Category Archives: Programming Tools

Searching for the Perfect Inline Code Documentation Tool

March 07, 2008 –

Programming Tips

I have an intense love automatic documentation generation. Nothing makes me more tickled pink than seeing code and documentation living side by side in perfect harmony. I hate seeing documentation put on the company intranet only to diverge from the code it’s supposed to explain as the days go past. I hate hitting my head against a brick wall as I’m pouring through the source code trying to understand an API because at no point does it mention that it’s documented in a Word doc in another directory.

This is my rule of programming: documentation should live beside the code it documents, in the comments, especially if it’s API documentation.

By engtech | Also posted in Ruby, Technology, Writing Better Documentation | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (8)

How to Profile Greasemonkey Scripts with Firebug

November 13, 2007 –

Programming Tips

Running performance analysis on Greasemonkey scripts can be a pain in the butt. They aren’t part of a webpage so standard tools for analyzing web sites don’t work… or do they?

By engtech | Also posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Using Mind Maps to Explore User Interaction

August 31, 2007 –

I’m “fortunate” to work at one of those companies where meetings are a way of life. Not only do meetings happen daily, but everyone and their dog is invited. Well, until one of the dogs bit an intern. Now the dogs are free to keep working on their projects, but everyone else is still stuck in needless meetings. The only good thing that has ever come out of these meetings is that I’ve developed a passing familiarity with mind mapping software.

By engtech | Also posted in Software, Technology | Comments (24)

Emacs Wiki

June 01, 2006 –

It really seems like wikis have hit a critical mass and everything has a wiki now. Here is the wiki for Emacs support: http://www.emacswiki.org/

By engtech | Also posted in Links, Technology | Comments (0)

Emacs, emacsclient and gnuclient.

June 01, 2006 –

For those of us who use Emacs as our text editor, there is one major problem: it’s a memory hog. That’s why it comes with a client application so you can open files from a separate process into an existing Emacs (server). This reduces the memory usage as you only have one process of the [...]

By engtech | Also posted in Links, Technology | Comments (0)

How to move all gnu emacs backup files to their own directory

May 28, 2006 –

Emacs (Gnu Emacs or XEmacs. Read about the difference at xemacs.org) is a robust text editors (plus a whole lot more). One of the features that drive me crazy is the backup files it creates whenever text is editted (editting README.TXT will create README.TXT~ in the same directory). There is a lisp package called "autosave" that will put all the autosave/backup files in a separate directory so that you don't clutter your workspace.

By engtech | Also posted in Links, Technology | Comments (1)

Free CVS Book - Open Source Development with CVS, 3rd Edition by Karl Fogel and Moshe Bar

May 27, 2006 –

"Open Source Development with CVS, 3rd Edition" by Karl Fogel and Moshe Bar is available as a free PDF download under the GNU GPL. It can also be browsed online in HTML. There is also a lengthy article available talking about CVS best practices.

By engtech | Also posted in Book Reviews, Links, Technology | Comments (0)

Configuration Management wiki — build management, version control, bug tracking

May 19, 2006 –

The Configuration Management wiki. It looks a bit disorderly, but there may be some good nuggets of information to glean amongst the dross. It looks like the most fleshed out section is the list of available tools (covering build management, version control, defect management and merging).
The fundamental purpose of Configuration Management is to establish and [...]

By engtech | Also posted in Links, Technology | Comments (0)

Apache Ant (Java-based replacement for Make) User Manual

April 27, 2006 –

Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like make, without make’s wrinkles.
Why?
Why another build tool when there is already make, gnumake, nmake, jam, and others? Because all those tools have limitations that Ant’s original author couldn’t live with when developing software across multiple platforms. Make-like tools are inherently shell-based: [...]

By engtech | Also posted in Links, Technology | Comments (0)

Eclipse IDE - demo of using Eclipse with Java and Glade to create a simple GUI

April 20, 2006 –

This is a flash demo by Andrew Overholt using Eclipse IDE to build a simple Java app.
>> http://people.redhat.com/overholt/nativeeclipse/index.html

By engtech | Also posted in Links, Technology | Comments (2)