CVS to Subversion Migration – a war story

One of the things that was annoying us at Wotif for some time has been how slow our CVS repository had been getting. Doing a tag after a release, for example, could take up to 15 minutes, CruiseControl was taking up to 45 minutes to do a scan, that sort of thing. Basically, the server … Continue reading “CVS to Subversion Migration – a war story”

One of the things that was annoying us at Wotif for some time has been how slow our CVS repository had been getting. Doing a tag after a release, for example, could take up to 15 minutes, CruiseControl was taking up to 45 minutes to do a scan, that sort of thing. Basically, the server we were using was almost literally having the hard disks melt… a 4GB CVS repository was being hammered almost continually. So, we finally bit the bullet a few weeks ago, and moved to Subversion, and I thought I’d share the experience.

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CruiseControl != Continuous Integration

We’ve been doing a lot of recruiting at “Wotif”:http://www.wotif.com/AboutCareersPositionDetails.jsp?jobId=7 recently, so I’ve been doing a lot of resume skimming and interviews of late. And I’ve noticed, amongst many other things, statements like this: “Oh, yes, we did continuous integration; we used CruiseControl!” Folks, using “CruiseControl”:http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net is not continuous integration. And that’s coming from a former … Continue reading “CruiseControl != Continuous Integration”

We’ve been doing a lot of recruiting at “Wotif”:http://www.wotif.com/AboutCareersPositionDetails.jsp?jobId=7 recently, so I’ve been doing a lot of resume skimming and interviews of late. And I’ve noticed, amongst many other things, statements like this: “Oh, yes, we did continuous integration; we used CruiseControl!”

Folks, using “CruiseControl”:http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net is not continuous integration. And that’s coming from a former committer on the CruiseControl project.

Continue reading “CruiseControl != Continuous Integration”

How not to handle exceptions from static code block in Java

Saw a “post at taragana.com”:http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-handle-exceptions-from-static-code-block-in-java on “How To Handle Exceptions From Static Code Block in Java”. It came down to advocating logging it and rethrowing a runtime exception which would “normally ends the program execution”. Sorry, but I couldn’t let this piece of extremely bad advice slide…

Saw a “post at taragana.com”:http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-handle-exceptions-from-static-code-block-in-java on “How To Handle Exceptions From Static Code Block in Java”. It came down to advocating logging it and rethrowing a runtime exception which would “normally ends the program execution”. Sorry, but I couldn’t let this piece of extremely bad advice slide…

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Broken abstractions => broken code

I’ve just received another powerful lesson in this simple concept. When you break your abstractions, it invariably leads to broken code.

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Google Trends

Well, I saw “this article”:http://www.jrandolph.com/blog/?p=30 showing how Ruby was trending in popularity to Python. Then, with the aid of some co-workers, it got morphed into “this”:http://www.google.com/trends?q=brittany+spears%2Cjohn+howard&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all Food for thought

Well, I saw “this article”:http://www.jrandolph.com/blog/?p=30 showing how Ruby was trending in popularity to Python. Then, with the aid of some co-workers, it got morphed into “this”:http://www.google.com/trends?q=brittany+spears%2Cjohn+howard&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all

Food for thought

Still no tax reform

Well, once again Peter Costello has failed to deliver any significant tax reform. Why? Well, read on.

Well, once again Peter Costello has failed to deliver any significant tax reform. Why? Well, read on.

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Misleading headlines – don’t you love them?

The Australian IT on Tuesday had a “lovely article”:http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,18994350%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html?from=rss on the Trellis system rollout in WA – specifically, how it was a “Big Java Job [that was] blasted on blowout”. The implication, of course, was that Java was to blame.

The Australian IT on Tuesday had a “lovely article”:http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,18994350%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html?from=rss on the Trellis system rollout in WA – specifically, how it was a “Big Java Job [that was] blasted on blowout”. The implication, of course, was that Java was to blame.

Continue reading “Misleading headlines – don’t you love them?”

*rofl*

Wot “Jeffrey said”:http://www.developertesting.com/archives/month200604/20060430-MockingASingleton.html. I’ll never be afraid to mock a singleton again.

Wot “Jeffrey said”:http://www.developertesting.com/archives/month200604/20060430-MockingASingleton.html.

I’ll never be afraid to mock a singleton again.

Estimation vs planning

One thing that I get sick of is how people take an estimate, expect it to be accurate, feed it into a plan, and when the plan is (inevitably) proven wrong, blame the estimate. This is a fallacy from the era of Waterfall development, but it still lingers on in many Agile environments.

One thing that I get sick of is how people take an estimate, expect it to be accurate, feed it into a plan, and when the plan is (inevitably) proven wrong, blame the estimate. This is a fallacy from the era of Waterfall development, but it still lingers on in many Agile environments.

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Well, that makes it official… Wotif.com is going IPO

It’s official, it’s up on “our site”:www.wotif.com, so it must be true: Wotif.com is in the last stages before listing, with the offical “Prospectus now available for review”:http://www.macquarie.com.au/wotif.

It’s official, it’s up on “our site”:www.wotif.com, so it must be true: Wotif.com is in the last stages before listing, with the offical “Prospectus now available for review”:http://www.macquarie.com.au/wotif.

Continue reading “Well, that makes it official… Wotif.com is going IPO”