews for these books are plenty (GIA, UA) saving me the trouble, though it’s worth mentioning [...]

The No Fluff, Just Stuff 2009 Tour rolls into Seattle on September 18-20th. The line-up has some interesting speakers:

Brian Goetz, Author of Java Concurrency in Practice
Brian Sletten, REST Expert
David Geary, Author of Graphic Java and co-author of Core JSF
Howard Lewis Ship, Creator of Tapestry and HiveMind
Ken Sipe, Technology Director, Perficient, Inc. (PRFT)
Mark Richards, SOA and [...]

Grails comes with HSQLDB as it’s in-memory db and it’s not difficult to inspect it, but there’s a simpler way than many realise and it’s built into every Grails installation, bundled in the HSQLDB jar lib.
I have found this trick is useful when inspecting DB state during integration test execution.
Just add the following line of [...]

There isn’t much more to say than Flickr, ur doin it right! Respect..
The way that metrics are being used for the continual feedback and ongoing health and monitoring of system and features is very Lean and not something I get to see too often.
10+ Deploys Per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at Flickr

View more Microsoft [...]

BoingBoing just posted about an analysis of the breathalyzer system written by AlcoTest where the following *stunning* failures were revealed in a report assessing the fitness of the code for a court case:

Readings are Not Averaged Correctly: When the software takes a series of readings, it first averages the first two readings. Then, it averages [...]

Spring has sprung and with that hails the first Vancouver Groovy and Grails meet of the year.
Time:
Monday 30th March, 18:00
Place:
WorkSpace @ 21 Water Street in Gastown, #400
Topics under the spotlight this time round are twofold:

EasyB: BDD For Groovy & Grails (Jerome Pimmel)

EasyB leverages the Groovy language with a simple readable DSL for writing BDD [...]

Eric Ries, formerly the co-founder CTO of  IMVU, is running a special Agile Vancouver workshop on the Lean Startup which he promises will involve more than just the usual slideshow and Q & A.
Whats makes Eric and the IMVU story so interesting (certainly to me) is that they are unique in having developed their business and [...]

Alistair Cockburn (@TheOtherAlistai) has posted a humorous yet incisive article reminding us that what absolutely certainly matters in software development is:

Coding
Testing
Listening
Designing

..  ergo, “That’s all there is to software. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.”
His compulsion to remind us of this core essence comes from the emergence of all kinds of newfangled buzzwords.. [...]

My friend and associate Chris Pitts, an Agile Coach in London, has weighed in on the ongoing debate about software craftsmanship.
Chris is focused on trying to move the debate from just being open to interpretation toward specific codes – as drawn from other present day crafts such as carpentry, surgery, architecture/building and so on. 
He proposes that [...]