[RO] Un nou inceput (2)

Acum 2 ani si 6 luni porneam pe un nou drum. Acum a venit vremea pentru inca un salt in fata. Am decis sa parasesc HyperActive.

De acum incolo titlul meu (pe langa “Comandant Suprem al Fortelor Imperiale“) este “Programator la Data Solutions“.

De ce?

Pe scurt: pentru a programa.

Pe lung: am inceput treaba la HyperActive ca web developer, si in aceasta perioada am invatat mult, am crescut mult, pana am ajuns in punctul in care ma simt gata sa urc inca o treapta, iar acea treapta o reprezinta lucrul pe software web si aplicatii intranet. Programare.

HyperActive are si va avea in continuare succes ca agentie interactiva, cu clienti si proiecte importante in domeniul advertising-ului si marketing-ului digital, iar eu personal le doresc tot binele din lume. Din pacate satisfactia mea interioara vine din alt tip de proiecte.

Ce am realizat?

Nici nu stiu de unde sa incep.

Toate astea datorita si impreuna cu partenerul meu de batut cap in cap in gasirea solutiilor, Gabriel Solomon.

Regrete?

Echipa. Fara discutii.

Poate mai important decat realizarile de mai sus, HyperActive mi-a dat ocazia sa beneficiez de sentimentul inaltator de a fi persoana la care colegii tai apeleaza cand au nevoie de ajutor sau cand sunt blocati.

Ovidiu Boc imi spunea mai demult ca satisfactia succesului colegilor tai, succes la care ai pus si tu umarul, o depaseste uneori pe cea a succesului personal. Avea dreptate.

Ce urmeaza?

In primul rand urmeaza acomodarea si stabilirea la noul birou. Apoi un proiect in privinta caruia sunt foarte entuziasmat. Apoi … multa munca, multa joaca, invatam si ne dezvoltam in permanenta, altfel nu merita.

July 9, 2010 | Filed Under Personal | 11 Comments 

Trying out The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique

In the raging, aeon-spanning battle against procrastination, I am constantly on the lookout (while procrastinating, of course) for ways to improve my productivity and help me work more efficiently. This is how I stumbled on The Pomodoro Technique, and gave it a try.

The rundown

At it’s core, the technique consists of splitting your work in 25 minute intervals, with a 5 minute break between each interval, and a longer break (15-30 minutes) after 3-4 such intervals (pomodoros).

In theory, it should help you stay focused and productive, by timeboxing your tasks into undividable chunks and then help you analyze and measure your productivity in uninterrupted pomodoros.

The trick is, if you somehow get distracted during a pomodoro (either by other people or by yourself), that pomodoro no longer counts. Even if you happen to take “just a peek” at reddit’s homepage in the 23rd minute (although you and me both know there is no such thing as “just a peek” when it comes to reddit.com).

After the first few days with just a few finished pomodoros per day, you will do your best to avoid interruptions.

Will it help me avoid said interruptions?

No, it will not. It will only make the measure in which these interruptions affect you crystal clear, by showing you just how little actual uninterrupted work you do each day. The book does have an entire chapter dedicated to interruptions and how to handle them, and it’s a short read.

Is it worth it?

First of all, it’s not a silver bullet. There are no silver bullets. It all boils down to your own resolve in sticking to a pattern and work in a less chaotic manner. I find it worthwhile and plan to keep using it for now, for the following reasons:

So go ahead, give it a try, but keep in mind, it will be hard at first; it will hurt your feelings, and like with all things that shine a light on existing problems, you will be tempted to give it up pretty soon.

June 29, 2010 | Filed Under Development, Lifehacks | 7 Comments 

Why testing doesn’t really happen until after D-Day

It happened to all of you. You work on a project and keep delivering features at a steady pace. You test your own work, and get constant confirmation from your project managers that each feature has been tested, and you have a green light to move on from the customer.

The release date is closing in, you manage to wrap everything up, and launch. You lean back in your chair and think to yourself “ahh, another job well done”.

Then, out of nowhere, after just a few hours in, your task list / inbox gets filled with things like “How can I do X?”, “We have an issue with Y” and the dreaded “Z isn’t working”. You open the list, scan the first few items, and it hits you:

“Wait a minute, we’ve been over these, this is the way this feature was supposed to work, it’s been tested.”.

Ahh, but you see, it wasn’t.

But how could this happen?

Here’s the thing: your customers don’t really test. Your project managers don’t really test. You don’t really test. Not until the lauch date that is. That’s when everyone really starts testing.

“But, we had at least 6 people involved in this project at all times. Surely between them they tested everything”.

Well, not really, no. You see, every person involved in your project has a certain way of  looking at it.

You have a list of features that needs implemented. While you churn out feature after feature, you only tend to test the specific behavior you built into each one. “Right, so the user clicks this, fills out this form, and ends up here.”.

You don’t really try to break your own application, so you only interact with it in the way it’s meant to work. And of course, it works … “on your machine”.

Your project managers don’t test because they don’t have the time for it, because they have that meeting about that other project with that other client in 10 minutes, just pop them an email and they’ll look it up later … They won’t. They’ll be too busy.
They’ll rephrase parts of your email (because really, you suck at writing to corporate clients), and forward it to the customer. And they will not get a chance to test it again … until after the lauch date, when …

… the customer will start testing. The customer, the person you build the entire project for, doesn’t even remotely start testing until after the project has set sail. Why? Because until then, to them, the project is not real yet. It’s “under construction”.

They will open it up, have a peek, and unless something is downright wrong, they will not notice it. They will not follow the individual interaction flows, they will not start using the project like they will use it for real. “Oh, I can see some products, that probably means the entire administering, checkout and billing processes must be working.”.

Most of the problems that will rise from the customer’s lack of testing are those when he expects a feature to work a certain way, but he described it to your project manager at first in a totally different way. And she described it to you in yet another way. And you developed it “your way”.

Who’s fault is it?

No one’s really. All of yours.

Who should test?

First of all, nothing beats professional testing. Ideally, you should have dedicated testers, but odds are you will have to make do with what you have available.

So there is good news, and bad news:

The good news is that, when searching for bugs, it’s easy! Grab a few members of your team that don’t work on this particular project. Best to do this with all types of colleagues: other developers, account managers, even the office secretary.

Sit down with them, and politely ask them if they can spare any amount of time to test your product. Then assign them some user roles, and let them loose.

The bad news is that application bugs are the easiest to find and fix. The biggest issues come from what I said earlier: miscommunication.

My bet is that shorter release cycles, more customer involvement (the project managers really have to step up here), and enhanced communication can at least lessen the impact of these problems on the typical project. Also, the User Stories and Acceptance Tests agile development concepts fit perfectly.

June 8, 2010 | Filed Under Development, www | 2 Comments 

Redirect all requests (including POST) from one Apache server to another

In order to test POST callbacks made by a payment gateway without having to work via FTP on a publicly-accessible server, I needed a simple solution to redirect all requests from said server to my workstation, that is on the same network as the server, but is not accessible from outside.

The easiest thing to do was to use the mod_rewrite, mod_proxy and mod_proxy_http Apache modules. You can easily activate all of them in Ubuntu with:

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sudo a2enmod rewrite proxy proxy_http

I created an empty folder on the server and placed a .htaccess file with the following lines in it:

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RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://10.4.2.155/$1 [NC,P]

The [P] at the end of the RewriteRule specifies that the request should be handled by the proxy module so all GET and POST data are preserved. Therefore, all requests made in that directory will be automatically forwarded to my machine.

April 28, 2010 | Filed Under Development, Linux | Leave a Comment 

PHP SoapClient port bug workaround

PHP’s SoapClient has a bug (PHP 5.2.10 here, still not fixed apparently) when the SOAP service must be accessed on a different port other than 80. The WSDL file is fetched correctly, but all subsequent requests are made without any port in the Host field. This causes a SoapFault exception when trying to call any of the service’s methods.

So if the WSDL location is:

http://example.com:33080/soap/server/path?WSDL

All requests after fetching the WSDL file will be made to:

http://example.com/soap/server/path

The simplest way i could work around this was to extend SoapClient and intercept the constructor and the __doRequest method to inject the port in the location on each request:

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<?php
class My_SoapClient extends SoapClient {
 
    public function __construct($wsdl, $options) {
        $url = parse_url($wsdl);
        if ($url['port']) {
            $this->_port = $url['port'];
        }
        return parent::__construct($wsdl, $options);
    }
 
    public function __doRequest($request, $location, $action, $version) {
        $parts = parse_url($location);
        if ($this->_port) {
            $parts['port'] = $this->_port;
        }
        $location = $this->buildLocation($parts);
 
        $return = parent::__doRequest($request, $location, $action, $version);
        return $return;
    }
 
    public function buildLocation($parts = array()) {
        $location = '';
 
        if (isset($parts['scheme'])) {
            $location .= $parts['scheme'].'://';
        }
        if (isset($parts['user']) || isset($parts['pass'])) {
            $location .= $parts['user'].':'.$parts['pass'].'@';
        }
        $location .= $parts['host'];
        if (isset($parts['port'])) {
            $location .= ':'.$parts['port'];
        }
        $location .= $parts['path'];
        if (isset($parts['query'])) {
            $location .= '?'.$parts['query'];
        }
 
        return $location;
    }
}

It works for me, and I would like to know if it doesn’t cover your particular case :)

March 2, 2010 | Filed Under PHP | 13 Comments