Good Advice – Don’t let performance overly influence design

Matthew Wilson has some good advice in this thread on [A good performance architecture ?][1].

• Don’t worry too much about performance in your design phase. Dont ignore it of couse. Implement a smart design and it will alow for the changes that may ha
  ve to be made for performance.
  

Based on my experiences, I tend to agree. There are often too many variables still outstanding during the design phase that would prevent any non-high lev
el performance choices from being made. It’s difficult to tune for performance unless you have intimate knowledge of the various components and their requ
irements. This type of knowledge isn’t typically available during the design phase of many projects. Try and understand the limitations of the particular
technology you’re considering, but don’t allow the limitations to force you into making silly design decisions.

Design and implement a solid flexible architecture (easier said than done). Implement iteratively where possible, getting feedback and usage statistics fr
om the prospective enduser(s) as you go. Use the information gathered at each iteration to further solidify your implementation, allowing you to make the
necessary changes only as required.

[1]: http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.ts
s?thread_id=26171 "A good performance architecture ?"

Quick & Dirty Bookmarklet for Javadocs.org

Here’s a _very_ quick and dirty little javascript bookmarklet that I put together for use with the www.javadocs.org service. It will prompt you for a java
class, and then open the Javadoc’d API for the class via www.javadocs.org.

javascript:topic=prompt(‘Search API for…’ );location=’http://www.javadocs.org/’ + escape(topic);

Just add a bookmark with that as the contents and voila. It’s pretty simple, but it’ll make my life a bit easier when I want to lookup something quickly.

Note, that I’m doing this in FireFox, so your mileage may vary in other browsers. I’d like to figure out how to add another search engine that will allow
me to query the javadocs.org without needing the javascript popup prompt.

XP : Short and Sweet

freshmeat.ne
t: Editorials – Xtreme Programming and Open Source Software Development

A nice short little freshmeat editorial on XP. I especially like the quote *In Russia there is a famous saying: “never show halfdone work to an idiot”</
i>, with which I agree completely. I’m currently working in an environment which has split personalities when it comes to development processes. We’re gr
owing
fairly rapidly so we’ve been putting effort in lately to try and formalize our processes and make it easier to have everyone on the same page.

Slight tangent…

I’m a firm believer in having the customer involved throughout the process but when developing commercial software, I believe that your sole concern should
be ensuring that your customer receives high-quality purpose-built software. Without involving the customer, how can you assure yourself that what you ar
e constructing will be useful and generate the necessary revenues? However, if you are going to involve the customer, you have to be prepared to manage ex
pectations on both sides. Under promise and over deliver as the old addage says, don’t promise the house and give them a shed.

Promise a shed and deliver a house…just make sure that the walls don’t fall down. I’m ok with a release date slipping (slightly) as long as it’s directl
y related to ensuring the quality of software being shipped. Of course I’m still a developer and, as such, somewhat shielded from business operation conce
rns.