The interface is to be implemented by a class and override the accessors methods.

I am giving a simple code that demonstrate its usage.

 class MyArray implements ArrayAccess {       
    private $arr = array();

    function offsetExists($name) {              
        return isset($name);
    }

    function offsetGet($name) {       
        return $arr[$name];
    }

    function offsetSet($key, $val) {       
        $arr[$key]=$val;
    }

    function offsetUnset($name) {       
        unset($arr[$name]);
    }
}
$arr = new MyArray();
$userMap["Hello"]="Worlds";
echo $userMap["Hello"];

This class can use a database for its model. The interface facilitates coding array style with similar __get() __set() functionalities for classes.

Btw, anybody knows how I can show codes like code in an editor with line number ?

After a long time I worked as free lancer for a week. My brother from US gave me subcontract. The project was mainly to localize Fedex international website as well as build a system for future purpose.

I enjoyed working with ASP.net after about 4 years. Being a java programmer that time I used to code rather use the studio to develop custom component and coding. Though some the localization could be done partially using the VS IDE, many part was was complex and need to modify C#,VB.net and JavaScript code. So, I preferred only coding without visual aid.

In addition to the enjoyment and freedom, end of the week I got quite a good pay

Now, I am really thinking should I continue with free lancing?

Anyway, I was searching for an IDE for PHP with auto completion feature. Having downloaded the netbeans6 I was surprise to find a plug-in named PHP! Downloaded it and got exactly what I was looking for

For more information visit Php plug-in for netbeans.

Hence come the agile methodologies. To produce the product right we encounter many implementation in this agile era, there are many paths originated from the agile development practice.

Now, which to choose ? Should you choose one and stick to that ? In my experience I found choosing a single methodologies is quite impractical, partly because none can match up with the unique project requirement, partly because there are way too many methodologies defined

Lets look at the core blocks of some major agile practices.

Extreme Programming (XP)
Planning:
Planning goes along with the creation of user stories. Stories are kept in index cards with priority value set by the customer. The xp team assigns a cost in terms of estimate time to complete. If the cost is more than three weeks, the story is broken into smaller ones. Needless to say, as agile goes, stories can be added any time!

Stories which will be included are set with customer’s approval along with the delevary date. The stories with highest value and the most risky ones are implemented first.

Project velocity:
Project velocity is calculated after each release. It is a simple calculation based on how many storeis are implemented in the release. Project velocity helps estimating the next release and understand the estimation accuracy.

Design and Spikes:
XP design provides only the implementation guidelines for a story as it is written. Specifying extra functionality is highly discouraged. Do only the things that is required for the current sotry in next release. If encountered a difficult design problem, create a spike solution i.e. an operational prototype.

One thing that you must need is the use of CRC cards. These cards also contains the release and story information. They are the only design artifacts produced by XP.

Coding:
Having done with the story and desing, now dive into development ? No, wait ! First write up some test cases and unit tests. Once the unit tests are created, focus only on what must be implemented. XP also encourages pair programing.

Testing:
As mentioned earlier,testing starts before coding. Tests should be done using a framework which will enable regression testing as the iteration goes on.

Adaptive software development(ASD)

It is based on team self-organization and collaboration. It is almost a formal incremental and iterative method which gives high value on learing practice.

Speculation:
First statge of ASD is speculation when the project goal, constraints etc are decided.

Collaboration:
Collaboration in this methodology does not mean simply being a motivated team working together. It is based on trust, the team met must trust each other to
1. Criticize without anmosity
2. Assist without resentment
3. Communicate to solve a problem

Learning:
Learning is practiced by formal technical review of the component built by the team members.

Dynamic system development method (dsdm)

It is a superset of XP and ASD butt his framwork deals with highly time constrained situation under a controlled project with incremental prototyping.

DSDM approach to each iteration following the 80% rule i.e. only doing the must-do works to move to the next increment. The remainin details are left for later completion when more related requirement, change request are requested and depends on the “time-gaps”.

Interestingly, DSDM creates a prototype which will ultimately the deliverable product.

Feasibility study:
Prepare the basic business requirement and figure out the constraints.

Business study:
Breaks down the busness requirement into functional requirement, defines overall application architecture.

Function model iteration:
Prepare a fucntional prototype from the sub set of all to be demonstrated to the customer. This where 80% rule comes. Customer feedback are gathered during the cycle and work on those to make it 100%.

Scrum

Scrum is actually not a methodology, rather it is framework which will use any effective agile methodologies.

First create the prodcut back log by the product owner(can be a customer) and prioritize, then create a sprint backlog i.e. which functions are to be imlemented. A sprint  generally spans 30 days and the team is consited of 5 to 9 people. The team lead is called the scrum master whoes main responsibility is to arrange daily scrum, sharing knowledge among the team and  to ensure the team gets the best possible circumstances to accomplish the next sprint.

Feature driven development

A feature in this contex is client’s on functional requirement that can be implemented in atmost 2 weeks. Features can be categorized into a hierachical way. The small size of the features, they are simpler to design, faster to implement and easier to inspect. Point to be noted, project planing and tracking is done according to the feature hierachy not to individual features chosen arbitarily or according to any criteria.

An example of a feature can be:
“Show the last 10 posts.”
“Auto save a post after 5 min.”

There are many other methodolgies exists out there. I think methodology practice in real life is often a combination of more than one.

Do you agree ?

We, the software developers know there is always ‘friction’ and nothing is ‘massless’. The ever changing nature of the human mind and limitation to perceive what it needs results in modification in the requirement. That why we are agile, we don’t just fall.

Now, trust and sense of responsibility are at the base of agile methodologies among some other. Here, every member in a team is expected to be self driven and self motivated. They are given task and set free to accomplish that at their own choice. Formal managing, let alone macro managing, hardly gets its place. Then what would the team-lead do ? Should s/he dive into developing? or is there indeed any need of a team leader?

Actually, there is an unavoidable need of the team-lead-role. And s/he should never dive into developing unless it is that required. Rather, he(please add an ‘s’ before ‘h’, I’m lazy.) role is to keep all his mets connected as well observe aspect of their work.

Team-Lead role is almost similar to the role of the wicket keeper in cricket; cheering up the players and catch all the balls behind. A team lead should also look for the quality and security of the code component. As well, he will also ensure development path is not deviated from the path. As we are talking about agile methodologies, change may come, but that change should be verified by the team lead.

Besides, the team lead should accumulate the knowledge learned by each of the team members. He is to somehow implement the notion of adaptive software development(ASD proposed by Jim Highsmith) i.e. focus on collaboration and learning. He is to arrange an meeting to share the knowledge of the team mets. It can be in lunch time, can be after lunch hour or whenever seems appropriate. Remember, there is no need to prepare presentation as it often time consuming and deviates the concentration from the development. Main idea is to use any wheel if developed already by a team.

One point must be concerned about at this regard is to maintain the motivation and positive team spirit. Say two techniques are developed by two of the team members for similar type of problem. Both the developers are smart and techniques are smart too. Now, to server in future which method is to be used? The team lead should carefully analyze(don’t take too much time, if not resolved drop it till a right time) the two techniques with participation of them and expectedly he should sort out the right one and has to convince both of them positively.

Always keep in concern to maintain the team spirit and motivation.

Recently I was very much inspired by Hasin Hayder to read on, since that, I like to share my reading experience.

This post will contain all my read books gradually

1. Agile software development quality assurance
by Ioannis G. Stamelos, Panagiotis Sfetsos

2. Test-Driven Development By Example
by Kent Beck

3. Software engineering A practitioner’s approach
by Roger S. Pressman

4. Object-oriented PHP, concepts, techniques and code
By Peter Lavin

Once it used to be stated that to be a good developer one should learn a language every year. Why? The basic reason was to widen up ones view. By learning new language we can come to know about new techniques to solve a problem. Following that rule, I tasted some languages like C/C++(:P), java, Perl, PHP VB, Bash, VRML, JavaScript, C#, VC++/MFC(it should fall in C++ !), Flash Action script, SQL, Ferite etc.

Now, should I start learning python or ruby? I know they worth knowing, those are suppose to be a pleasant experience. But, what else might be done? I think knowing some api/libs can do the same! So, we learn GTK, XFC, Enlightenment, JFP, Struts, Tapestry etc.

In this way, I have started tasting JQuery. I am not saying learning, as to ‘learn’or to say “I know THIS” not just means I read few books, some articles and a handful of codes to demonstrate, rather it’s a matter of a longer period than 24 hours or 30 days.

Anyway, I am just writing about what I understand while going through the journey with JQuery( JQ ). Btw, I am studying the book, “Learing JQuery” by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg.

What we can do with JQ:

1. Easily access to any DOM element
2. Modify the appearance on the fly [using css]
3. Change the content of the page
4. A wide range event handling to make the page more responsive to the user

Besides these using jq we can do animation on the page,

ajax

integration and simplify other javascript tasks.

JQ has an interesting factory function $() and it can refer to any object very easily, like:

1. Elements : $(‘p’) : Gets all the paragraphs
2. A particular element: $(‘#an_id’): gets the element with id ‘an_id’
3. Elements with same class: $(‘.className’)

[to be continued, feeling sleepy..]

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Really a nice statement, there is no ‘I’ in TEAM.

In addition to it, I would like to say, “…though it is consisted of
some I’s”. And everyone, really need to be concerned about all the I’s.

Why I am saying this, is for another truth that you said about team
sport. Yes, surely someone gets more credit. Say in foot ball, may be
the scorers are highlighted. But if the scorers want to play alone it
is not appreciated and can be risky; as we all know it will also
hamper the team effort.

Additionally, think about the case when the captain is always planning
how to score himself and forgets to plan how to defend his back, or
how to employ all the players for winning the match, in software
development context, meet the deadline and keep the project and make
the customer happy

Though, in some organizations and in some teams, it is experienced
that some members irrespective of his/her role often forget their
play.Sometimes they fail to understand the difference between
confidence and (superiority)complex. It is rather detrimental when it
happens to the captains.

Specially the captains who came up to the managerial level by his/her
development talents, which is undoubtedly appreciable. But
occasionally, they are found to give more concentration on
development(not design) rather on managing. As a consequence,
developers kept idle. There are even some situations where developers
were kept idle for 5+ hours for a 2 decision of the skipper(and it was
solved in 10min after that), why ? cause s/he was coding in quiet
mode! And it was not use to happen occasionally, rather it was a
everyday practice! Developers working late nights often had to wait
for hours together for a decision.

Moreover,another problem of captains who were a Ronaldo(I’m his
fan!)once is frequently found in their initial planning and designing
the system. They tends to concentrate(and confined in the box) more on
development details. I had another experience, where the manager was
very talented and designed an system architecture(it was really a
nice, I admit) and made the developers write more than 60 classes! But
the problem was s/he did not know which technology/api will be used.
When the api is got along with the apidoc, all those piles of codes
are kept aside for the dust to fall on and with a hope to use in
future. Developers again started writing code when they come to know
what to do after sitting idle for hours. And again, the captain uses
his/her full talent to develop some roadblocks (definitely those were
very important) but without an integration plan and guess what… even
without a revision control system. So the developers started writing
the drama, which was scattered and scary…..

So I think, though the word TEAM has no ‘I’ in it but it has an ‘M’ at
the lead. S/he must ensure and be concerned that there comes no ‘I’ in
TEAM.

Have a nice day !

It is true, eclipse user base is very rich and so is its plug-in base. Almost all the necessary tools along with huge unnecessary ones (for a particular development view) can be found with eclipse. Especially the subversion plug-in… it is simply splendid). No worries.. I will download the svn module for netbeans. Hope it will not dishearten me

Lastly, I also admit, netbeans is very slow for java development. Last time I was developing a non-day-job project using jsp/struts. I choose netbeans and found that it takes all the memory of my computer. Again after tweaking for memory, it came up with much faster speed, even though an honest comment will be . SLOW.

But, if for C++ development, its simply great. Additionally, you can easily create UML design graphically by drag and drop; and then use it in your project ! One interesting feature of the UML module is that, here some of the design pattern templates are built in i.e. just select a pattern, give custom name click ok… you got the classes.

Finally, I am very happy with the new netbean.. I simply love it.