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Software Development

March 2006

Developers will gather once again this year at Software Development West, held March 13-17 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Now in its 19th year, SD West will bring developers together with some of the biggest names in the software industry—Bjarne Stroustrup, Herb Sutter and Steve McConnell, to name a few—and will offer some new tracks and classes.

We asked Conference Director Nicole Garbolino to give us a preview of this year's event:

Who are the standout keynote speakers for 2006?

There are lots of great speakers, but attendees shouldn't miss Steve McConnell's keynote "The 10 Most Important Ideas in Software Development" on March 13. Steve explains how these 10 ideas form the foundation for effective software development, and sheds light on which practices will withstand the test of time, and which are fads.

On March 15, there's Bruce Schneier's security keynote "What Works, What Doesn't and Why." From the human to the technological, from the personal to the national, the concepts are the same: By pulling examples from a variety of sources—technological, historical and biological—Schneier will discuss the fundamentals, and tell us how we should be thinking of security.

What's new?

The Business of Software track is brand new. Whether you're starting a consulting business or a small ISV, this track will give you insight into starting your own business. Learn how to raise money, and what terms like "bootstrap," "venture capital" and "corporate investment" mean to the entrepreneur. Learn what a business plan is and how to present it to investors. Get your questions answered by venture capitalists, lawyers and successful serial entrepreneurs. We'll even tell you when and why to sell your company.

The two-day tutorial "Stroustrup & Sutter on C++" returns this year. Bjarne will reprise his popular "Speaking C++ as a Native" talk, and the tutorial will be packed with lots of new, leading-edge and highly practical material—in addition to forward-looking discussions about the next version of the C++ Standard, C++0x.

Are there any special events attendees should know about?

The annual Dr. Dobb's Journal Excellence in Programming Awards and the 16th annual Software Development Jolt Awards will take place on Wednesday, March 15.

The "Model-Driven Development Face-off" is also on March 15. This year, industry experts such as Jack Greenfield, Granville Miller, Scott Ambler, Jon Kern and Juha-Pekka Tolvanen will debate which approach is better able to realize the promise of model-driven development in the real world, what are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and where they're heading.

What else should readers know?

Each year the conference receives over 600 submissions for class topics and some standouts don't fall into the suggested categories. This year, we created a "Grab Bag" track to showcase these submissions. The track includes such classes as "Agile Contracts" and "Taming Legacy Perl Code."

Finally, I'd like to add that our speakers are the best and brightest in the software development world. I've had a few people tell me that any speaker at SD West would be a keynote speaker at other shows.

—Kevin Carlson

Testing for Testers
Patton's tome reviewed.

Software testing is an integral—yet often neglected—part of the software development process. For those of us among the testing-disinclined comes Software Testing (Sams, 2005), now in its second edition. Written by Ron Patton, a 15-year veteran of the field, the book covers a variety of topics in the software testing process.

Software Testing is written primarily for those interested in becoming professional software testers, and managers looking to improve their department's testing process. Patton unfortunately considers developers as separate from testers. That may be true in most medium to large shops (Patton's résumé cites Microsoft and Texas Instruments), but in smaller companies with even smaller budgets, the programmers and testers are often one and the same. Patton largely neglects this type of tester, and most of his examples deal with near-finished software navigated through GUI interfaces. In fact, there's little source code (most of which is written in Basic), and unit testing occupies only a few paragraphs of this modestly sized book.

Patton also uses a number of questionable examples. In the later chapters, he uses Mantis Bug Tracker to demonstrate how to file and review bug reports. If the book's major aim is to prepare its readers for a career in software testing, shouldn't the more commonly used BugZilla or FogBugz be used instead? The same can be said for a number of tools presented in Chapter 15, "Automated Testing and Test Tools"—surely there's a better tool for automating testing scripts than the Windows Task Scheduler.

Despite these criticisms, Software Testing is well written, providing a broad overview of the testing process. Patton's expertise is evident, and the book covers many overlooked topics. For example, an entire chapter is devoted to testing the software's documentation, and another section outlines recommended steps and documentation necessary when outsourcing testing responsibilities to third parties.

Potential software-testing candidates, managers and programming newbies, will find the tome worth its $39.99 list price. However, experienced software developers looking to hone their testing skills ought to look elsewhere.

Ben Vinegar (b.vinegar@utoronto.ca) is a computer science student at the University of Toronto.

Feature Funhouse: IT Alias Livening up dull staff meetings Goal: Give your staff a healthy sense of humor and professional pride. Activity: Tired of being an ordinary Programmer Analyst? Want your business card to read Code Contortionist, Process Pirate or Software Sculptor? When your shop is long on work and short on humor, break the ice with an activity that won't consume much meeting time. Preparation: Make a list of technology profession nouns such as architecture, code, collaboration, deployment, enterprise and infrastructure. Next, list unusual professional titles that are unrelated to technology (jockey, masseuse, knight, excavator, rock star, surgeon and so on). Cut out the words, keeping the technology nouns separate from the unusual professions. Randomly draw one from each pile to form new job titles. Depending on your preferred variation, you can draw the job titles ahead of time, or have staff draw their own during the meeting. Variations: For departmental meetings or large gatherings, have "Hello, My Name is ..." stickers handy and ask each person to write his name and "new" job title. The wacky job titles are great conversation starters. Another possibility is to choose the random job title combinations ahead of time and print a new business card for each staff member. You could also make place cards for each chair. When each staff member enters the room, ask him to sit at the place with the job title he likes the most or best reflects his job. If you have a thick-skinned group, consider substituting the second list with undesirable animals such as paramecium, ogre, sloth, gnome or lizard to create hilarious job titles like Programming Paramecium or Validation Ogre. Donna Davis manages projects and developers in Pitt County's MIS Department in Greenville, N.C.

Ten Top Tomes
The best-selling books about hardware on Amazon.com

1. Wiley GAAP 2006: Interpretation and Application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Barry J. Epstein	2. IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results, Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross
3. Boards that Deliver: Advancing Corporate Governance from Compliance to Competitive Advantage, Ram Charan	4. Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas, Lou Dobbs
5. Corporate Canaries: Avoid Business Disasters with a Coal Miner's Secrets, Gary Sutton	6. Manager's Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Improving Internal Controls to Prevent Fraud, Scott Green
7. Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage, Nicholas G. Carr	8. What is Sarbanes-Oxley? Guy P. Lander
9. CarverGuide: Basic Principles of Policy Governance, John Carver	10. The Sarbanes-Oxley Guide for Finance and Information Technology Professionals, Sarbanes-Oxley Group

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