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I was wondering what are the pain points for other developers when learning Windows Phone 7 programming. For me is switching between application pages and the MVVC. If you have any hints or resources helping to overcome these pain points, please share it.
When switching to a new development platform there are bound to be new things to learn.
If you're coming from a web background it's important to note that you're no longer in the same stateless world as the web. There is also a different navigation model. (Especially if you're developing in XNA!)
The biggest, and in my opinion, most important difference in moving to developing for the phone (or any mobile platform) are teh follwoing 6 points.
"Mobile" applications are used
differently to desktops ones. -
Expect users to have less time to
spend with the application and be
doing other things at the same time.
Input is different. - Consider
[multi-]touch as well as voice,
location and sensors rather than
mouse and keyboard.
Output is different. - Even if just
considering output to the screen,
it's very different developing for a
small screen than a large one.
Connectivity is nott guaranteed. -
Create apps which work offline and
are occassionaly connected. Don't
assume a network conneciton is
guaranteed or fast.
Performance is important. - Partt of
the way that"mobile" applications
are used differently to their
desktop counterparts creates a
different expectation from users and
they are much less tollerant of
applications which are displaying
the equivalent of a wait cursor. Do
no more than you have to and be sure
to keep the app/device as responsive
as possible.
Resources are constrained. - The
most important consequence of this
is to do no more than you must, so
you can preserve battery life.
Afterall, if you run down the users
battery they get frustrated and
can't use your app.
Unfortunately the best way to avoid running in to problems is to develop a detailed knowledge and understadnig of the platform.
With that i mind, I'd recommend the following resources:
For general information check out the MSDN documentation.
I'd like to particularly draw your attention to:
the design resources, particularly the UI guidelines - so you can create something which looks like it is actually part of the platform.
and the fundamental concepts - so you don't waste time trying to do something which isn't possible.
Other useful resources are:
- Code samples
- Online training (there are updates to this coming soon)
- the book by Charles Petzold
There is a great, organised resrouce list here which covers pretty much all the major points of Windows Phone 7 development.
I am thinking of building a web based face recognition system. I know there are a few like KeyLemon, and others offered by different manufacturers that allows the laptops users to login into Windows using their face. I am wondering if this functionality could be transfered to a web application.
suggest you use this as the basis
OpenCV (Open Source Computer Vision) is a library of programming functions for real time computer vision.
There was an excellent podcast on OpenCV on Hacker Medley which has various references that are useful. From that i understand that the library tends to move quite fast in development terms so needs close attention.
You may use thing like flash to access to camera ... , and then use the same algorithm to recognize the face ..
I've written a web application which does something similar. And I have to say - I'm quite disappointed at the level of technology we're currently at for such things. The system in question used a 10mpix Canon camera and a special flashlight stand. It had to have a perfectly white background, the head had to be tilted exactly the right way, couldn't be rotated by more than a few degrees, and had to have very precise distances to the edges of the picture. And even then it gave a lot of false positives and negatives.
So maybe they've come up with something better today, but I doubt that. This was all 2 years ago and the software was some commercial product by a company that specializes in that sort of thing.
So all in all I say - better don't. Biometrics are cool, but currently they are way too unstable to be deployed in anything more than niche situations.
Keylemon provides web api to enroll faces and their later recognition. You can use this web apis to integrate in your application to provide face recognition functionality. It works like this. During enrollment six photographs are taken and a bio metric model is generated. A model id is returned to the client. This model id needs to be stored in application database. For face recognition, web camera streaming combined with model id is passed to the keylemon server. If the model id and stream matches the face is authenticated.
What are some open source client-server projects which might be best to look at and mimic their code organization style?
Java is preferred but not required.
Related:
I'm still trying to determine an answer to my question from a few minutes ago, "Should client-server code be written in one 'project' or two?" and I think it would benefit me to see how other projects organize their code (and hopefully deduce the pros and cons of why they chose to do it that way).
Well since nobody else dares answer, here are a couple, though I'm not sure they are good examples to go by: (disclaimer: I have only looked into the source code of a few of these)
Cube game & 3D engine, a multiplayer FPS with unique multiplayer editing capabilities, written from scratch using OpenGL and SDL
Cube 2: Sauerbraten, same as Cube with slightly more developed features
Planeshift, an open-source MMO
Red Dwarf Server, a Java server application primarily targeted at online games and MMOs; only comes with small example clients
I dont know if this is too late but heres what i have to say about it, i usually keep the server and the client in the same project just incase they both need access to a class. If you are still interested in some example code, ive been doing networking for 5 years+ and i have plenty of example code if youre interested.
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Hey all. I would like to get some insight on a question that I have been trying to find some information about. If you are the solo developer that is building a project from ground up, how do you manage the project? In the past, I have worked on a few personal projects that have grown into fairly large projects. In almost all of those projects, I have tried to wear the hats of all the roles that would normally be in place during a normal software development project (i.e. Product Owner, developer, architect, tester, etc.). It seems that when I leave the project for some time and come back, it is extremely hard to get back into the rhythm of what I was doing. So with that, I have some questions:
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways? If so, how do I go about
doing this, and how do I manage these
requirements? Product backlog,
features list, etc?
If this is the case, are full blown product backlogs or use cases a little overkill?
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow? Start coding
immediately, write down user
stories/use cases, then go into
OOA/D?
What diagramming/modeling would be sufficient for this level? Domain model, class diagram, etc?
Basically, I was curious how everyone out there in the SO community would go about developing a project from inception to deployment when you are the lone, solo developer. What steps, documentation, and other project related activities are needed to help bring this project from an impractical, hobby project to something more professional? Any help, references, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
The most difficult part, I have found, about developing solo is that it's just tough to keep yourself driving forward. Even if you're doing this to make a living (AKA, running your own software business), unless you have pressing needs (AKA, you're going to starve if you don't make money) it can be difficult to sit down and just code.
From your perspective, I would recommend following good software practices where it makes sense to. For example, if I were a solo software developer, I would have no reason to create a collaborative development environment. All I really need is an SVN server, my IDE, and a place to record documentation (might setup a wiki or a website or something). I would personally create a realistic schedule to follow and would work on sticking to that.
As for level of effort of documentation, that really depends on you and the product you are developing. For example, I would definitely recommend recording your requirements. Unless your product is trivial, there is no way you'll remember them all and why you wanted certain ones over others. Managing a full backlog, however, can be a job in and of itself. In the solo programmer case this may not make sense.
Basically, the point I'm trying to get across (and should be followed with every project - not just in this case) is have just enough management that makes sense. The rest should be focused on the work and the development of the product.
Something else you may want to look into is reading this - Agile Programming Works for the Solo Developer. There are other, similar, articles out there. Might give you some good thoughts.
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways? If so, how do I go about
doing this, and how do I manage these
requirements? Product backlog,
features list, etc?
I have two lists of features:
A high-level view which states the scope of the finished product
A list of the features which I'm implementing in this iteration
Because I don't need to communicate it to other people (yet) I tend to write down the things that I don't know about the project (if I already know it there's no need to write it down): it's when it gets too complicated, or when there are details which I haven't defined but need to define, that I start to define them in writing.
I did however try to investigate/make a business-case for the project before starting coding.
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
I did non-programmer, product-owner thinking at times when I had to be away from the computer anyway.
Apart from that, my cycle is:
Implement more functionality
Integration-test it
[repeat as above]
Every 3 to 6 months I compare the new-functionality-accomplished against my estimated schedule, and then recalibrate: i.e., make a new list of the highest-priority features to implement in the next few months.
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow? Start coding
immediately, write down user
stories/use cases, then go into OOA/D?
I started with working part-time or in my spare time, to make sure that I had:
Understood the required functionality
Made significant architectural decisions
Written any throw-away prototypes as necessary to learn new technology
After that I was ready to start developing full-time.
What diagramming/modeling would be sufficient for this level? Domain model, class diagram, etc?
I'm not using diagrams at all (except for sketches of the UI). By structuring the code, and refactoring, I'm able to know/remember/rediscover/decide which software components implement what functionality.
It seems that when I leave the project
for some time and come back, it is
extremely hard to get back into the
rhythm of what I was doing.
You need to comment your code more. If you leave the code, come back in two weeks, and can't remember how the code works, you need more comments.
If I know the requirements (at this
current time), do I record them
anyways?
Yes, for the same reasons stated above.
how do I manage these requirements?
A feature list is OK, provided you have enough detail in each feature to jog your memory.
How does one efficiently appropriate
his/her time to each respective role?
Break down each feature into smaller and smaller tasks, until you feel like you can do each task in a half day or less.
What would be a normal flow of events
that one would follow?
That depends on your development style. In general I would follow a clear but simple architecture, avail yourself of software patterns where practical, and provide adequate unit tests for your code as you go.
What diagramming/modeling would be
sufficient for this level?
Sufficient diagramming/modeling to make the project clear in your head.
What steps, documentation, and other
project related activities are needed
to help bring this project from an
impractical, hobby project to
something more professional?
Other than what I have already mentioned, make sure you have a good source control system and daily backups in place.
Good luck!
If you believe there is a chance that you're going to work on the project for some amount of time, leave it, and then come back to it at a later date...your best bet is to treat the documentation for the project the same as if you were working with a large team.
That means documenting requirements (even if they're from yourself), writing use cases (if functionality is going to be complex, otherwise some other form of documentation could suffice), and some level of UML diagraming (or other domain specific diagram) which could include activity diagrams/class diagrams/etc.
That way, when you leave the project for some amount of time, you can come back to a well documented idea and pick up where you left off.
As a side note, I try to do the majority of those things no matter what...that way if I ever find somebody interested in working on the project with me, I can get them up to speed quickly and get them on board with my ideas.
This is how I work, YMMV:
Keep a spreadsheet for high level of everything - list of your projects, and some top-level items/todos/reminders
Create a "project" folder for each product/project you have or work on, and create a strucuture to contain documentation and code for the project.
Keep a top-level "catch-all" document for each project, in the root of this folder. Keep you ideas, research, notes etc in this doc.
Then if you want to get organized, keep an MS project file (or similar) and plot out timelines for the various steps in each project. This is good for tracking progress on each project and make sure you arent forgetting anything. Basically keeps you honest with yourself.
And if you need to track progress on project work you are doing for clients, I understand Basecamp is a good solution for this. I am currently evaluating it for my own company. See www.basecamphq.com
Even as a solo developer, you should document at least the overall features of your project, and then the requirements for the particular feature you are working to complete, and then maybe produce a short pseudo-code for the functionality you're currently working on.
That way, if you do end up breaking away from that project, you can get back to it and see where you're up to easily enough. It's also pointless getting too far ahead of yourself with details for this same reason.
It's also a neat motivational tool for a solo developer - getting through and ticking things off is a way to show progress - something that you can start to feel you're not making when you're chewing through a couple of thousand lines of code and it seems like you're still miles away from actually having 'module x' completed.
Lastly - with regards to code comments - I at least try and fill out what actions/behaviour a new function should have in an outline, and then write the code in between the comments. Also, it is useful having plain English explanations of why you're branching in an if/else to support the logic in the condition...
I belive that better results in solo development one can achive with appropriate tools support and tasks that compensate lack of ohers people and help to organize working time. Any tool that generate metada with minimal create time cost describing your software is helpful.
VCS and tools for tracking user actity/code changes history - very important is to add good commit messages
mind-mapping tools for storing project related data (e.g. XMind), blacboard is useful too :)
time tracking tools (e.g. Toggl.com)
write a lot of acceptance test and use acceptance testing frameworks
Of course these clues also fits in non solo development :)
As a lone developer, I've found that your time is very expensive. This means that you have to balance sustainability and momentum - even though you are just one guy, you have to do things so that the you six months from now can go back and look at old stuff without wasting time, without spending so much time maintaining the systems that it compromises your flow.
Your question suggests that you are thinking in terms of fairly heavyweight tools and processes, but the 80/20 rule applies - for example, you can nail documentation well enough by TDD, using the doc tools of your platform to generate API docs, plus a Wiki for specs, lists, etc.
In that vein, I would suggest that you choose your platform carefully. The question about modelling suggests that you are using a platform that produce a lot of code and artifacts, but you may be able to get most of the functionality for much less management overhead elsewhere. Today I'm working on a .NET Web app that I wrote "the right way", but now realize that I could have delivered the same functionality much more efficiently in this case by using PHP with a PHP MVC framework to keep a clean structure.
Specific tools that I'd recommend:
A distributed version control system (much less overhead than centralized)
The most lightweight platform that you can use that has good tooling
A Wiki to easily capture and maintain small and large bits of content
Whatever testing framework that you can use, right from the start of the project
A lightweight TODO list system that you can access from anywhere
I used to work on a very small team (one dba and one C# developer). Even then I found it very useful to have written requirements, formal tests, source control and bug tracking (we used bug tracking for our features as well as bugs). It helped us to not forget anything and a year later when you were doing maintenance, you had something to research though to help you undersatnd what you did. Plus when the two of us left (as most people eventually move on) there was documentation there for the next person.
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So, I've got an idea for a website. I can start off using any platform and frameworks I want, but there are almost too many options.
OS Platform:
Windows, *nix
Web Framework:
Rails, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Django, Zend, Cake, others
Hosting:
EC2, Dedicated Server, Shared Hosting, VPS, App Engine, Azure, others
Persistence:
S3, MySql, PostreSql, Sql Server, SimpleDB, CouchDB, others
How do you avoid decision paralysis and get started?
Firstly, your familiarity with a framework's language should dictate which framework you choose. Don't add the burden of learning another language on top of learning a framework.
Next, have a look at the remaining frameworks. Do they have good documentation? What about the community. (A good community can go a long way to making up any shortcomings of a given technology.) Does the framework solve the problems that you need solved?
Finally, just dive in and try something! Pick the one that makes the most sense to you and start writing code. Don't do too much hand-wringing over your decision. If it becomes obvious that you made the wrong choice, it should be obvious quite early. Learn from what you've accomplished so far and consider restarting with a different technology. (Just don't get several weeks down the road before you make this decision!)
I'm sure you don't like all of those technologies equally. Pick a framework that you like and get to work.
It depends on what your app is going to be doing. A handful of the technologies you listed are direct competitors (like Django vs. Rails), but some are completely different ways to do things (like MySQL vs. S3).
Questions to answer before you begin:
Will the app need to be horizontally partitioned in the near term? If so, using EC2, Google App Engine or Azure would be a good option.
Will your app fit into the constraints of Google App Engine? If so, it requires a lot less hassle on your part than running on bare metal (whether real or virtual).
What's your preferred web framework? If you want an MS framework, you'll need to run on a host that supports that.
What will your persistence and data access patterns look like? This will determine whether to use a database or something more exotic.
If you are running on EC2, the other AWS services are more appealing. Similarly, if you are using GAE, you have only one option for persistence. If you are using Rails, may as well start with MySQL.
In answer to your question of how to reduce the number of options, the answer is to realize that many of the options are related, so you don't have as many choices to make as it first appears.
Some advice that was once given to me is, pick what your friends (or colleagues) are using. Having people around you that you can share ideas and the learning experience with is invaluable.
If you want to learn something new: I'd just go with your gut and get started. If it sucks then switch to something more familiar.
If you don't have much time: Go with what you know and forget about the other options. Just start coding.
Optimize for happiness. Pick the one that you like the most. Or the one that intrigues you the most.
I've worked in Microsoft shops, in Ruby on Rails, and in homegrown shops having Apache, Jetty, even Mason.
All frameworks have their warts, their idiosyncracies that will keep you up until 3 AM, and their "tribal knowledge" vagaries that will be completely unexportable to other frameworks. (The last point is sometimes by design, the whole "platform entrenchment" business strategy)
Listen to what the supporters of the frameworks say about the problems with the other frameworks (Google: X framework vs Y framework). Pick the framework that has the loudest supporters. If they are equally loud, make the decision with a dice roll.
With me it's simple.
I only know MS stack and see no point in "checking out" all of those you mentioned.
No, actually I once tried to use JSF before excluding it from my list permanently.
Use what you are experienced in and where you can be more productive. The objective is to get your site up and running. Go for it.
One of the biggest factors in determining which platform/framework to use is your budget. You have to factor in the cost of licensing, software required to develop/maintain your website and other miscellaneous costs.
I suggest you begin with a scorecard of your own construction. Perhaps you can find different ones on the web, but if you do, modify them to meet YOUR needs. There should be a scorecard for each level in the stack (as you've described). Each scorecard should share some aspects to grade with other scorecards but each will also have their unique aspects.
Once constructed, weight each aspect graded according to your needs.
Once you've chosen the weights, pick the scales for grades.
At this point promise yourself you wont mess with the weights or the scale and then start collecting data on your options for each level in the stack.
You may also want to put a time limit on the collection period.
Make your decision based on the outcome of the scorecard.
The beauty of this approach is that the effort is made in constructing the scorecard, not in circular arguments of options. The effort in making the scorecard is vendor agnostic and focuses on the desired result, not the options. Thus you can avoid paralysis.
One more thing, my best scorecards have included sections addressing the availability of resources and other human related things. Don't make the mistake of just looking at the technology.
good luck.
Go for personal preferences.
One decision at a time:
Firts I would begin with type of language:
Script: PHP, Python,
Serious: Java, .Net
The language will restrict your OS, plattform and will give you hints for the dataabse decission. The database load is also important. And, Do you want logic in the DDBB? how much data?
Last advice. Try combinations well tested. LAMP, WAMP, Windows with SQL Server and .NET.
Evaluate each platform and technology for quality of tools for your needs. For example, if you are cost sensitive, you would value free operating systems and tools higher than costly ones. If you need performance, you would value tools which provide high performance higher than ones that don't.
It entirely depends on your situation. I spent several months evaluating stuff for a new commercial web site last year, and it was very easy to feel paralized. In the end it was talking to several people who'd done similar things, and of course reading a lot of stuff online and from Amazon. I chose Java, since our team had a lot of experience in it, and it has good performance and extensive supporting technologies. Oracle is our database but we used a persistence manager to make it easy to change later on. We used a half-dozen very good libraries to eliminate much of the boring and repetitive coding (Restlet, iBatis, Freemarker, XStream, jQuery, SLF4J). We used Glassfish as our web server.
Yours sounds like a small project with only you to work on it. In that case, pick a complete framework instead of a smorgasbord like we did. Pick something fun to work with, and something with good "return on resume". Look very hard at Ruby on Rails, Django (kind of a Python on Rails), and Groovy on Grails (a Rails-wannabe for the Java world). In your shoes I'd pick Ruby on Rails because there's a large and growing community and a good number of books and tutorials. Plus, Ruby looks like a worthwhile language to learn. For your database, just pick one. These frameworks make it easy to change your mind later. Pick MySQL unless you have another you like better.
And as other posters said, just do it! ;-)
Like others said, pick something you and your employees are familiar with. I highly doubt you are close to being industry ready with all those techs.
OS Platform: Windows, *nix
Shouldn't matter except for Windows licensing costs, and that is probably the least of your expenses.
Web Framework: Rails, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Django, Zend, Cake, others
Dependent on your favorite language
Hosting: EC2, Dedicated Server, Shared Hosting, VPS, App Engine, Azure, others
You should design your product to be movable, so you can scale among these. If you know for sure you are going big, then just start off with EC2. App Engine is extremely limiting, ex. they don't let you form outbound connections.
Persistence: S3, MySql, PostreSql, Sql Server, SimpleDB, CouchDB, others
You need to do the research yourself whether or not your product requires an RDBMS or a simple key/value store, and what features each of these have.
Just go for it! Your platform choice really is not all that important as long as you make a reasonable choice (Ruby + Rails, Python + Django, PHP + Cake/CodeIgniter). Any of these can be used to build successful sites. If your site really takes off, you'll be able to scale it fine.