Feb/080
Thoughts On My E-Book
I have received some feedback both negative and positive. The most positive thing has been that everybody has found something useful from there. And on the negative side people think the price is too high and that there was only few goodies. Great feedback, I appreciate it!
I still don’t consider it over priced as everybody has been able to find something useful from it. If you buy some top quality book about software development with loads of content the price probably is a lot higher, but will you learn from it? When I read a book, I’m happy if I even find something to learn from there, most of the books out there are copies of each other. So if there was something useful in my 18 tips & tricks, I’m more than happy. But hey, if you don’t find anything useful from it you can get your money back. 
Feb/080
Variable Signess : Portability Problem
As you might have already noticed I released my first e-book about these tips & tricks. At the same time I changed the service name, it is not anymore programming tips & tricks, now it is software development tips & tricks. But don’t worry, you are already getting newer information as this trick won’t be in that book. 
So, have you ever considered variable signess?
Feb/080
Software Development Tips & Tricks E-Book Released!
I have released my very first e-book : Software Development Tips & Tricks
Book contains 18 software development tips & tricks that I have found useful. I can’t say that it would be top quality book as I know it isn’t as it is my first one, but I know that it contains loads of useful information.
It costs only 18 dollars -> 1 dollar per tip, I think that is pretty fair price. Also it has 28 – Day Money Back Guarantee!
Font Cover & Table Of Contents
Buy it from here :
Feb/080
Thoughts On Sprint Retrospective
I had my first sprint retrospective last week and it was a very useful thing to do.
Sprint retrospective is like a post mortem of the sprint : go through what went well and what could be improved. It becomes very powerful as you will have many retrospectives during the project, after each iteration you are able to improve for the next sprint!
Note that it is important that the improvement process is organized. When improvement process is organized it is a lot easier to handle, e.g. improvement will done during or at X – date, how it is done, who will be affected by it, person X is responsible for it.
I really recommend trying out Scrum. Iterative development is very useful if used right. If used wrong it will probably just do more harm than good. You need to give it some time, apply these processes step by step, results won’t show right away. Scrum doesn’t solve all problems, and it should not, it will identify more problems. And that is important : you cannot improve if you don’t even your problems.
Our team found loads of improvements to be done, we are going to apply some of those right away and some later. Remember that you might also find improvements that doesn’t just fit in to this project but might be good ones to next one, so it is useful to write those down too.
Feb/080
Books For Game & Graphics Programmers
Andre LaMothe is one of my favorite game & graphics programming book writers, I really recommend getting both of these books :
Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus-Advanced 3D Graphics and Rasterization (Other Sams)
Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus (2nd Edition) (Other Programming)
Feb/080
Fast And Practical Testing
I’ll be releasing this Tips & Tricks – article as free. When I four months ago started my 2D graphics engine I had problem with testing :
- How to test for regression if I don’t have the resources to setup nightly builds.
- Manually running those tests was not good enough solution.
This is really a problem in many projects, people think that there is no sense to do testing if it cannot be automated. Most of the time there is just not enough resources to setup a nightly build system. I thought about this problem for a while and I love solving problems, so I came up with an idea :
- Create fast dummy tests for the core.
- Will not test everything, but is good enough.
- Test on each build.
- This is even better than nightly build!
Now if you know that testing is the way to go you know how important it is to do as much testing as possible. This system ensures it. So, how to do it :
- Create tests in your code so that they are disabled for the release build.
- Create a RunTests – function in general or RunTestsModuleX – functions.
- Add these to your init code as early as possible.
- All tests must pass in order to continue, assert if failed!
I’ll have to say that even after years of doing shit loads of testing I’m still amazed how much it helps. I have been able to catch dozens of bugs from my code just by doing a few tests! And I’m still amazed why people don’t do it.
Note : for your information, don’t pretend to be agile developer if you are not, it makes you look -not good-.
Happy testing!