Thinkinuous

My 1st Anniversary in Readify & in Australia

Few days ago was my first anniversary in Readify & also concludes of my first year in Australia. Truly, days move so fast! So much events makes me feel I have been here for so long but I still feel it passed too quick!

It won't be a surprise to anyone if I said I enjoyed working for Readify this year. I came from too far away thinking that I'll find like-minded people to share same interests & thoughts and get a great chance to continue working on my professional development goals and this is exactly what I found.

Recently, I found visiting old posts or timelines is helpful to tell where I've been & what I've been thinking of & where I'm now. So, I decided to write down my efforts & activities every anniversary. Actually, It was surprising when I started thinking of all these things I had in the past year. It was full of many events I attended, and books I read, and lessons I learned.

Actually, one of my best findings that year was Meetup. It helped me to find many interesting communities, specially those interested in Agile. I attended many Agile & Scrum & Lean events & workshops. I'll list details if someone is interested to catch up there :)

• Agile Sydeny
• Sydney Scrum User Group
• Sydney Limited WIP User Group
• Sydney Lean Coffee (just recently, couple of times)

Also, attended monthly technical events

• Sydney ALT.NET User Group
• Windows Azure Sydney User Group
• Sydney MongoDB User Group (few times)

Also, few annual technical events/conferences:

• Windows Azure Dev Camp, Sydney 2012
• TechEd Australia 2012
• CITCON SYDNEY 2013 (sounds like 'kitcon')

Finally, I attended couple hackathons -- but I don't think I'll do it again (separate story!)

• GovHack, Sydney 2012
• Random Hacks for Kindness, Sydney 2012

About books, I read several books & still have long list of pendings :)
Disclaimer: Reading doesn't mean knowledge or experience!

• C# 5.0 Pocket Reference By Joseph Albahari, Ben Albahari
• Programming Entity Framework: Code First By Julia Lerman, Rowan Miller
• Windows 8 XAML Primer By Jesse Liberty
• Delivering Mobile-Friendly WebSites with MVC4: A Developers Guide By Lyle Luppes
• Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code By Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror)
• Scrum Guide By Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (Must read severak times - condenced)
• User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development By Mike Cohn
• Next on shelf: Software in 30 Days: How Agile Managers Beat the Odds, Delight Their Customers, And Leave Competitors In the Dust By Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland
  

In addition to couple of books I couldn't complete reading them either because of lack of interest or lower priority.

I guess the missing part is thinking of lessons I learned this year. I believe this is a tough task. Considering exposure to different projects & environments & having access to all those awesome Readifarians. I believe everytime I talk to anyone here I learn something. Aggregating these lessons & concentrating them in few lines isn't an easy task. I should start writing down notable lessons as I go so it can be easier later to aggregate them when I need.

It was a very interesting year. I did lots of efforts in moving to Sydney & to settle in & continue working on my professional development goals. Thanks for all of those who helped me to achieve my goals; up till now. This includes my big family & my Readify family.

Thanks You

Quick account about CoffeeScript & QUnit

This is a quick account about unit testing JavaScript code. Recently, I tried to find a good JavaScript unit testing framework. I found different choices but the simplest and easier to use for test driving was QUnit

QUnit is a powerful, easy-to-use, JavaScript test suite. It's used by the jQuery project to test its code and plugins but is capable of testing any generic JavaScript code (and even capable of testing JavaScript code on the server-side). 

I didn't practice unit testing on JavaScript code before but intending to test my JavaScript code in future. I have created a sample project to show how to integrate different tools together.

My intended Javascript development stack contains:

1. jQuery

2. QUnit

3. CoffeeScript

4. JSLint for Visual Studio

I love Coffee & I like CoffeeScript :)

 

* CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into  JavaScript. * CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way. * The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just JavaScript". -- from the official site

Just recently I heard fellows on Twitter talking about CoffeeScript. I believe I heard the name before but I was very busy couldn’t even have a look. This time I tried to check what is that.

It turns out to be a new way for writing JavaScript that is more compact & dynamic, and resembles Ruby and Python dynamic languages. After I gave it few hours & I felt I like it.

The idea behind this new language is to write your code in a dynamic syntax that later can be compiled to generate a 100% equivalent JavaScript that's granted to be always valid if you check it against a tool like JavaScript Lint. The gain of this is brevity and readability, typically 1/3 fewer lines with no effect on runtime performance.

First issue I faced was how to get it working on my PC? The installation on Windows is somehow long & complex; no single-filre installer available for Windows on the official site yet. But I found this project that simplifies compiling CoffeeScript into JavaScript on Windows. Hence, my first environment consisted of a good text editor, Notepad++, and a CoffeeScript Compiler for Windows. There's another simple alternative, the online compiler available on official site called "TRY COFFEESCRIPT".

What I liked about this language that I can write complex JavaScript in a more compact & readable form. The major difference for me, since that I’m not a good JavaScript developer, I don’t like the way JavaScript define classes. JavaScript way of defining classes sounds, for me, a method-oriented way than an object-oriented way. But when tried CoffeeScript I was able to express my thoughts in an object-oriented way. Moreover, It has a dynamic syntax similar to Ruby & Python that takes indentation into account instead of braces and parentheses to make your code looks more readable & expressive; though I love static languages in general & specifically C# :)

Using my simple environment, I managed to write my first simple program. I found Ayende’s latest challenge for Tax Calculation a good start, so I decided to write my answer in CoffeeScript. You can find this simple program in this GitHub:Gist. The screenshot below can give u an idea about how does it look like if u didn’t check the official site yet.

 

This is my first account about CoffeeScript, the second will come soon about preparing a better environment for developing on Windows, probably also on Ubuntu.

Enjoy learning... :)

Building a stand-alone Windows service on top of Topshelf

I'd like to share my experience about a valuable OSS project I liked very much & used recently.
The latest project I designed & implemented was an integration subsystem that acts as a bridge between two systems, our B2C Portal & e-Government  Message-based Services.

The solution architecture is based on building multiple multi-threaded windows services that receive, parse, initiate and send different types of requests & transactions between both systems bidirectional.
Building this number of windows services required building a good common infrastructure for all services to make them consistent enough, well refactored, and easy to debug.
And, Here came the decision to use Topshelf as an infrastructure for my services. Topshelf describes itself as "An easy service hosting framework for building Windows services using .NET"

What I liked about Topshelf, as a first reason to search about it & use it, that It enables you to build Windows service as a console application and run & debug it as a console application but you can deploy it as a Windows service. This idea sounds very good for me. So my services shouldn’t inherit from a specific class and shouldn't install them during development time before each debug session & uninstall them again.

Edit: Installing Topshelf became quite easy because of NuGet integration with Visual Studio 2010.
Other wise, you can simply download binaries & add references to you project.

So, let's see how it's easy to use Topshelf! All what I need is an empty console application and in the main method let's write the following.

   1: const string SERVICE_NAME = "Do Something Service";

   2:  

   3: // configure log4net

   4: XmlConfigurator.Configure(PathHelper.GetFileInfo("do_something_service.log4net"));

   5:  

   6: // configure service runner or host

   7: HostFactory.Run(cfg => {

   8:     cfg.Service<IDoSomethingService>(svc => {

   9:         svc.SetServiceName(SERVICE_NAME);

  10:         svc.ConstructUsing(name => new DoSomethingService());

  11:         svc.WhenStarted(service => service.Start());

  12:         svc.WhenStopped(service => service.Stop());

  13:     }); cfg.RunAsLocalSystem();

  14:     cfg.SetDescription(SERVICE_NAME);

  15:     cfg.SetDisplayName(SERVICE_NAME);

  16:     cfg.SetServiceName(SERVICE_NAME);

  17: });

Those few lines will make the console application work both as console application, as expected, and also as a Windows service that can be installed & controlled from Services Manager.

The code shown above is very generic so it doesn’t require implementing specific interfaces or to inherit from specific base classes. You can see method signatures below to make sure it’s all generic.

   1: void ConstructUsing(Topshelf.Model.DescriptionServiceFactory<TService> serviceFactory);

   2: void WhenStarted(System.Action<TService> startAction);

   3: void WhenStopped(System.Action<TService> stopAction);

To implement my services, first, I created custom interfaces. First interface called IGenericService that will be a base for all service classes. Then, I create a custom interface for each service. For instance, I create DoSomethingService, I use an interface IDoSomethingService that inherits from IGenericService.

   1: public interface IGenericService {

   2:     void Start();

   3:     void Stop();

   4: }

   5:  

   6: public interface IDoSomethingService : IGenericService {

   7: }

   8:  

   9: public class DoSomethingService : IDoSomethingService {

  10:     void Start() { return; }

  11:     void Stop(){ return; }

  12: }

Now, you can easily install your console application executable as a Windows service through the following command line: {console_exe} install  Or {console_exe} uninstall to uninstall it.
Then, using Services Manager you can control the service as needed.

There’s another way to host services built by Topshelf called shelving but I was interested in stand-alone Windows services that I can control through Services Manager.

That was a quick dumb of steps I went through during building my services. I hope it was useful.
Questions are welcome :)

Today's short discussion led me again to the question "Business Analyst vs System Analyst". I feel now that the discussion was talking more about BA than SA. I found this statement "The Systems Analyst role attempts to provide a bridge between the business requirements and the technical definition of the IT solution. The Business Analyst role is primarily about documenting and gathering the business requirements. The important point to note that the two roles are complimentary, you need both to make a successful IT project." Check http://bit.ly/g666lV for full article. I usually see the SA as a clever ex-developer who understands building systems very well to put the first blueprint of the new system. Anyone else think the same? :)