Django 1.0 has been Released, Film at 23:00.

I know that it has been a while since I have last posted, but I'm not one to post meaningless empty ramblings on a regular basis. I just want people to know that I'm still alive and will still be posting when I have something worthy of your time.

I will mention in brief that Django v1.0 has been released and we are all thankful to BDFL's Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss for their amazing efforts in making this release come to fruition. I would also like to add that the biggest 'gotcha' between .96.x and 1.0 is in the standardisation of certain db api arguments. maxlength has become (more aptly) max_length. There is also now a DecimalField type which can be used rather than the less accurate (for monentary purposes) FloatField. Read all about it at the Django Website.

Finally, for those interested, I have also started another non-computer related blog over at Bucks Bicycling, a site related to vehicular, commuter, recreational and sport cycling. I'm currently working on a fixed gear conversion of an old cheapie AMF Roadmaster Scorcher as well as a 1985 Schwinn Sprint road bike.

I will be posting shortly pending upon the official status of the newest Django 1.0 based project on which I've been secretly working.

Till then..

In defence of the lone coder archetype

All too often these days we see companies and methodology evangelists touting the system du jour whether it be Extreme Programming (XP/Pair Programming), or Agile as being the "One True Path" to coding enlightenment. All other be damned is roughly what said mantra translates to in common speak. We're told to beware the engineer who works alone in a dark back room for weeks on end. We're told to such a thing is heresy against the gods of modern application development.

We're being lied to by the methodology evangelists. I'm not here to down speak any of the other methodologies currently in use for software development. I am here, however to point out the benefits of the 'lone engineer' (not to be confused with the lone gunman). Lets set a few things straight though.

A coder with little to no professional experience in the field is not the optimal individual for this kind of setup. This is more for a seasoned professional who has at least been a team lead on several projects from conception through maintenance phases. I'm not saying it isn't possible to pull it off without significant experience, but I wouldn't place bets on such an individual succeeding at the whole task at hand in said company.

This kind of environment requires a disciplined engineer. We're talking about someone who knows the questions to ask, and how to dig deep to find the true needs of the client(s). This also means that the engineer needs to stand his/her ground when it comes to setting a solid schedule for phases of the project(s). There is room for variability in terms of time frames for each phase, but that the plan must be laid out in a linear fashion. This is engineering after all, and one doesn't plan to build the rooms before the foundation is laid.

Agile methodologies are more akin (though not parallel to) modular housing construction. Individual sections or units can be build simultaneous and changed (to a certain extent) by separate sub-teams. Whereas the lone engineer mentality is more akin to traditional construction in which the design is finalised, the foundation is laid and construction occurs in layers from the bottom up with customisations being generally last.

This isn't to imply that software built in this manner cannot change or adapt in a timely manner, far from it. Seasoned engineers/developers understand that the only true constant is change. We constantly work on new ways in which to design flexibility and mutability into our systems regardless of the specifics. This however just goes back to one of my earlier points in that this requires someone who isn't wet behind their ears. You can only know and plan for the unexpected via flexible designs after having cut your teeth in real world projects, and by faltering. Everyone makes mistakes, and it is through these mistakes that we grow and better ourselves. I'm not implying that senior level engineers don't make mistakes, I'm just pointing out that their success to failure ratio is pretty strong in favour of the success side.

One of the key benefits of the lone engineer methodology is that focus can remain solid with no deviation due to intra-coder/intra-team conflicts. And while this can at teams be a negative, overall it proves itself beneficial towards the ultimate goal, a finished software package/eco-system designed from the ground up to benefit the requisitioner(s)/client(s).

The issues of coding standards still must be kept, however there is definite consistency when only one individual is involved. This is also a liability as said engineer must have strict standards, commentary and documentation from beginning to end so that in case of any situation rending the engineer on the project incapacitated in any form, another could come in and continue with minimal delay. These are issues which affect other methodologies, some more than others.

There are downsides as well though. There are no direct peers upon which one can depend in times of need or collaboration. There are no peers to assist in code review sessions, meaning that the QA of any project must be proficient at testing, and enforce strict recursion testing when any changes are made to a product in production as QA becomes that final line of defence against human error. The reality is, no usable (as in serves a real purpose) piece of software is bug free and to think otherwise is the sign of a fool. What is realistic is having a system robust to handle errors when they occur, even if that is infinitesimally infrequent.

I'm getting off track here. My point is that in this newer, more extreme era in which coding fundamentalists believe they possess the one-true-way of coding and all others be damned, we must step back and realise the grave miscalculation they are making so boldly. After all, those methodologies weren't what were utilised to get us where we are today, nor were they even thought of when some of the staples of our art were invented. This doesn't mean that the next great piece of software or language won't be produced in such a manner, as it/they may. It means that we as professionals shouldn't be so narrow minded with tunnel vision when approaching different methodologies in an attempt to find which works best for the project/company/industry at hand.

SimulaE Cartography Program - simulae-kaart.py

As a quick follow up to the previous entry regarding rooms being a void and not an object, I can happily announce that the first working alpha of simulae-kaart has been committed to code this evening.

The function of this bit of code is simple:  Produce the necessary wall/barrier objects needed to create the voidspaces we call rooms.

The current working codebase does the following already:

* Allow graphical design in a 2d environment utilising unicode representative tokens.

* Returns Multidimensional Lists designating literal start & end points of wall objects

* Allows for walls in traditional cardinal orientation (north-south, east-west, nw-se & ne-sw)

* Also allows for arbitrary wall/barrier positioning at any angle (true 360 degrees).

* Default scale based on cubic decimetres, variable scaling coming soon.

Upcoming functionality to be added:

- Auto population of a given map grid

- Auto insertion of portal objects inside any giveen barrier/wall object.

- Automatic map scaling down to the smallest micro and largest macro levels

Stay tuned for further information.  If anyone else is interested in signing up for future beta

testing, I can be reached at this domain, under the email account of eric. 

-e

Simulae3 Update: Room Object? What ever do you mean?

This is just a simple, quick update to let it be known that the issue pertaining to how to accurately represent a room in Simulae3 has been resolved.  I spent about an hour with a blank book of graph paper and pen poised in my hand and thought about the problem till the following realisation hit me:

Rooms are an abstract, a void.  They only exist as a concept without substance to us.  They are the empty space created by barriers, some of those barriers contain portal objects (e.g. windows, doors, openings).  It is using this logic that the next piece of Simulae3 can be designed.  

SimulaeKaart.py

A simple cartography-based program (kaart) being the word for map in Nederlands (Dutch).  Physical space will be represented in 10 centimeter square grids (though variable map design may be possible).  The whole point of this is that in the real world, we use GPS and surveying to accurately place physical locations, Simulae3 will be no different. 

The other quick note is that the concept of rooms are also knocked out in that a room knows not of its purpose, it is only by human reasoning and deduction that a particular enclosure/void/"room"'s purpose can be ascertained.  If you take an empty house with two rooms near the room with the stove and dishwasher, how does one know which is the dining room (if either).  One doesn't, one chooses to assign that role by the placement of the appropriate objects (appropriate to a dining room that is) within said void. 

Simply put, this conundrum has been resolved and the next phase of design and coding can continue.

Migraines: A common misunderstanding

Mi - graine: (n)

A headache characterized by throbbing head pain, often greater on one side; may be preceded by a warning (aura) and accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to light and sound; in rare cases, weakness, language problems, or other neurologic disorders are associated with migraine.

Over my years of coding I've endured what I thought were migraine headaches, not uncommon to those of us who spend waking moment after waking moment staring at multiple screens as part of both work and hobby.  I say "thought" because up until this past weekend, I was sure that the harsher headaches I had endured qualified as the infamous 'migraine' variety.   I was wrong.

On this past Saturday, I had the pleasure of seeing one of my best friends (and also my best man at my wedding) tie the knot with his sweetheart (both are coders by trade as a sidenote).  The day was perfect, the weather was wonderful (as it was an outdoor ceremony) and all was well in general.  I on the other hand aside from coping with sciatica down both sides of my body (a relapse of a previous L4/L5 left disc rotation), awoke with what I thought, was one of my annoying 'migraine' headaches.  I took Excedrin Migraine along with Vicodin for my other-pain and proceeded onto the wedding with my wife.  The headache didn't subside, regardless of a second round of 'migraine' strength medication.

The first lesson to be learned here is that Excedrin Migraine (I'm pretty sure any over the counter "migraine" medication as well) , while great for 'bad' headaches, is lightweight against 'textbook' migraines (more on this later).  

     After the wedding was over and we made the drive home (hellish for me as my headache seems to have grown from annoyance to throbbing), I started to feel dizzy with a bit of nausea, yet did not succumb to an involuntary protein spill thankfully.  I ended up retiring fairly early figuring that my 'migraine' was just particularly bad and was exacerbated by the fact that our table at the reception was next to the live band.

     Sunday morning arrived and that horrible headache was still present.  I took two vicodin and several aspirin in the hopes that it would finally kill the beast within but it was all for naught as much to my dismay, the headache only soldiered on.   I spent much of the day in a narcotic (vicodin) induced stopor in an attempt to mask the pain which was at this point pressing heavily on my head, and would remain this way the rest of the day into the evening when I retired early in an attempt to once again let tomorrow come without the now 36 hour headache.  Little did I know that this was about to get worse, much worse. 

     Memorial Day arrived, complete with plans to go to my in-laws for a barbeque and family goodness.  04:00 on the clock and I arose from my sleep to the udder shock that the pain was not only existant, but worse.  I quickly (well, as quickly as I could) went downstairs to take three Advil (I was now out of Excedrin Migraine), and then return to bed, hoping this was finally the end.  The time was 08:00 according to the clock and I was expected to rise.  Problems.  The headache was still there, and it was rather angry with me.  Outside of glancing to see that it indeed was 08:00, I had to keep my eyes shut, the dizzy feelings, nausea and pain from the light (through the blinds, mind you) was unbearable.  It felt as if my head had been mounted between the the grips on a vise.  I at this point, took the decidedly un-male action and asked my lovely wife (and child) to get me to the Doylestown Hospital Emergency Room.  Something was obviously wrong and I was quite worried, not to mention blinded by the pain.  

     After what seemed like an hour (when in reality it was half of that), I entered the ER and was promptly thrown in a wheelchair, tagged and admitted to ER room #5.  At this point the pain caused me to writhe in pain in my open-backed hospital gown in my new metal bed.  Another 10 minutes came and went, along with an increase in the pain until one of the nice ER nurses (and a doctor I believe) tapped my arm to place an IV line, which was utilised shortly thereafter to inject a medication (a narcotic of which I'd never heard) that immediately overpowered the pain with a feeling of numbness.  This enabled me to speak somewhat lucidly to several nurses as well as a doctor about all of the aforementioned backstory leading up to this point.  

     First comes the catscan at this point to check for abnormalities.  None found.  Then the blood tests, no oddities either.  ER Doctor then comes to the conclusion that a LP (Lumbar Puncture) was the next logical step.  I consented, though it was not to be, after a considerable number of jabs and sharp pains, said doctor gave up and contacted a Neurologist who would come in later to do said LP.  

     The pain started to return and I was given another dose of said magic narcotic.  All remained well for another 90 minutes or so (at this point, I've been in ER room #5 for approximately 6 hours).   During this time the Neurologist arrived and I spoke with him and allow him to have a crack at a lumbar puncture.  Needless to say he was an expert at this procedure and was able to withdrawal 4 vials of the clear cerebrospinal fluid from my spinal column.  He then surreptitiously disappeared for what seemed like hours.  

    It was at this point, my pain surprisingly started to return, first on the right side of my head, but then started to migrate over to my left side as well.  The pain became so severe that I could tell that the lights were on in the next room over (separated by a curtain), even though I had a folded over pillow case upon my eyes, with my hand over that.  The lights in my room had been out since my arrival as they were painful, even with my eyes shut.  I felt as if I were going to tear the metal sides of my bed clear off.  I suffered like this for another 60 or so minutes as we were awaiting the results of the spinal fluid from the lumbar puncture, and it was already stated that I was given an extraordinarily large amount of narcotics already and they worried about providing anymore until they knew more about the cause of my pain.

     After all was said and done, I was told that this whole episode of the worst head pain in my life, was a 'real' migraine.  I was told that they would provide me some additional medication intravenously before being discharged which would 'kill the headache' this time.  I was also being given more subscriptions, one for vicodin (as if I didn't have enough for my back pain, which I already try to avoid using), but a medication which i had never heard of before, specifically meant to stop migraines at their onset.  That final migraine killing injection came, along with a complimentary spewing of my stomach contents shortly thereafter and I was on my way to being released.  I was informed by the doctors that there were a few things I could do to keep migraines at bay aside from the medication provided.  

"Caffeine, Caffeine, Lots of Fluids, and of course, more Caffeine."

     I'm thankful to all of the wonderful nurses, doctors and specialists who provided help to me after suffering what ultimately will be remembered and hereafter referenced by me as the 60-hour migraine.  I will never use the term "migraine" mistakenly to mean a "severe" or "bad" headache as they not only aren't in the same ballpark, they're not in the same league, region or country.  

     I decided to share this with everyone in the coding community because I'm sadly sure that this will happen (if it hasn't already happened to some of you) again, and to others.  I hope that having read this, those who find themselves suffering one of these 16 tonne behemoths will not wait an exorbitante amount of time before doing exactly that which I did, contact professional medical help as quickly as possible.  No one should have to suffer that kind of pain any longer than it takes to realise what said pain was; that being a 'real' migraine.  

     Wishing everyone good health.

Eric

Simulae3: A Testament to Socratic Design.

Socratic Method: the pedagogical technique of asking leading questions to stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas.

When I first started working on SimulaE (long before it was even referred to by the aforementioned name), it was a solo project.  This isn't to say that I haven't written all of the code from day one to this very moment, because I have.  I can however say that the design portion of its various incarnations wouldn't have evolved in the manner which they did were it not for the diligent use of the Socratic Method.  

My earliest versions of designing the Simulae virtual world simulation suite of libraries and what not were designed and written by me in response to the original interactive fiction/text adventure engines, then consequentially MUDs (Multi User Dungeons).   The proof of concept of building a better designed mousetrap was simple enough to bring to fruition.  This took place over years, dependent upon my free time and interest in furthering what was simply a flight of fancy for me from my programming youth and Zork playing escapades. 

What really became apparent was when I worked for another company and had the pleasure to work with a very intelligent individual by the name of Tim.  He is a systems/network administrator as well as a capable coder though the latter is not his primary goal, nor role professionally.  

Tim was interested in my Simulae project and as such I found a kindred spirit through whom I could interact by applying the aforementioned Socratic Method.  Through a constant back and forth barrage of theories and examples along with postulates about the hows and why virtual components modeled after reality need to be viewed in a certain light, we would come up with a whole new understanding about the direction of the project.  

It was during this time initially working together that the present tense English Parser component (parser.py) came to be realised and produced.  It took a total of seven point-releases to go from simple noun verb understanding to parsing complex compound sentences with a massive understanding of 45,000 adjectives, 9,500 verbs and multitudes on various parts of English speech.  This series of productive success if anything re-enforced the validity of this methodology in the realm of software design. 

It is now though, with this in mind that I have taken utilising this method to the next level and enacting it with completely uninvolved individuals (uninvolved in the sense of the projects topic and internals).  In the past several days Simulae3 has emerged from the bowels of my TextMate application.  The code is simple, shorter and far more capable than any previous incarnation and things are moving forward at a great clip.  

This brings me to the current point of interest and a call for assistance for anyone willing to get into sometimes heated dialogue about object models.  The object model system is based around the three basic SimulaeObject types.  The only piece of the puzzle still causing an issue is the matter of Portal Objects (entranceways between other container type objects.)  

For the sake of argument, just look at it this way:  A room is a container, that leads from one room to other rooms of 'greater' building enclosure.  A set of lips in a Mobile Object (hereafter MOB) (e.g. 'actor' in OO/UML terminology) is simply a Portal Object to the mouth of said MOB.  A window is simply a portal between the outside 'container' object (in this case a root SimulaeObject), and the room in which our Actor/MOB would be in (to see said POB destination from said perspective).  

I need others with whom I would be able to work out ideas so that this conundrum can be resolved and the next phase of Simulae can come about for code release and testing.  If anyone is interested, contact me at this domain via my email address: eric

I am going to finish on that note being that due to medical reasons dealing with my sciatica, I ingested a full dosage of two Vicodin tablets (as per my primary physician), and as such I'm getting ready to crash hard.   I hope to hear from some of you in the hopes of moving forward, but I'd like for Tim to give me a call in any case so that I we can bounce some ideas back and forth on these issues.

SimulaE - Model Update

I've made mention of my virtual world simulation project on multiple blog entries, most recently related to Ruby and making a rewrite of the existing engine in said language to test out its applicability (the language not the simulation), which by the way I found to be the lesser language for this kind of application, but I'm not saying anything about the language as a whole.  Either way, onto SimulaE, which after all is what this post is about today.

I have been rattling my brains (and occasionally those of my friends) regarding the basic SimulaE Object model, which up to this point has served its purpose.  Though the time has come for it to evolve.  It can implemented in a simpler manner and I have known this in my mind all along though it hasn't been an issue in the process of designing the parser which has for the most part been satisfactorily completed. Now that my focus has returned to the object model, I feel it a fine time to share that update thus far.  Comments are always welcome and most are appreciated.  

The fault before was that I broke the objects into the wrong sub classes.  Originally I had the parent Object class,  and subclasses for Room objects, Exist Objects and Person Objects.  This is a horrible idea and leads to unnecessary complexity.  

The newest model:

Object (super class)

MovableObject (isa Object)

PortalObject (isa Object, isnota MovableObject)

PortalObjects, hereafter POB are a much more dynamic version of the previous "room" objects.   A POB behaves in the following manner(s):

1. Object(s) enter into the object containing said portal.

2. Exits an object when contained therein.

3. Can exit (when specified) to a specific object, though by default exists to the parent container object.

If a MovableObject, hereafter MOB, is not contained within the same container as the POB, POB leads into the container.  

If the MOB is contained within the same container as the POB, POB leads out of the container.

By working in this manner, we ensure that the simulation object model more closely mimics the real world, whilst still allowing for exceptions to transpire for non-real world based applications of this group of models as well as anything they may be working on at CERN in Switzerland which breaks our current understanding of physics. 

I haven't had time to implement this new set of models yet, but as I write that code, I will be posting the revised Python source.