Yeah, I know – another ridiculously long time between posts…..not like there’s anyone waiting for me to post anyways…but I’m going to try and post more often.  Writing is cathartic for me, and if nothing else, it’ll ease the jones I get when I need to put something into words…

But this is a historic day, and I want to be sure I capture my thoughts while they are fresh in my mind – plus then I might be able to actually get some work done…

I usually don’t like to delve into Politics as I find it to be a VERY personal topic.  People align themselves very tightly to a party affiliation, and often times they can’t (or won’t) understand how anyone else can have different ideologies than they do.  Me, I’ve got a different view on politics.  I’m very much a social liberal and believe that the government should help those in need and that everyone has a right to basic decency and a standard to which they should be able to live their lives.  No one should be able to thrive at the risk of endangering others.  But on the other hand I’m also a fiscal conservative.  If a big proposal comes up, my first thought is “How are they going to pay for it?”  The 10+ trillion dollar federal deficit that this country currently holds is driving me insane because that puts the country as a whole at a risk – no one could run a company with that much red ink, so why should a government be allowed to?  So that puts me firmly in the middle of the ideologies of both the Democratic AND the Republican parties.  And over the course of this past year, I’ve been in both – apropos, non?

As such, this past election cycle (I can’t say year since campaigning started in 2006) was very enlightening for me.   Only once in my presidential election ballots have I actually voted for a major party candidate.  I had never found a candidate which met my criteria for what a President should be.  I’ve always found them to be party shills who shifted whichever the way the wind blew at that point in history.

This cycle seemed to be shaping up the same way as well.  I was a registered Republican at the time, and I couldn’t find a viable candidate who held the same types of views as I did.  There were a few that were close, but either they had other personal issues which caused me to question their integrity and their ideals, or they didn’t last long enough in the cycle to actually get to vote for them (my state votes VERY late in the primary cycle).  So I started to pay attention to the other side of the aisle. 

The first major candidate was a former first lady who was running on a message of experience, but I questioned whether I thought the country was ready for a return to the drama which enveloped that family – nor did I think a number of her plans fit well into where I thought the country needed to go.  Next was the former vice-presidential candidate from North Carolina who I liked well enough the last time around, but he didn’t seem to do enough to be ready to move to the top spot, plus health issues with his wife which should have obviously come first but didn’t  (then there were the extra-marital things that creeped up later – oops)

Then there was the freshman Senator out of Illinois.  A very well-spoken man with high ideals, a steady hand with real ideas which fit into my trains of thought.  One who spoke not of party lines, but of real change within our government.  But I honestly didn’t give him a whole lot of thought.  For one, he didn’t have a long track record of government service (and people don’t trust those without experience), and two, he was african american and while I don’t think this way, the rest of america hasn’t historically considered anyone that wasn’t a rich white man to fill that post.  Yes, we’ve had some candidates (Jesse Jackson, Alan Keyes), but they weren’t really given the chance to make a serious run at the job.  And finally, he was going against the Clinton machine – a massive fundraising machine with a lot of political clout.  So while I liked the guy a lot, I didn’t give him much thought because I thought he’d be gone early in the race.

Then a funny thing happened – this guy won Iowa, an ultra-conservative state who NO ONE gave a chance to win.  Then he started to really gain momentum, raising money at unprecedented rates, all from small donations and no lobbyist money.  People were registering and changing parties to vote for this man.  Then he came out of Super Tuesday ahead and never really looked back.  Amid all the struggles and dirty campaigning, he kept on being the promise of hope and change that this country really needed.  So much so that when it came time to get ready for our primary election, I switched parties to support his candidacy (admission – OK, I also wanted to vote against Clinton as well).  My wife thought I was crazy (and still does), but I felt strongly enough about his candidacy and the direction he wanted to take that I wanted to do my part.  And it worked (yeah like my vote broke it all - he actually lost my state), he made it through the primary season as the Democratic candidate.

What followed was one of those election cycles that when it’s looked back upon, people should hang their heads in shame.  Racist attacks, religious bias (based on false accusations), attacks on his character and flat out lies about this man were spread with impunity and without regard for truthfulness or honor.  Attacks on the readiness of the candidate for the office of President, all the while with a vice-presidential candidate on the opposite side who was no more experienced, and less knowledgable in most matters since she didn’t have the two years to prepare for the role by campaigning as he had.  While the polls had him leading, it all had me worried that all of these months of hope would be dashed by the fear mongering which had been strewn about the weeks before the election.

Then an amazing thing happened on November 8th, 2008.  Voter turnout was at an alltime high – initial estimates lay it at 65% of all registered voters with some areas showing 70-80% turnout rates.  People waited in lines for hours just to make their mark, many of them for the very first time.  They wanted their vote heard. 

And heard it was.  In one of the most significant elections of the modern era, Barack Obama was elected to serve as the 44th President of the United States.  Not only was he the first African-American person elected to the highest office of the land, but he’s the first post-baby boomer elected as well.

Now, do I think he’s the Messiah as he’s often been nicknamed?  Do I think he’s going to magically make all the problems go away?  No.  I’ve often said that this presidency will probably be a one-term office because of the mess that the country is in.  There are two wars to resolve, an economy in the tank, an education system in dire need of help and a Social Security system on the brink of ruin because it can’t handle everyone who’s going to be drawing over the next decade.  But I do think he has the chance to be regarded as a great president if he can have some success going across the aisles and getting all the portions of congress working together for the betterment of the country and not the lobbyists.

Why do I think he can do that?  Because he’s got an extraordinary gift for oration and inspiration.  He also doesn’t claim to be able to do it himself.  He lays out expectations and also draws in the people needed to make something succeed – isn’t that what a leader does?

• A more perfect Union – a race on speech which was perfect for when it was needed.
• The America We Love – a speech on Patriotism
• The American Promise – at the Democratic National Convention
• Election Day Speech – he speaks not only to the US voters, but also the world and provides hope.

Congratulations President-elect Obama and Vice-President-elect Biden.  I look forward to seeing what you can pull off the next four years – they’ve got to be better than the last eight.

Edit:  I found another post that makes the case in a different voice, but I agree with the sentiment.

Man, I had every intention of getting this going, but real life got in the way (who’da thunk?).  I’ve been slammed every which way but good, so my writing itch hasn’t been able to be scratched.  I’ll get back into it, I swear!

 Anyway, I just needed to say that I’ve determined I’m

85% Geek

That’s all I needed to get off my chest.  I’ll get back here someday (I hope)

Today is apparently Blog Action Day for 2007.  It’s a day where the power of the blogosphere is to be turned to one agenda.  Everyone is supposed to write about one topic, with their own slants, their own biases – but still to write on that one topic.  It’s an interesting proposition, and I’m going to be wandering around checking all the different sites that are linked to see the viewpoints of everyone else.

 This year’s topic is the environment, the hot topic of 2007.  Everyone seems to be talking more and more everyday about the environment.  I don’t know if it’s the Al Gore effect, or if this is a sincere shift in focus for everyone involved, but it is what it is, so here we go.

The environment is one of those really odd things that no one seems to understand.  Have the human race done everything they possibly can to screw up the environment?  Sure.  Has it reached the point where it’s screwed up to the point that it can’t be fixed?  Possibly, but then you read a story about how the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking, and you realize just how much we don’t know about the earth and it’s recuperative powers.

But does that mean that we’re powerless to help?  Not at all – but we need to push our legislative bodies to get involved because if it’s up to the average joe human, nothing’s going to get done because it can be more expensive to do the right thing.  Here are just a few ways that we can help to make the earth a better place overall.

1. Require our automakers to produce economically viable “clean” vehicles.  The current slate of hybrids and/or clean cars cost significantly more than those that are the typical gas hogs, and the ones that do exist are not viable for more families as there is little room for storage for trips, or even for a family of four.  And no, I do not consider an SUV that gets 24mpg vs 18 mpg to be a greener alternative.  In the early 1990s, I was driving a Mazda 323 sedan that averaged 40-50 mpg on the highway - why has the capacity of the cars gone so far down since then?  My next car averages 32-38, but even that is more efficient than what we can get today – why?  Why is gas mileage going down instead of up?  Don’t tell me it’s the SUV factor because even the smaller sedans aren’t getting it.  Nowadays, the only cars that get close to the gas mileage I had in 1993-95 are the hybrids – and from what I’ve read, the advertised averages are not close to the realistic ones and the results are more pedestrian.
2. Increase the availability and affordability of mass transit.  With the trend of moving away from the cities becoming even more rampant, the amount of traffic (number on cause of pollution) is going through the roof.  Traffic congestion, road rage, noise pollution – all of these are symptoms of too many drivers for the roads.  So why is mass transportation failing in so many cities?  Where are the light rails running in and out of each city?  Where are the eco-friendly buses which I’ve seen prototyped throughout the area, but have never gone live?
3. Stop urban sprawl.  This is the one that bothers me the most.  Even with the housing market crashing as bad as it is, I’m still seening signs everywhere for new housing builds.  What was lush farmland has become barren ground as they’ve made new houses which are bigger and more ridiculous every day.  This adds more traffic to roads which aren’t built to handle it, and less green space which the earth can use to regenerate itself.  Encourage revitalization of the towns and cities.  Make it more economical to renovate than to build anew.  Do something to stop the sprawl.  This will result in less traffic, less loss of open space and more community spirit as once thriving areas start to thrive again.
4. Pick up after yourselves.  Yes, I know this isn’t something we can encourage our legistlature to get involved in, but it’s amazing to me how lazy people get when it comes to their own trash.  I don’t know how many times I’ve been hiking on a nature trail and had to stop to pick up the trash someone else has left behind.  Candy bar wrappers, chip bags, empty soda cans and bottles, all that could be carried a few extra minutes until a waste receptacle can be found.  The boy scouts have a “zero footprint” policy for camping – it’s a nice thought I wish more people would undertake.

This is a whole series dedicated to a site refresh.  What steps do I take?  What plans do I make?  How can I learn from this process to improve my workflow?

Series History: Intro / Part I / Part II

I apologize for the gaps between postings.  I’ve been extra busy in real life – between reviewing and commenting on 100’s of pages of technical project documentation for a new project going on here at work, and coaching my son’s midget football team, and running the local barbershop chapter I’m currently serving as president, my days seem to get shorter and shorter in terms of having time to just sit and think.  My wife even got on my case because I didn’t take time to relax yesterday.  I think I may have forgotten how.  Not that anything’s an excuse – just an explanation.

Now, in our last episode, I did a quick rundown on the functionality the site needs.  For a quick recap, everything can be rooted down to four basic functional components:
1) A content management system (including the photo gallery listed in the last portion)
2) A calendar
3) A membership/group management system
4) A forum or some sort of interactivity capacity to interact with the audience of the forum.

I mentioned before that being the anal retentive I am, I will probably build most of this myself.  I like to know how each and every piece works, and I also like to have that tight control over what the end result is, and plus I know if it’s screwed up, there’s only one person to blame – me.

I may take the opportunity do some exploration into .net – dunno.  Depends on where I am when it comes time to rip out the site build.  If I’m getting hammered, then the classic asp while come crashing out since I can invoke it and wield that sword as effectively as just about anyone I’ve encountered.  If I have some time, then I’ll break out my “Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 WEBSITE using VB and C#” from SitePoint and see if I can’t expand my horizons (not to mention my employ-ability).

But let’s not put the proverbial horse out in front, shall we?  I want to take a couple minutes and analyze each of the components to work out required functionality, and as well as the bells and whistles which would be nice to add.

CMS

The CMS here will be a little different than what is usually done.  Most CMSes I’ve run into are, while effective, are a bit convoluted and do much more than what it needs to do.  While I’ll incorporate some sort of blogging/article functionality in where the content can change often and is very fluid, then I’ll be dependant on dynamic functionality as driven by a database.

But the nice thing about most of this site is that for the most part the content is pretty static.  The pages can be generated once as static html and be good to go.  A number of pages (quartet pages for example) will be based on a base template which can then be extended with the specific information.  The hope is to be able to make changes to a database, then rebuild the site as needed which would allow us to make changes in one location and then dispersed.  This will also simplify backup procedures since essentially the template pages and the database(s) will be the only things which need to be backed up for the site to be recovered (which this site has suffered through twice).

Calendar

This will probably be the most complicated portion of the development.  This component will need to be very flexible.  Just some of the features that will be required off the top of my head:
1) Have events that are both private and public.
2) Have single events, as well as recurring events (weekly or multiple performances) * this will most likely be the most difficult to implement
3) For each event, especially the public events, have the ability to schedule multiple times for the same event, with the audiences being different for each time (i.e. have an arrival time for the chorus to get warmed up, and a performance time for the public)
4) Allow multiple users/groups to schedule events.  Quartets should be able to schedule events for only themselves, for example.
5) Allow the calendar to be filtered to show only specific information.  On a quartet page, only show events the quartet will be at, while at the chapter level, show just chapter jobs, though also show quartet events as well.
6) The ability to show variable calendars – yearly, monthly, weekly, upcoming events.  These variations need to be printable.
7) Send out notifications that a calendar event has been added/deleted or modified.

Membership/Group Management

The website is for a chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society, so there is membership to deal with.  The site has a members-only area which will need to be accessed by members of the chapter.  This section will have downloads of learning files, display upcoming events, provide crucial information our membership needs to know, etc.  Barbershop is four-part harmony, and as such we will have four sub-groups which will need to be provided the same sort of information/files (e.g. the leads don’t need the bari learning tracks unless their gluttons for punishment).  Our membership is pretty fluid, and so we need to be able to add/edit/remove members on a semi-regular basis, so this functionality will be pretty crucial.

Interactivity

This part I haven’t decided to handle yet because I haven’t determined the level of interactivity that is appropriate for this site.  Our members are currently using a yahoo group, so I’m not 100% sure a forum is needed, but there does need to be a method for those outside our friendly little organization can get involved and communicate with our members or the chapter in general.

Six years ago today, the United States got a dose of reality and joined the real world as one of the most horrific and coordinated attacks of terrorism ever occurred on U.S. soil.  Roughly 3,000 people lost their lives that day – the largest loss of life on American soil since the Civil War.  The country (and the world) would never be the same again.

Up until then, the people of the U.S. had always felt safe and that the tragedies affecting the rest of the world could not happen within the borders of the country.  Generations of Americans hadn’t been born since the last major war ended, and no one felt safer.  Oh, how wrong we were.  Most of the country was just waking up to a nightmare of unimaginable proportions as we watched the first plane hit the twin towers, followed shortly by the second.  Then to find out that two more planes had been hijacked and the feelings of helplessness as they two fell from the sky.  Phone lines all over the country jammed as people tried to contact loved ones affected, and for others just to feel the comfort of a familiar voice as they found their loved ones safe and sound. 

Every major news outlet in the country provided nearly 24/7 coverage of the aftermath.  We watched in horror as the tragic events were replayed over and over again – the towers falling, the people jumping to their deaths in the attempt to simply get away from the flames.  We shook as we saw the carnage and damage that occurred.  We saw the images of those that were lucky enough to get out running to escape and to get away from the disaster, covered in the ash and dust of the towers that spread all over the city.  We mourned for those that lost their lives, and suffered along with those that were not able to leave as bridges gridlocked and all transit out of the city shutdown.  We listened as the news agencies dissected the events, listening for something to grasp hold of.  We listened to a President, only in office a little over six months, that attempted to show strength but still conveyed the underlying anger and feelings of hopelessness we all felt.

But then, we heard stories about the brave men and women of the NY fire and police departments risking life and limb to get everyone out of the twin towers, knowing that the towers could fall at any moment.  We heard of the stories about the passengers of Flight 93, who fought the terrorists and saved numerous lives as they sacrificed their lives to save those that were the target of that planes demise.  Heroes were born that day – heroes that galvanized a nation, and gave hope for all of the country to hold onto and heal.

Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda had hoped to strike fear in the heart of the country, and for a while they succeeded.  All commercial travel ceased for a time, and Americans walked in fear, waiting for the next attack.  Never had this country seen such an attack, and the sheer gall and coordination of the attack was frightening.  But eventually, the stories of heroism and bravery started to have an affect on the American public.  A sense of unity and nationalism rose once again, and the country refused to let the terrorists win, and was determined to get back to a life as normal as possible – though it would never be usual since no one would truly feel safe again.

 We will never forget, we will always remember the events of that day - but we will live on.  That’s the way it must be.

This past weekend was Labor Day in the U.S. and was created as a day of rest for the American laborers and is often considered the “end of summer” for most Americans as school is starting back up if it hasn’t already started.

Our family had a good weekend overall.  Friday we went to our local amusement park for a nice afternoon of rides and laughs.  Saturday was the first game of the season for my son’s Smurf football team (I’m a coach).  We won’t talk about the first half of the game, but the second half was competitive, and I got to be on the field to watch my son rip off a 30+ yard run for a touchdown.  Sunday, we went to the next to last game of the season for the Harrisburg Senators, the Washington Nationals AA affiliate, then (luckily) went out and had a nice dinner.  Monday was a day of hiking, picnicing and swimming at one of the National Parks which is close to our house.  Overall an enjoyable weekend.

Then last night hit.  I had gone out to get pizza for us to have for dinner, and when I got back, my wife called me into another room away from the kids.  She told me then that she got a call from a friend that a neighbor of ours had been killed in a sprint car race Sunday night.  He would have been 28 the end of this month – eight years younger than me.

Now, I wasn’t close to this young man.  I had met him a total of three or four times in the three years we have been living in our house.  But his parents are good friends (he lived with his parents), and have been very good to my family, especially my children.  In fact, they have taken my wife and kids along to see their son race numerous times – and that’s why I had written luckily above.  See, our neighbor had been looking for my wife and kids to go with her Sunday night to see him race, but we had been out to dinner, otherwise they probably would have been there to see the accident (details are sketchy but from reports, the car flipped multiple times, was hit by other cars and burst into flames).

So while I mourn this young mans death, and feel horrible for his parents (no parent should have to bury their child), I am incredibly thankful that we had decided to go out for dinner that night.  My kids are seven and five, and while we had to tell them about his death because they knew he had been in an accident, there’s no telling the mental anguish that would have occurred if they would have seen the accident first hand.  My kids are still very innocent – a fact I feel very blessed with and hope to keep going for as long as possible. 

So parents, if your kids are around, hug them.  Cherish the time you spend with them – whether it’s good times or bad.  You never know when that time will be taken away from you.  Each moment you spend with them is a moment you’ll never get again, so make the most of it.

So I just want to say to Bill, please rest in peace.  The only comfort I can take from you being taken away so young is that you died doing what you loved more than life itself – racing.  May your soul find peace and happiness in the next life.

Series History:
For initial background, see the Intro post.
See part one where the target audiences are identified and needs listed.

Now that the target audiences have been identified, let’s break down what is needed for the web site at a “1000 foot” view. This list is by no means complete, and will probably get updated from time to time:

1. a calendar of events. Events need to be private and public, and mappable directions accessible where appropriate.
2. rudimentary CONTENT management system. This needs to be able to create files on the fly, and files needs to be able to be uploaded, and accessed over a number of pages.
3. CONTACT management – need to be able to add/edit/delete member information from a csv file
4. a forum or some other sort of interactive application which will allow members to interact with each other, as well as interacting with members of the public.
5. Group Management – to add/edit/delete quartets and their members.
6. photo gallery
7. mailing List management

Now, of course being the anal retentive I am, I will probably write most of this functionality by hand. Things like the forums I will use a pre-built (Snitz most likely), but other than that I will probably build it on the fly to ensure all the pieces work together as they need to effectively. More time consuming that way, but the only way to ensure that everything meshes together properly.

Background – see the Intro post for the background behind this post and all within this theme.

The intro for this process was definitely long, so I’m going to try and break down the processes a little father to get these into reasonable length posts.

First step is to identify who fits into the target audience.  While the ideal is to identify one “niche” to target most of the efforts to, in the case of this site, there are actually five target audiences:

1. Current Members
2. Potential Members
3. Potential Clients (Show Audiences/Booking Clients)
4. Fans, Friends and Families
5. Other Barbershoppers

Current Members

Description of audience – This is the largest audience of the site.  The age of the audience members ranges from 20-80, with technical ability ranging from experienced to sheer novice.

Audience needs – The site is the fount of information for the organization.  While our organization used to be phone-chain and physical media based, as more of our group joins the modern age, more and more of our communication methods and media has been shifting towards email and the website.  This usage will only increase as the organization increases in size – it must or we’ll not be able to keep up at the pace we move.

Being that most are not completely techno-savy, the members area needs to be simple to use, and not provide them with a lot of choices in terms of customization – the KISS method will work better in the members area.  For this audience, the following needs to be provided:

• a calendar of events with the ability to get driving directions when appropriate
• audio and video files (as appropriate) of coaching sessions, choreo plans, learning files
• newsletters/announcements/rss feeds of all important information.
• supporting documents that members may need (member manuals, board hierarchy structure, etc)
• contact information for other members
• support mechanism for asking questions of the leadership of the chapter.
• a mechanism to get with other chorus members who would be interested in quartetting.

Potential Members

Description of audience – This audience is for those men who may be interested in joining our organization.

Audience needs – this audience needs to provide a prospective member with all the information he would need to consider whether he would be able to/would be interested in joining the organization.  It needs to be engaging and thorough, and be kept up to date as requirements change (costs for joining, etc).  There needs to be information which provides meeting information, as well as the capacity to get driving directions.

Potential Clients

Description of audience – This audience is for those people or organization who would be interested in hiring the chorus, an ensemble, or a quartet to perform for them for a specific event.

Audience needs - This audience needs to be able to:

• See/Hear the chorus perform
• Find out what the costs for a performance would be
• Find out what dates the chorus, ensemble or quartets would be available to perform
• Have a contact mechanism which would allow the client to contact the chorus manager to arrange a booking, get more information, etc.

Fans, Friends and Families

Description of audience – This audience is for those people who love the members of the organization and support us by coming to our public performances, our shows, dinner theaters, etc.

Audience needs – This audience wants to see their friends and family in person, but also be able to see those memories from those events. So this audience would needs to be able to:

• have a calendar of events which would allow them to know when and where to find the chorus perform.
• see audio and video of the chorus from recent performances
• see photos captured at the events, and be able to provide them to the chapter via the website to be added to the gallery
• provide feedback to the chapter through a forum, or guestbook or some other sort of mechanism.
• sign up for newsletters, announcements from the chapter.

Other Barbershoppers

Description of audience- this audience is for those barbershoppers (both male and female) who would be interested in visiting the chapter and perhaps ringing a chord or two.  They may also want to be able to follow along with the chapter, finding out the latest news.

Audience needs – the needs of the audience meet almost identically to the needs of the friends and family PLUS have the ability to find out when and where the chapter meets, and get directions as appropriate.

 Now that the core audience has been identified, the next step is to parse through all of this and determine what is needed.

Experiment time – read on if you’re interested.

Like most developers, most of the work I do involves other people in the development process.  I’ve got a customer who is involved in helping me to identify what’s required in a site, build content, etc.  This project I’m documenting here is a little different.

Background

I’m currently the webmaster for the Keystone Capital Chorus, the Harrisburg, PA Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society.  Our website has been in existence in some shape or form since 1997, from a free host up to our current host.  There are few technophiles in our organization, so the content and design for the site has solely been up to me, and to be honest, being a hobby site, it hasn’t always been as high up on the priority list as it should be.  On a semi-regular basis (monthly or so), the site content would be updated, and from time to time a new design would be invoked at my whim.  Don’t get me wrong – for the purposes of our site, it has been pretty successful as it has helped us gain a 1/2 dozen or so new members over it’s lifetime.

Well, over the past year or so, our membership has been growing significantly as well as our level of technical proficiency.  I’m still the only web developer on the roster, but our members are the generation that make heavy use of Google, youTube, Flickr, etc.  And as our membership grows, so does our need to expand our use of technology to communicate, share files, advertise, etc.  As such, it’s become painfully obvious that our site needs to be more flexible and allow for more rapid content changes, and allow others to contribute to the content without my having to get directly involved.

With this being a hobby site, I’ve always worked on it at a whim.  It’s still pretty much a static site, though over the years, I’ve changed some of the site to be database driven, but it’s been that I’ve needed to manually update the database, then reupload it to the site to make the changes active.  Not a pretty solution, but it’s worked and I’ve just never taken the time to work out something better.

Well now, we’re moving at a much faster pace within the organization, and we need more and more information modified throughout the site.  Plus, my kids are now of an age at which I just do not have enough hours in the day for me to live up to the expectations I’m setting for myself in maintaining the content of the site.  Obviously, I’m feeling an obligation to keep our content fresh and relevant, but there just isn’t the time in my schedule to handle the needs of the masses, so I’m going to have to refresh the site to allow others to be able to keep the content up to date without having to get their hands dirty in html (did I mention the lack of technophiles?).

So what happens next?

You may be saying to yourself “This site just needs a content management system,” and while this is true, I’ve never been a person who’s been satisfied with using a square peg jammed through a round hole.  The site needs to be simple to use, easy to maintain, but also specialized for my core users – barbershoppers.  There are some very unique pieces of functionality this site will need to fulfill, and I won’t be satisfied having to just jam it in because it’s easy.

So instead, now comes a site refresh.  In the past, I’ve gone the “fly be the seat” approach with this site and just done it at a whim.  But I thought that using this blog would be a good way to document my whole process and see if by documenting it all out first, I can develop a new site faster and more complete.  This will allow me to develop requirements for functionality, content, design, administration, etc.  Hopefully, someone will eventually trip onto this site and actually find this exercise interesting and helpful.  If not, hopefully this will just help my thought process and save me some time and allow me one place to document where I am in the process and what I need to add, what order to add it in, etc.

I’ve never had a “formal” process for my development, so if nothing else, I can determine what works for me and what doesn’t.  If I even learn one thing from this process, I’ll consider it a success.

So stay tuned to the journey and we’ll see you along the way.

It’s days like today that I start to wonder if I’m getting too old for this business….

 A thread started over at Sitepoint yesterday which started off innocently enough.  It asked which of these steps of the System Development Life Cycle is the least important:  Problem Definition, Software Specification,  Algorithm Design, Coding (Implementation), Documenting, Testing or Evaluation.  Seems like an innocent enough question, right?

Coming from an “old school” background (my first couple jobs were mainframe based) and having had the SDLC beaten into my head over the years, I answered the question as best I could – all things considered, Coding is the least important step of the SDLC.  If you define the problem and develop the specs and algorithms properly, coding becomes very easy.  You then need to test thoroughly, document it well (both for users and for developers who have to maintain your code later), and then evaluate what got accomplished to ensure you solved the problem.  All in all, coding is the least important step.

 Then someone piped in that this lifecycle was too restrictive and “real men do it iteratively.”  WTF?

OK, maybe I’m getting too old for this profession, but what am I missing here?  I know the concepts of extreme programming and iterative development, but how is that really different from the “standard” SDLC?  From my perspective, here’s the standard SDLC

1. Problem Definition
2. Software specification/algortihm design
3. Coding
4. Testing
5. Documentation
6. Evaluation

Now here is the “iterative” format

1. Problem Definition
2. Software specification/algortihm design
3. Code functionality A
4. Test functionality A
5. Go back to 4 for functionality B
6. Rinse and Repeat for each piece of functionality defined
7. Documentation
8. Evaluation

The benefits of iterative development isn’t in problem definition and specifications.  The time savings comes in the coding and testing phases in that you’re only coding and testing one piece at a time, ensuring that you are able to identify exactly where a problem is occurring.  You’re not playing guessing games trying to determine exactly which piece is going wrong. 

It’s a philosophy I’ve been following for years before it became a popular design pattern – this has always made sense to me.  But it seems to me that there’s a new way of thinking which has permeated modern development.

1. Define one small problem
2. Design a solution for that problem
3. Code for that problem
4. Test that code
5. Return to step one for a new problem
6. Rinse and Repeat until all the problems are fixed.

Notice documentation isn’t in there – another trend I find disturbing.  “All code should be self documenting”….HA!  Try to visit someone’s code from a year or two ago and tell me that’s the case.  Not gonna happen.

But back to my point – it seems that there’s such a push to get a product out there, that the basic premise of good development has gone away – figuring out the problem first.  It seems that it’s OK to put out something small, thinking “oh, we’ll add feature X in later” – even if feature X may be the key feature which the end user would want, or even the feature which make the end result a viable and usable product.

Or am I just missing something here?