Something Important Happened

I just caught on the eetimes that there is a new software engineering certification.  What makes this a big deal is that it's by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, something that has an actual track record.

The test info is also on their site, look for "Software" in the list.  As the recent spat on Yahoo's CEO demonstrated, there isn't currently an equivalent of the engineering certifications in software.  This may change that.

This may prove to be pivotal for the field of Software Engineering / Programming / Whatever we call it.

NOW I Get It: Aspect Oriented Programming

After going through the Aspect related chapter of Spring in Action the concept of Aspects finally "clicked" for me.  This is after reading the Wikipedia on it, the Spring documentation and various other articles as well.

To summarize:

• Some things (like logging) need to be executed everywhere, even in modules who's primary purpose isn't logging.  Aspects address this issue.
• An Aspect is just a bit of code (with Spring it can even be a POJO) that is configured (typically with an annotation or XML) to run before, after, or around a join point (for now, assume it's a fancy word for method).
• For the canonical example of logging, you can create an aspect to log something like "Calling method x with parameters x, y and z" before a method runs and "Returning from method x with return value y" afterwards.  
• This separates the logged class from the logging system entirely and results in a second class logging the first one.  
• If you want logging statements in the middle of a method, too bad, refactor to call a helper method (thus creating a new join point) and log there.

Hopefully presenting the gist of it with concrete examples will help everyone's understanding.

Gower's Law

Gower's Law: You can deliver a broken build in near-zero time.

(PS: thedailywtf article in the above link is gold)

This was inspired both by Peopleware (where they mention that when there is a tight schedule quality usually suffers) and my own experience in the work force.