Category Archives: Engineering

All about the engineering side of software development

Software Estimation — A good simple way courtesy of the Navy and the cold war

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 19, 2011

In my last post I told you that your next project will take longer than you think. Now I’ve destroyed hope I’m going to show you how you can use this knowledge to be better at software estimation. We’re going to use a simple but very effective technique first developed by the Navy back in […]

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Your project will take longer than you think and less than a Nukem

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 16, 2011

I will tell you how long your next project will take to release. You won’t like it, but I’ll tell you. A game is launching this week and in the story of its development is the key to successful software estimation. The game is Duke Nukem Forever, and just like the title, it did pretty […]

Also posted in Quality Software, Software Estimation | 3 Responses

Making Quality Software: how to test non-functional requirements

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 10, 2011

In my last post, I outlined what I think are the twelve key constraints you need to think about if you are going to build high quality software that people want to use. As I mentioned, thinking through this needn’t be a mind sapping endeavour, and for some things you may just decide it’s not […]

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Making Quality Software: 12 non functional requirements every app should have.

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 7, 2011

When people talk about really great quality software, they usually think in terms of it’s utility, simplicity or aesthetics. But there’s more to it than that. A really great piece of software will bleed quality through and through like a piece of Brighton Rock (or Bognor Regis). What separates high quality software from mediocrity? It’s […]

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Code Coverage with Flex – a headless agent for CI builds

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: July 28, 2009

In my last blog post I gave details of how I user the modified code coverage viewer for flex in an automated build to follow the trend of code coverage over time. The trouble with this approach was that there was a problem either with the localConnection in flex or the code that uses it […]

Also posted in Agile Software Development, Continuous Integration, Flash & Actionscript | 22 Responses

Code Coverage with Flex – ANT build for running the viewer

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: July 25, 2009

In my last post, I gave you my elegant extension hack for generating EMMA style code coverage reports from FlexCover. This post covers the first route I took to incorporating this in my build process. It does work, but it’s not very consistent in its reporting and I’ll explain why at the end…

Also posted in Agile Software Development, Continuous Integration, Flash & Actionscript | 5 Responses

Code Coverage with Flex – creating EMMA formatted reports

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: July 24, 2009

Details on my hack for creating EMMA formatted code coverage reports using FlexUnit

Also posted in Agile Software Development, Continuous Integration, Flash & Actionscript | 5 Responses

FlexUnit eclipse plugin alpha

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: August 30, 2007

I’ve been kind of quiet recently for three reasons: Its summer Work has been insanely busy I’ve been beavering away on a new plugin for eclipse The plugin is designed with one key goal in mind: shortening the develop-test feedback loop. It integrates eclipse and the flexunit framework to make our lives as developers easier. […]

Also posted in Agile Software Development, Flash & Actionscript, Test Driven Development | 1 Response

Continuous Integration with Flex – a better log parser

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 13, 2007

About a year ago, I posted a six part series explaining how to set up a continuous integration process for your Flex projects. Since then I have been refining the process when I have had a spare moment. One of the hassles I found when trying to setup continuous integration on a new machine was […]

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CruiseControl on the Mac – modifying the build script to work x-platform

By Paul Barnes-Hoggett | Published: June 12, 2007

So, I thought I was doing pretty well, getting svn working on the mac, installing cruisecontrol for my continuous integration, even getting SCPlugin working with unsigned certificates. Then I tried to run my ant build, and ended up having all sorts of problems getting my mac debug player to run. Some investigating and help from […]

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