Mark Roseman's Blog

Javascript testing.

With a few exceptions, the last couple of weeks have been glacially slow on the development side. Some of the new work on the wiki editing side (to appear in a future version) involves a lot of Javascript, some mine, and some from various third parties.

Getting it to work is somewhat painful (i.e. I'm far from a Javascript expert), as is getting it to work across browsers (though libraries definitely help). What was far more painful though was getting the automated tests for all this working. I've been using Selenium, or more precisely a tweaked version of the small Tcl wrapper that Jean-Claude had started.

I do have to say I'm amazed at what Selenium does (or more to the point that it's actually just one big Javascript application), and it's a very handy tool. But as always with earlier-stage tools that are in rapid development, the documentation, while better than most, isn't ideal. What really takes a lot of time is figuring out the right browser idiom to use to test a particular application condition, which definitely takes a lot of trial and error. But then getting things working on one platform (Firefox) and finding most of the various idioms don't work on other platforms (e.g. Internet Explorer). Lots more trial and error, and several days later finally have a decent set of tests that runs on Firefox (Mac and Windows) and IE. I'll save Safari for another day.

On the plus side, it's very much just a learning experience... what idioms to use, how best to express things, and even little changes to the application being tested that can make it easier to work with. So moving forward will be at least incrementally better. On the negative side, it was really slow going, too much trial and error with each iteration taking up to a few minutes. The "edit-test" cycle felt uncomfortably like the "edit-compile-link-run" cycle in the bad old days of compiled languages on overly loaded, slow, shared machines.

Tcl Summaries.

The ghq.tcl.tk site that Steve set up for the Tcl/Tk conference has been a nice way to catch up on what I'm missing, especially with Michael Cleverly providing very nice summaries of most of the talks again.

Social Impact of Working from Home.

A nice article from Stefan with a different perspective on the "social isolation" perspective many people have about working from home.

For me, one of the huge benefits has been the flexibility. Pauline's job keeps her incredibly busy, so being able to take on a few more things around here during the day (without it being a huge interruption from work because of extra travel time) is very handy, and definitely leaves us with more quality time together, lets us take better care of ourselves in terms of eating and exercise, and certainly makes for less stress.

I've actually been working from home since we've been married, but I'd have trouble seeing us do it any other way and still keep our sanity. I remember the first while after we sold TeamWave. We were living in Hamilton at the time, the rest of the TeamWave guys were in Alberta, and the company who bought us were in Boston. I ended up being the go-between, so between the frequent trips to Boston or Calgary, plus the daily coordination and assistance to everyone (from 8am for the Boston guys to usually well after 8pm for the Calgary guys, given the two hour time change and the fact that most developers are not exactly early risers), plus trying to get tasks of my own accomplished, it made for really long days with rarely a break. With Pauline at a particularly busy time in her residency, it was a not a good combination. And I don't think we'd ever had so much takeout. I can just imagine what it would have been like with all that plus working out of an office somewhere.

We're lucky we've got the options to achieve a healthier work/life balance now, with both of us still working. The great thing about the technology nowadays is that it has given a lot more people the option to make similar choices for themselves. Things like that are a big part of what motivates me to work in this area (as opposed to providing tools that improve business efficiency by 2.31%...).

Spammers suck.

Especially when they use one of your domains for the return address of their emails.

Missing out on Tcl conference.

Though I've in the past ended up going (mostly for social reasons) I decided to skip out on this year's Tcl conference, which will be held next week. It's a bit odd since it's been held in New Orleans three times I think, and I haven't actually been to any of those ones. No offence Gerald.

Besides being way behind on work (or at least way behind where I wanted to be on certain things), the whole travel for conferences thing is less and less appealing. Certainly for US destinations there's the whole uncomfortable border/DHS factor, and in general getting on a plane is still not something to look forward to. All the many food restrictions I have now also really takes a lot of the fun away, especially for a location like NOLA. So that can be frustrating as well. But by and large, I also just don't feel that I'm missing that much from most of these conferences.

But, to those who will be down there next week, have a drink or two for me...

Like a Hamster on a Wheel.

Joel's comparison of Ajax today/tomorrow with the DOS-Windows transition is a good one (except for remembering all that stuff as it happened, which reminds me yet again I'm too old to be doing this). It's also yet another reminder of how little the whole field of software development truly evolves - three steps forward, two steps back. Not so much in terms of individual technologies of course, but in terms of our ability (and the effort required) to create software to solve problems.

Congrats to David Ascher.

David will be heading up the new Mozilla foundation email and communications spinoff, the intent being to do with Thunderbird et al what spinning off Mozilla did for it/Firefox.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with this, and it would be cool if on the offchance it does produce a significant new email option in the same way that Firefox produced a much-needed new browser option. I'm particularly interested by the hints of integrating other sorts of communications facilities.

Though I haven't actually been following Thunderbird, the whole email client area is a long-standing interest, beyond the broader interest in collaboration tools. I remember reviewing some of the early MIME/AtomicMail papers, and trying out about every weird research prototype email system I could find in the early 90s. I also led a team working on one of the first commercial IMAP clients, including a complete rework of the user experience to better match the capabilities of this "newer" protocol.

Anyway, best of luck as "MailCo" gets going, and with any luck we'll be hearing many more good things.

SaaS+ for Small Business.

I recently had my attention drawn to WinWeb, which advertises itself as "small business infrastructure". Essentially, it offers a very reasonably priced suite of online tools and services extremely well targeted to small businesses. It includes things like bookkeeping, calendar, address book, file store, web presence, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.

On top of that, there are a number of value-added services offered by professionals (accountants, virtual assistants, etc.) available through the site for extra fees. The beauty of that of course is its all done on an as-needed basis, which makes it both easier to find professionals when you need them (so you'll actually use them), cheaper (because doing one-offs or short term things is easy). And of course you can provide them with access to all your information which is already stored on the site, so there's no need to worry about getting information back and forth like usual - it can all be done "in place".

I'm surprised I hadn't heard of them before, though it is pretty much UK based. Looks like a very nice, practical, well-priced and well-targeted offering. I'm impressed.

Book: The Shock Doctrine.

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is a fascinating and disturbing analysis of political events over the last 30-40 years. More specifically, the book connects the move to more "free markets" in various countries, particularly through pressure from groups like the IMF, to disasters of various sorts, randomly occurring and otherwise. The underlying thread is the use of disasters to institute policies (privatization, outsourcing, etc.) to transfer wealth from the public at large to private interests, in the name of "democracy" and "freedom", but in reality anything but. It's also a pretty heavy blast at the recently-deceased uber-capitalist Milton Friedman.

It's a compelling lens to view these various events through, and I was surprised and impressed by the amount of research that went into this. Having said all that, it's one of those books that will either support your existing world view (in which case it does provide some new insights), or be dismissed as so much socialist, leftist propaganda and whining. No middle ground here.

Book: Get Smarter.

We took a brief hop out to Edmonton this weekend for a family wedding. On the flight over, I read Seymour Schulich's book Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons.

Schulich, a fairly well-known Canadian businessman and philanthopist, wrote this as a wide-ranging book of advice for people in their 20s and 30s, particularly those with entrepreneurial or leadership inclinations. The reviews I'd seen have commented that unlike most business books with one or two decent take-away lessons, this one probably has a dozen or two. I'd definitely agree with that.

Most refreshing as compared with most business books is that it's written in a very straightforward, to the point way. With the average chapter being 4-6 pages (and the first of those being a cartoon), this is not an academic thesis by any means. I guess that's the benefit of being very successful, you don't feel the need to justify things so much.

A quick read, and many practical ideas to adopt or consider, this one is a no-brainer to recommend to people, especially those in the target audience of younger professionals.

Next up is Naomi Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism...