I’m a big fan of keeping stuff in a simple textual format (even more so since reading The Pragmatic Programmer). So on our little startup project we’ve simply been keeping the documentation in text files. The project to-do list, installation instructions, all that sorta stuff. There’s only two developers on the project at the moment, so we just sync up to CVS and we get the latest gear. Well I’ve started doing doco for more [...]

JoSQL is a pretty addictive API for querying java.util.Collection classes. The more I use it, the more I like it. This weekend I had a scenario where my Collection was full of objects implementing a custom Event interface – some of them SystemEvent, and some of them MonitorEvent (and one day, potentially, a host of others). MonitorEvents have a bunch of additional routines they expose which I needed to query on. So, how do you [...]

I’ve been meaning to have a play with some of the “dynamic proxy” type mock frameworks out there for a while and yesterday I finally had a chance. For most of consulting stuff I’m writing J2EE tests (EJB,MQ,JDBC,JNDI,Web stuff) and I’ve found Mockrunner to be the business. Huge fan. But MockRunner works on providing mock implementations of InitialContext, HttpServletRequest, and all those other essential classes in the JEE space. What I was after was a [...]

After reading and reviewing MicroISV, I’ve done a brain dump on bunch of key software business ideas I learnt from that book. This stuff may be old news for you, but it’s really making me think right now… Forget the VC thing for now. A 200 page business plan isn’t worth it… but a 2 page one probably is. There is power is committing stuff to paper and if it forces you to cogently present [...]

Just finished reading MicroISV: From Vision to Reality and I have to say that this is one sensational book. If you are interested in starting your own software company, then this is one book that you need to get a hold of. The focus of this book is starting a small product-based software company with a vision to grow it into something great. But by far the most valuable bit for me was the 50 [...]