Robert Casto
Software Developer and Performance Engineer
Avoid Creating Performance Tests
May 26th
Most projects, big important ones, have a person or team assigned to test the application. These people must create and run hundreds of tests to verify the system. If the team is well organized and has sufficient resources, they probably have their tests recorded in some way to reduce their work load. This can be a great source of test data and code for the performance engineer. Instead of inventing everything needed for performance evaluation, all that is needed is some conversion code and perhaps a way to adapt the test code to the performance tool. The hundreds of tests are already captured in some way, you just need to create some method for making them usable. First look at how the tests are captured. Is it in XML, serialized objects, perhaps spreadsheets? A conversion program can be used to make the data they contain usable, or an adapter can be written that is able to read the files and extract the needed data. This work though tedious, will save tons of time that would have been spent creating tests. It also means that the testing group can continue their work of creating new tests, updating old ones, and fixing ones with problems. All that work can be reused and save a great deal of time for the performance engineer.
Companies Should Buy Developers $3000 Machines
May 21st
Why do companies give developers junk machines? Compared to hardware, software developers are quite expensive. A really nice PC that costs $3000 might sound like overkill for a $60k a year developer, but it only comes to 5% of their salary. A $5000 laptop for a developer who makes $100k per year is still only 5%. To get the most out of your developer investment, give them the best machine money can buy. If you give them a $1000 laptop, you will save money on hardware, but the developer will be sorely underutilized. The developer will spend most of their time waiting on tasks to finish or fighting problems on the machine so they get their work done. Giving a developer a cheap machine not only lessens their productivity, it also lowers their morale. Developers want to get code written, solve problems, and fix bugs as quickly as possible. Nothing frustrates them more than waiting on a slow machine to compile their code or run the newest version of a program. Just think how productive they can be with a machine they never have to wait on. A machine with more disk space, memory, and cpu power than they have ever had in their lives. Their productivity will go up, morale will go up, and the company will get a lot more out of its $60k to $100k investment than they ever dreamed.
Support Your Favorite Dealer
May 20th
I have to side with the dealers when it comes to whether they should be in business or not. Why should a auto manufacturer headquartered in one location decide the fate of family-owned dealerships across the nation. Our free market should decide who lives and who dies. It is true that in bankruptcy all contracts are null and void. But that protection should only be extended to the company and not give it the power to bankrupt thousands of other businesses in the process.
When Encron and Worldcom fell years ago, they took down a number of companies with them. There was not much shouting, but in this case, we are talking about thousands of companies, many of which have been in business for decades, and deserve a fighting chance if they can make it work.
Password Management Web 2.0
May 18th
A problem all of us share is dealing with too many passwords. There are accounts for everything on the web, and each one wants a different login and password. One way I have dealt with this issue is to install KeePass (www.keepass.info). It is a free password safe that supports triple password protection. It does a great job of generating passwords as well which means I can use strong passwords, and not have to remember them.
The other problem is always having my passwords available for lookup. I use a number of different computers throughout the day and using USB drives at customer sites is taboo. A great solution I found is to use DropBox (www.getdropbox.com) which sets up a special folder where you can place files and they will automatically be updated onto all your computers. I put the KeePass database file there and anytime I update it, all my other computers get updated as well. My passwords end up on all my computers, and because the files are on multiple computers, I don’t have to worry about backing the files up. The password database is protected by encryption, and the transfer of files to other computers is encrypted as well.