The Agile Micro ISV Blog

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

Sydney Smith
English essayist (1771 – 1845)

Although it didn’t happen by conscious effort, I have managed to steer myself through a decade of software engineering whilst remaining largely ignorant of a great many areas of what many would consider my trade. Although this could be construed as self criticism, it has actually served me rather well. Although I’ve dabbled in various areas, Windows desktop applications have been my main area of focus, and in the freelancer market, this is very much a niche that I am happy to occupy. Being in this niche, and also being one of the most experience WPF freelance developers in the country has not only shielded me (thus far) from the recession, it has also led me to the Mecca of .Net developers: Microsoft itself, where I am a very, *very* happy chappy.

Whilst this laserlike focus is benefiting freelancer-Tim, it might also be hurting micro-ISVer-Tim. I am at the point where Home Document Manager is a solid 1.x product, its traffic share is increasing, as is its customer base. I’ve signed a partnership agreement with a UK startup (the founders of which are friends and ex-colleagues) to rebadge and push Home Document Manager in to document management resellers, and that is starting to get some traction too.

As my main areas of interest revolve around document management in its many forms, my attention has started to shift a little to what I could do in the web-based arena. I have no intention of going up against Google Docs or Zoho (rest easy boys), they aren’t really document management tools; certainly not in the sense that people who work in document management would understand. So when my B2B partners asked if I would develop a web based offering, I was more than a little interested.

Although I toyed briefly with the idea of taking this as an opportunity to play with Ruby on Rails, I put my business head on and decided that I would be far more productive by staying in my comfort zone, i.e. .Net.

Some fantastic things have happened to desktop apps in recent years; Adobe Air and WPF both spring to mind. The web has also seen its fair share of advancements. After considering all, some or fewer of the competition, I’m taking a tentative step towards the ASP.Net MVC framework. Its simplicity, power and convention based strengths were immediately apparent and its inherent unit-testability makes it very appealing to me.

The Model View Controller is not new, but the very mature framework that comes with the download makes for easy development. I like easy development.

Being the methodical soul that I am, I’ve scouted out the best book on the subject and am merrily plodding my way through it. I chose Professional ASP.Net MVC 1.0, by Conery et. al., and can certainly recommend it thus far. The samples and walkthroughs are well thought out and the rate of progress is just right for me and I would certainly recommend it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Adobe AIR update to address performance, memory leak issues (infoworld.com)
• AIR 2.0 will flow to Flip cams, local apps (macworld.com)
• Microsoft Flips the Switch on Silverlight 3 (thaibrother.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Required materials:

• Plain Paraffin Wax (about 1/2 pound)
• Double Boiler
• Wooden spoon
• Bowls for cold water
• Candle thermometer
• Kitchen Stove
• Wick

And the instructions:

1. Cut the wax into small pieces.
2. Bring the water gently to the boil. Place wax in the double boiler.
3. Stir until the wax is melted. Once melted, try to keep the wax at 71C / 160F.
4. Cut the wick to the desired length, then dip into the wax. Allow the wax to cool between dippings for a minute or two.
5. Continue the dipping and cooling process. After a few dippings, you can speed up the process by dipping in cold water.
6. Repeat the process until the candle reaches the desired thickness.
7. When finished and cooled, cut a flat base on the candle.

Et voila.

So what’s so interesting about candle dipping from the perspective of software development?
Well, after 1 dip, what do you have? Well, you have a piece of string
covered in wax, neither use nor ornament. But after just a few dips,
you will have the beginnings of a candle, albeit at this stage, a very
slim one. So very quickly, we have something that could function as a
working candle.

Then, over time, we add layers, additional wax, additional
functionality. In time, this candle willl become an impressive church
candle, with a good 4 or 5 inches in diameter. Just as your app, with
very humble beginnings, will, with proper technique, become a very
impressive app.

The use of candle dipping as a metaphor for software development is not new in the world of Agile Software Development.
The essence is that we work in very small iterations, and we keep a
working application available at all times, just as our candle could
function as a candle at all times throughout its creation.
Functionality, business value, mojo, whatever you want to call it, is
added in vertical strips, just like in candle dipping.

If mojo is added in the order of business value, this process will,
at all times, mean that your application will yield the highest return on investment possible at any given time.

It’s been a while. How’ve you been? I’ve been run ragged, and displacement theory caused my beloved blog to drop off the agenda.

It’s been worth it. I’ve been so busy I didn’t even have time to announce a product launch on here. So, belatedly, here it is.

Convert2XPS has launched. It’s not big, and it’s not clever, but it’s launched. Convert2XPS is a .Net development library and custom XPS virtual printer driver that will, by hook or by crook, convert documents of arbitrary type to XPS.

This will not be my main product. I’m adopting a slightly different
strategy to the 100% laser beam focus of many micro ISVs, but more
about that later. For now, it’s back to the coding.