Xmlguy => attributes of life

Test post for sysntaxhighligther

Manuel Martone — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:29:36 GMT

<test>
    <indented text="anxkjanxkjxanka" />
</test>

///<summary>This is a testing code content</summary>
public void TestMethod(string input, ITask runnableTask)
{
    if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(inpu))
        runnableTask(t => t.Command = input);
    //do nothing...
}

///<summary>This is a testing code content</summary>
public void TestMethod(string input, ITask runnableTask)
{
    if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(inpu))
        runnableTask(t => t.Command = input);
    //do nothing...
}

Workflow Tales n°1 – in the beginning

Manuel Martone — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:02:33 GMT

Ok, now my task, in this period, is evaluating and architecting a workflow engine implementation, better to say, how to support a workflow engine in an enterprise application to driving business processes (workflows).

Ok, I can hear many of you which might say “why loosing time in that, we have Workflow Foundation here” or “we are close to the release of AppFabric and .NET 4.0 WF implementation” and that would mean something like “all the games are done…”.

Well, I don’t really think so…

First of all i don’t really like the Workflow Foundation, I don’t feel more comfortable with it, I don’t like the implementation, the design about the pluggable services, and more.. and in the end the philosophy itself. This because fundamentally I agree with the fact that a workflow is no more that an IF-Machine.. and as an IF-Machine no more that is done with a workflow could be done in code, and doing things in code we know could much simple, extensible, and more

but proceeding with order, I need to support a workflow engine which would run state machine workflow, with rules and all the things which could be expected by a state machine workflow, transitions, events and so on

Now, with my great surprise I saw Microsoft has break the support of Workflow State Machine in .NET 4.0, so now, in the time just before the .NET 4.0 release, if I would select the MS technology, I would have to change my implementation in the porting to .NET 4.0, this because the State Machine Workflow has been replaced by a “work around” customizing a Flow Chart Workflow… I was surprised when reading the WF4 State Machine Guidance from Microsoft I found this:

There are two potential directions you can consider in this situation:

Writing a custom state machine activity: The WF activity model provides you with rich extensibility to construct the perfect control flow mechanism for your scenarios. WF4 comes with a significantly improved activity model that you can use to write your own StateMachine activity. Implementing a custom state machine may be easier than you think using WF4.

Waiting: You can wait for a subsequent WF release that contains a StateMachine implementation out of the box.

So, I don’t want to continue to talk about, I hope you can imagine how I would continue, sometimes it’s impossible for me to understand some MS decisions… (sure someone could explain me maybe I’m ignorant, and if it’s true I’m not afraid to admit). After that I realized I have to looking for something different, maybe not just a single piece of software, but building a stack for example and drive all the pieces to realize what I have to, could be a better thing.

I found a stack, I made first of all an architectural stack and then a software one collecting some OSS projects which could help me gaining what I have to realize.. In the next post I will start to talk about the stack, the participants and more, but now I’m curious about what you think, in your opinion, so if you don’t get bored yet, please leave a comment.

See you

Technorati Tags: Workflow,Ideas,Developer Tales

What I would like to do in the coming 2010

Manuel Martone — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:00:36 GMT

After reading the last Davy Brion's Blog post about the new year’s resolutions, I thought to do maybe the same, saying what are my intensions about the forth coming new year..

Applying the Family pattern this is the most important thing which makes the new year the better one, the greatest of my life! I need to apply all of my passion, love, qualities and more to apply the Family Pattern

Keep and increase blogging unfortunately my last 5 months, or better, the last, or better yet the current year, has been so heavy about all, and all of my time was spent, so I cannot blog anything since I moved my blog and my site to webhosting4life. My idea is try to keep blogging frequently, about everything happen in my job career, in my day by day working experience, studying, talking and exchanging ideas with my colleagues

Get more involved in new developments this year I tried to begun new development as open source projects, contribution in OSS projects and more, but my time was so empty that I couldn’t any of my idea, intention or what else. So This year I really hope to start and continue new OSS ideas, like the one I thrown the last week about developing a new OSS enterprise mail server starting from the Apache James

Get more involved in new tech to apply in day by day work my big problem every day is the lack of time to do what could be interesting, useful and needed, I’m thinking about all the techs and knowledge which maybe could make me safe in many situations in my projects.. So I intend to acquire good and better knowledge in new patterns and practices, tools, frameworks and more, now for example I’m thinking about deeper NHibernate knowledge, AppFabric, .net 4.0 plat, OpenId, Federated security, amd more

Learning, learning, learning what was so heavy for me during this past year was keeping in learning every time the reason was the lack of time, I started I don’t know how many books, but maybe all of them are stopped at page 30, in the better situation at page 50… I’m a big sostenitor about continuos learning, I think this should be a kind of well known practice as “continuos integration”. I see how the big troubles comes in place starting from people ignorance starting from the simplest concept, just because today if someone ask “you know this or that tech?” the great part of the peoples tend to say YES just because they read two sentences about in some blog or in some sites.. I think as I ever said one of the big source of knowledge is learning from OSS projects, reading books.. but the most important is “talking” with colleagues, and “asking”…

Playing, playing, playing the last one, but one of my best wish for my self is to re-begin to play, I hope I can take my classical guitar and start to study another time and to play continuosly.. even here “continuos playing” this because I saw in my past, when I was too young than now, that take my mind in an activity well structured helped me doing better my day by day work as never before…

“And in the end…” I wish for you (and for me) a great new year, the best ever seen (in the past) and I hope learning and starting from our 2009’s mistakes we can do better, first of all in our life, with peoples.

Ciao

p.s. sorry about my poor and bad english

Technorati Tags: Personal,Thoughts

Because code matters

Manuel Martone — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:45:01 GMT

I’m a great supporter of learning, self-training and “continuous training” this because our job is made in percentage : 15% prepared, 35% of passion and 50% of training and learning continuously without stop..

Maybe someone could say I’m crazy or these percentage are wrong or anyone could have his own percentage, but in my experience this is what I’ve seen.

So about me, what is the most, the great and the largest source of learning and training and so on? Open Source Projects!

Most of the things I (hope I) know I’ve learned watching and reading open source project’s code listings, this because this kind of projects usually are made by volunteers who are good and experienced developers which wants to produce valuable software for the community, and, even that it’s driven by prepared, passion and training, learning and so on…

So now, my wish is to begin something new, not so new, but something new for me, I wish to try to translate and port a Java open source project to .net, because I think this could be exciting and good about passion and learning… So I have a project in mind but I’m open about suggestions, ideas, and more, so if someone wants to suggest and maybe partecipate let me know by comments or mail or I don’t know what…. my mail is manueldotmartoneatgmaildotcom I wish to start a new project in an hosting site (sourceforge, codeplex, github…)

Now what could be interesting for is doing that with two Apache Foundation projects:

1. Excalibur project

2. James Mai Server project

James server is built on the excalibur project (ex Apache Avalon) so could be exiting thinking doing this for the two projects.. but first of all I hope someone is interested in.

Sorry for my english, bye

Technorati Tags: Open Source,Projects,Ideas

…and maybe I’m come back

Manuel Martone — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:26:32 GMT

Hi, it’s too much time I didn’t wrote anything on my blog, for many reasons I didn’t, but the most important is because I’m thinking! Yes you heard well..

Why I’m saying that, because in this period I’m thinking about how my work, my passion in my work could evolve to another level, I’m thinking about how technologies and how methodologies are applied in a day by day job and how could be applied in near future..

I’m not so happy this time, because I see how my, or better OUR job it’s done in my place, I would say in my country, but I cannot talk about every place or every company, I know there are companies where job is done very well, but this is so singular as I seen in my experience..

The Italy part which I know about our job could be resumed in this words:

do fast, do dirt, forget soon and make more money as possible…

I think I’m doing this job first of all because I like it, then because I think it’s a really beautiful job, about it’s implications and how things could be applied an more.. but I see close to me only dirty things, dirty ways of applying even the simplest things. So I’m a little bit discouraged about that because:

people won’t learn new things (auto-training it’s a kind of dream..)

people won’t hear

people won’t …

I know when you are reading this post you could think “these are the same things which every one says” or something similar, but when I think about that, I think when I read tech blogs which every day I consult, I think things I read there are from a “beautiful world out of the reality” or from another planet…

So my question is what can I do? how can I promote new technologies, methodologies, frameworks, guidance… and let people “hear” new words?

Sorry I’m not so good in writing in english, and my thoughts in my mind are too fast that my fingers on my keyboard, but I’m interested about what you think about, so please if it’s possible leave a comment!

bye

Technorati Tags: Work,Thoughts

Principled or not principled…a day by day story

Manuel Martone — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:27:27 GMT

Hi,

recently working on some ASP.NET MVC projects, I saw first of all two things:

how much exiciting the framework is and how much flexible and better design approach it tends

how much people in the way are not familiar with good developing standards, design and techniques

I was reading the K. Scott Allen post on Principles, Code-Behind, & View Engines and I saw how much the the Pushy and Principled conversation is true in my day by day coding and working experience.

Let’s me explain, what if I said to a developer “ok..start to unit test the controller and then, try to isolate and let the controller free of so much contextual not testable or better hard-testable features” and he said to me “no…please don’t try to begin to play with tiny ugly long-named unit test methods and play with the (in our case) resharper nunit integration…please we have no time to spend, going to DEBUG via browser and use F11 F10 as all the world does”… result… 5 hours of stupid debug, said to us what my unit tests said to me in an half an hour…

or what if say that I need to be carefull to explain new language features as then are used in any part of a project just because are funny?

or, why we need to use this stupid concept of partial views?? tag-soup?? it’s time to eat?

Now, as I ever said in other posts, I desire to know the beautiful developing world where the neautiful things are on the way, standards, priciples, techniques, and I don’t konw what else… I saw that in the day by day story, all of these things are (for somebody) just trash things…

I spend so much time explaining what principes and coding standards, techniques and good practice are that I don’t know if my job is what I’m doing, developing software and doing architectures, or I’m a storyteller?

What’s your experience? share with me please your story….

Technorati Tag: Work,Practice

Blogging Tales – looking for source code formatter

Manuel Martone — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:21:27 GMT

Hi, recently my blogging activity was too poor, in these days my job and all of the things I have to finish are over my head…but I wush to begin to blogging frquently than now..

I have a request, I’m looking for a source formatter/syntax highlither wlw plugin, anyone can suggest me the better? Now my blog is on subtext and I need a good feature plugin. I saw maybe tons of them but I cannot find the better to work with subtext.

So please, if you can help me please leave a comment, I will really appreciate it!

Ciao

p.s. if you prefer, emai lme at manuel.martone@gmail.com

Technorati Tag: Personal,Windows Live Writer,Subtext,Blogging

Developer quality

Manuel Martone — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:42:50 GMT

Hi, I'm thinking about what makes a good developer.. This could be a good Thought specially now, in this moment where technologies, strategies, and tools are so many in the show. I was reading the Scott Hanselman post about T4 and Nerddinner app.. what take me into thoughts was the sentence "I really advocate folks reading as much source as they can because you become a better writer by reading as much as writing. That's the whole point of the Weekly Source Code - reading code to be a better developer."

I completely agree what Scott says, because I think growing and becoming a better developer is not (maybe someone has) a falling-sky quality, but depends on learning, reading, asking from others, I think it's a kind of mutual exchange.. Sometime ago I was talking about with a colleague of mine, and talking about that, he says to me that reading and learning, and then using what learned it's not a way to become a better developer, but instead it's a way to become a kind of "Code User" because this cuts off the personal quality of thinkng and invent. I said for me it's not true, Everything I could say I konw, it's from learning from: Colleagues, Open Source projects, books are the last isle, because I think books, technical better books are so rare! the great part of tech books are nothing more than a manual! So what you think??

I really appreciate to recieve comments and thoughts from you, so I can learn more even from You! Ciao

Points of view

Manuel Martone — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:55:44 GMT

This post was made on my wordpress blog on 05/06/2008

In these days I’m thinkng about the concept of “Achitecture” and “Architect”. Even now I’m experimenting what I’ve experienced for years about what the folks (in my country) thinks about that, and I’m, or better, I can be too confused..

I don’t want to fall here in discussions about what is an architect or what is and what makes an architecture because I thinks many good peolple talked about that (i.e. Arnon Rotem), I want just to post some thoughts about the fact generally people, in this job, think about architecture, design, development, as maybe the easiest thing to… I’m saying that because every day when decisions needs to be taken, or things have to be done well, the words I usually listen are “It must works”, “It must be done early and dirty” and so on… you can imagine what is the flow…

What I think, and everytime I stay on that, software architectures, software architect, doing this job in general, is not a trivial job as It can seems to the folks (I say this with caution..) It’s not possible to think our job could be done by everybody, not because to be architects or related is to be an elite, but because IT’S NOT SO SIMPLE AS IT COULD SEEMS in general.

I’m not helped by my poor english to explain my concept, but I hope I can try.. I fell in so many troubles about bad decisions, bad organizations, bad communications, and so on in my tiny past (11yr) even me I did in bad things, but I hope I’ve learned from my mistakes.. but this story is going on and sometimes I think it never stops..

Recently I’m thinking about the fact, technologies, framework, tools, languages and so on, became everytime more detailed, more in general, and the learning curve is eccesive than before, I think about the VB3/4/5/6, COM times, sometimes I thinks this could helps to understand the fact we have to continuosly learn, concepts became everytime more sofisticated, we have to be professionals and good programming can’t be made by tools, Drag and dropping things or something similar. We daily read good people and good techinicians blogs, read articles and more, but our daily life it’s more soiled than the “dreaming” reality people continuosly read about… I call it “dreaming” because I would like if it could be reality, but in real, things are so dirty, and we have to fight to try to do things well, and why not with passion…

I can continue talking about that hours, but now I stop, I’d like to know you’re opinion, how are things in your reality, in your country, or better near to you? I’m living in Italy..

Technorati Tag: Personal,Work

ASP.NET MVC Released

Manuel Martone — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:54:23 GMT

This post was made on my wordpress blog on 03/19/2008

Hi this morning I found an email with this notice: “ASP.NET MVC RELEASED”… In the firs time I found it a joke or something else which doesn’t matter, but the email continue with a link to the download page.

Now I’m reading the release notes..very interesting, and as the email says: “I don't think there's been an official announcement yet, but we all
kind of knew (or highly suspected) it was coming at MIX anyway.”

Ciao

Technorati Tag: ASP.NET,ASP.NET MVC