Alan’s Kiloblog

Amazing that I still use Mail.app, even when it loses email.

My routine. When I don’t have anything better to do I write about my routine. You always know you are not getting things done when you think that the first thing you need to do is get things done. I’m experience a moment of resistance. Need to publish something. Anything. Anywhere.

We didn’t have the concept of a notary in Michigan. I need to find a Notary today to notarize the articles of incorporation for Think New Orleans. Today will be quite a little trek.

My days are falling apart without structure. I’m not able to create quite what I wish to create. At this moment, I’d like to call Karen and plan to run out and spend time at NENA, which is something that is very important to me. When we do, we miss Patricia, and nothing gets done. I don’t seem to be able to find the time to do this. Myself, I need a way to get things done, a project planning tool for volunteer projects. It would probably resemble a trouble ticket system in a software application.

Blogger supports a comments feed for each post. I did not know this. I found the example in Graeme Rocher’s Blog.

I have no users for Syndibase, no clients except myself, so I need to not worry about how something will be used outside myself. I must stop fussing, anticipating complaints of people who do not yet exist. In this note to self, I ask you to please be more agile. If only there was a better way to document this stuff, like a Wiki that was attached to the source code. Some place where I could write in English, what I’m trying to accomplish. In any case, I’ll fuss over a functionality that you would expect from an object or library, but one that I have no need for as of yet.

I can see that test first, and test coverage, has pushed me to write a lot of code that exists only in tests. When writing a library or object, I’ll think of a functionality the it ought to have, to round the object out. Let’s say I’ve created a container interface. For some reason, I’ll flesh the library out, adding, say, an immutable decorator implementation, even though their is no call for it in my current project.

I’ll write tests for the immutable decorator. Now, there is code that uses this implementation. Test code.

With a burning desire to release some software, I’m annoyed by all this rounding. When I look closely, a lot of the code that exists only to be tested, is dubious. If I have no need for an immutable decorator now, will I ever have such a need? Will a rounded library attract more users, or will it chase them away, because there are compontents that are unemployed oddballs?

These cheeky monkies like to break their tests. That all they got to do. When they do, it is agony to nurse them, because they stand between me and a commit, and all they do is exist to please some future programmer, to show that I thought of that possiblity.

I care not for this code. Apathy is toxic. I’ve remediated my source.

I do not berate test first. I berate myself.

It was my personal test first mindset of late 2005. It was a cycle of writing tests first, instead of writing code first, that led me to write objects that have no client except for the test.

I’m reading Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure or Homeland Security. This is what I’ve done when I’ve not been sleeping. Stories of incompetence. Stories of unrecognized ingenuity. There is a feeling that I need to be doing something to commemorate Katrina, but I’m quite tired of being around people. I don’t feel like changing my web sites to include some graphic. It seems hollow. I don’t feel that we can have a one year anniversary, any more than we could have had a one week anniversary. The CSO was announced yesterday. They are moving forward while we mourn.