A very motivating discussion

Today I took part in a very motivating discussion with Ed, the tech lead for a huge and working software, envisioning a change to unify many applications on a single platform starting from business use cases to real architecture.

A bold, yet realistic plan.
How many teams are brave enough to dream about such a transition?
And how many companies over 100 are brave enough?
Respect.

VMWare Player on Windows 7

Off topic.
I have tried to install VMWare Player 3 on my Windows 7 system.
The installer produced a quite weird error: setup window pops up then... shazam.... shazam..... uh well. Nothing happens.
An ugly grey and empty window grins on the unhappy user, as found in many complains all around google.

Log says: "20110123224814:ERROR** CHtmlDialog::CallJScript: Failed to obtain required required jscript ID; COM Error: -2147352570".
Many posts claim that booting safe mode will help.
No, it wont :(

The solution was quite simple, yet annoying - this is the reason for my post.

I have booted up an old XP machine, started the installer there. Afterwards looked for the temp folder with a vmware_<some numbers> folder. The folder contains the "vmware player.msi" installer, that can be copied back to my Windows Seven system :-)

Happy End.

ASP.NET,avoiding unnecessary async AJAX postbacks

I have faced an issue trying to avoid unnecessary async postbacks.

First of all, improve the website asp.net performance - e.g. avoid using updates by design (e.g. markup or default UpdateMode="always" behaviour),instead use UpdateMode="Conditional" and even consider ChildrenAsTriggers="false".

In this manner one will be able to minimize the need for updating specific update panels and thus posting back dummy markup and causing flicker applying them.

So far, so good, I am able to tell if e.g. updUpdatepanel1 is to be updated by my code and the very same for updUpdatepanel2. I could even check if an UpdatePanel is being updated or not with some little tricks.

But I could not find any means to:
  • check if no update is pending (on server side) and cancel the postback
    currently I am experimenting with Response.End.
  • cancel only one updatepanel at a later point and cause only a small part of the page to be partially rendered....

Thoughts about Scrum ("re-blog")

I have found many interesting thoughts in this post about what is scrum about and what it is not about.
Tips, tricks, hints and failures...

Scrum will not save your project instantly. If started without careful preparation and knowledge there will be little success or fun...

The original post in Hungarian and a very rough translation.

Under-promise & over-deliver versus (?) Scrum

One of my colleagues, happens to be in a fortunate situation to control English almost as a mother tounge. It is always a pleasure to get fresh new ideas from him.

Lately he pops up again and again the under-deliver-over-promise saying.

In Eastern Europe this is one thing most people do not seem to value enough.

Though at some level there can be a trap in this I think that applied carefully and right this can serve as a key element of scrum.
Yeah, I know -- Scrum is about honesty, but currently I seem so many bad examples of over-promising and under-delivering that as a direction is seems to be very tempting.

Keeping the team honest should be the most essential part of any working methodology & project...

Recommended eBook: Agile Development Made Easy!

Some months ago I ran into some slides of Kelly Waters.
I see he has a promising eBook, now on sale for ten bucks.

I have checked his "agile principles" in the past and I have found his style quite enjoyable. He has a brief, well structured mindset, yet doesn't fall into the common mistake of writing some introduction in a agile-for-dummies minimalistic style. I really got useful ideas.

(please note, I am just convinced: I do not get any percentage :-)