Frank Carver's Punch Barrel

I use Test-Driven Development (TDD) every day, and find it very helpful. It can be hard to get to grips with, though. I was pleased to read that acceptance-testing pundit Gojko Adzic had fun with some very strict TDD rules.

Gojko Adzic » Thought-provoking TDD exercise at the Software Craftsmanship conference.

My approach to TDD is really quite similar to these strict rules. I’ll admit that I do (sometmes) cut a few corners. The biggest aid to getting the most from TDD is definately good refactoring tools. Without that the whole thing becomes so much more clumsy.

TDD is very comfortable with Java and Eclipse. Recently I have moved out of that comfort zone into some fairly deep JavaScript work, and really miss the ability to automatically extract or move methods etc.

At work I have three monitors on my desk – one 20″ wide-screen and two 17″ regular monitors. At home I have just two somewhat mismatched 17″ monitors. Admittedly, in both cases all the monitors are attached to different computers, but using Synergy they respond to the same mouse and keyboard.

I do a lot of programming using Eclipse, for example, and I have found that the widescreen monitor is considerably more effective than the old 4×3 style. The extra width gives room for a variety of toolbars and navigation panels at the side of the screen. I have tried using multiple monitors on a single computer but have never found a satisfactory way to use them. Splitting a single desktop always seems to result in windows with a big opaque bar down the middle, which I hate, and makes the “full screen” window button effectively useless. So far I have not found any desktop settings which support the option of “full screen” filling the display the window is currently displayed on. Perhaps I should try harder!

It’s sometimes more difficult to justify getting a bigger monitor for home development, than for one used at work for paying customers, though.

Coding Horror: Does More Than One Monitor Improve Productivity?

This looks like an interesting project. I’m slightly worried by the way that it seems to embody the one class === one test assumption, but if that doesn’t get in the way of other forms of unit testing it could be useful.

moreUnit – Home

This looks as if it might be useful, particularly when blogging about software development or when writing HTML documentation. An Eclipse plugin which allows easy copy/paste of code with HTML syntax highlighting.

SourceForge.net: Files

Like many other developers I was keen to try out the recent Eclipse Ganymede release. In particular I wanted to try the new subversion integration (“subversive”) to see if it is any better than the old (“subclipse”) plugin I used to use with Europa.

Getting the new subversion working was surprisingly tricky. Obvious choices simply do not work, and the error messages do not give quite enough information to solve the problem. Add to this that some of the names of locations and updates can easily be misconstrued and you have a recipe for confusion.

For example, the error message presented if you try to use the subversive plugin without installing any third-party connectors is the only-partially-helpful:

I think the Eclipse folks have potentially missed something important here – checking out a project or three from subversion is almost always the way I start when I want to evaluate an IDE.

Anyway, here are a set of steps which should result in a working Eclipse Ganymede with the new subversion:

Get the basic subversion integration plugin from the eclipse download site

1. Select Help::Software Updates from the menu bar
2. Unfold Ganymede::Collaboration Tools
3. Select SVN Team Provider (Incubation)
4. Click install… and follow the instructions, including a restart of Eclipse

Resist the temptation to try and use the plugin at this point. It won’t work and you will get the above confusing message about connectors.

Get the third party SVN connectors from a different update site

1. Select Help::Software Updates from the menu bar
2. Click Add Site…
3. Enter http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/update-site/ and Click OK
4. Unfold the new site :: Subversive SVN Connectors
5. Select appropriate connectors. In my case I selected Subversive SVN Connectors, SVNKit 1.1.7, and SVNKit 1.2.0
6. Click install… and follow the instructions, including a restart of Eclipse

You should now be able to either Window::Show View::Other…::SVN Repositories or Window::Open Perspective::Other…::SVN Repository Exploring and add repositories to your hearts’s content.

Please let me know if your process differs from this, or if you have any corrections or suggestions.

I found a blog entry which goes through the steps of downloading, building and installing the eclipse git plugin, so I thought I’d give it a go. It’s a bit complicated – involving building the plugin from source, but It seems to work!

Chris Cruft » Blog Archive » Eclipse Git plugin installation

This is such a great idea – it really is getting close to real pair programming environment. Best of all it runs with the familiar Eclipse IDE.

Cola: Real-Time Shared Editing on Vimeo

I make a lot of use of Eclipse these days. I use a small number of keyboard shortcuts, and would like to use more, but have always found it tricky to find/remember them. Here’s a handy list from Rohith Rajagopal:

Go Forth And Code: Eclipse Shortcuts: or To Eclipse and Back Again