William C. Wake's Blog

February 2005 Archives

Anonymous subclass with instance initializer

In JUnit Recipes, JB Rainsberger points out this idiom:

static final Set s = new HashSet() {{
  add("this");
  add("that");
  add("another");
}};

(JB points to an article by Paul Holser, which cites Dave Astels' Test-Driven Development as the source.)

What's it do? The new HashSet(){}; part creates an anonymous subclass (a new type of HashSet without any name). The inner braces are an instance initializer, run before the constructor (implicit and empty) of our new class. So this code creates a new Set, and fills its contents.

Kent Beck's "Programming Intensive" Workshop

We used "games" as the vehicle. That worked well enough - you can get the feel of a game without having to develop it all the way out. In the evenings, we were on our own to do some writing and exercises in thinking about software.

The first couple days, we focused on creating a crossword puzzle helper. The idea is that you'd populate some parts of a grid, and then the tool would fill in the remaining words. We got far enough into it to show it worked on moderate-sized examples, and to start optimizing.

The next program we worked on was a partially developed tic-tac-toe program. We completed some screen hookup and looked at improving the code. We spent a good bit of time contemplating a couple approaches to part of the problem, and how you'd choose between them.

Finally, we took a stab at something closer in spirit to an arcade game; a relative of the commercial games Pong or Breakout. We got as far as having a paddle and a ball bouncing around. We gave it a twist - you controlled the velocity of the paddle, not its direct position. As primitive as it was, Kent's children gave it a thumbs up.

The week was good for me. I got to learn some things about Eclipse, I got to learn some things about design. We had a couple stretches where we had the "flow" feeling of losing time in the zone. One of the puzzles I've been working through is how to take a thin slice of a system; I had some time to think about that.

Would I recommend it? Yes: I learned a lot, and found it great to spend some "renewal time" with others who just wanted to program.

Agile 2005 conference call for participation

Call for Participation - Agile 2005
July 24-29, 2005. Marriott Hotel, Denver, Colorado, USA.
http://www.agile2005.org

March 1: Submissions due for Tutorials and Workshops
March 15: Submissions due for Research Papers, Experience Reports, and Educators' Symposium

Agile 2005 integrates the best features of the Agile Development Conference and XP Agile Universe to create an exciting conference about techniques and technologies, attitudes and policies, research and experience, and the management and development sides of agile software development. The agile approach focuses on delivering business value early in the project lifetime and being able to incorporate late-breaking requirements changes. It accentuates the use of rich, informal communication channels and frequent delivery of running, tested systems, while attending to the human component of software development.

Agile 2005 gives attendees access to the latest thinking in this domain, and bridges communities that rarely get a proper chance to exchange ideas and thoughts. It brings together researchers from labs and academia with executives, managers, and developers in the trenches of software development. Agile 2005 is not about a single methodology or approach, but rather provides a forum for the exchange of information regarding all agile development technologies.

We invite submissions for the following:

• Research Papers
• Experience Reports
• Tutorials
• Workshops / Peer to Peer Sessions
• Educators' Symposium

• Introduction to Agile (for Agile "newbies")
• Executive Summit
• Open Space

Agile Immersion

I attended the first one of the original series, and really enjoyed it.

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