Miguel Carrasco's Real World

Software Development Top 30 Mistakes

I have been developing software and web applications for nearly 11 years now.  Software development has come along way since the days of Binary, Cobol, etc.  What still fascinates me however about software development however is the same mistakes made before, are still made today.  Below is the top 30 mistakes that are made within the software development process.  It's amazing to see that non of these have anything to do with the language itself.

1. Not understanding the user's needs. Lack of user input, or not even asking.
2. Underestimating the size of the project.
3. Rushing through he planning stage, or avoiding the planning all together.  Code first, plan later! BAD
4. Not testing early enough, often, or at all!  Make it a habit!
5. Choosing the "Cool" methodology at the time, vs one that has worked in the past. Which leads into my next point
6. Not using a methodology.
7. Letting a software developer run the software development project.
8. Bored, unmotivated team!  You have to motivate your developers!  If you can't motivate, don't bother trying to lead.  Your team will fall asleep, literally.
9. Planning on catching up later.  You won't... don't even think it!
10. Non Source Control!  Ouch.. not good people... and no, just installing a software package is not it...
11. Deciding to switch your development tools when your already into the project.
12. Allowing feature creep.  Just say NO!  Everyone will be happier in the end.
13. Omitting necessary tasks to shorten the project plan.  Really, what's the point of doing this?
14. Insufficient management controls in the development project.
15. Lack of high level business sponsorship.
16. Adding people at the end of the project to "speed things up".  You will only slow things down...
17. No unit testing.  Heck if you can do it, use Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and set up some automated testing nightly.
18. Stressed out software developers.  If you have managed to perform even one or two of these software development mistakes, you will have a stressed out bunch of programmers to deal with!
19. Lack of error handling.
20. "Off by one" errors.  These happen a lot during the software development process.. *sigh*
21. Typos...  Just use option strict and explicit please..  during one software development project, which I was on as a consultant, they were getting ridiculous amounts of errors everywhere... turned out the developer couldn't spell and would declare variables with incorrect spelling.. no big deal, until you use the correct spelling when your assigning a value to it...  and  you had option explicit off.  Ouch to them...
22. No understand the deployment or hardware the software is to be installed on.  Ohhhh it's for a macintosh... lol.  Well hopefully not that bad, but you get the point.
23. No naming style or code conventions.  Honestly it doesn't matter what you use... as long as you are consistent with the rest of the team, and hopefully at least yourself.
24. Using global variables everywhere.  These are NOT your friend and hog memory like nothing you have ever seen before!
25. Not asking for help at all during the software development process.  If your stuck, don't fight with it for hours on end!  Ask for help!
26. Not commenting your code.
27. Hogging all information to yourself.  You think your more valuable this way?  Your actually not and there is a plan brewing to get you kicked off the development project.
28. Performing database operations at the application layer instead of the database layer.
29. Not validating your data! Yikes...  Yes.. lets just assume all the data is perfect! NOT!
30. No load testing.  What.. This is supposed to run on 1,000 user's machines through Citrix?  Interesting... Shouldn't be an issue! lol... NOT.

Software Development is tricky enough!  Make it easier on yourself by ensuring you do not make any of these mistakes.  Although it seems like a simple list of things not to do, it can make your life so much easier!

ZUNE

A lot of press is building up on Microsoft's venture into the portable music space.  Microsoft launched a viral marketing campaign for the ZUNE device well in advance, and now as the clock is ticking to its release, more details are starting to leak.

The Zune will come in three colors, Black, White, and Brown.  It will come with some preloaded music and videos from Virgin Records, DTS, EMI Music’s Astralwerks Records, Ninja Tune, Playlouderecordings, Quango Music Group, Sub Pop Records and V2/Artemis Records and a handful of other labels.  This is a nice value add feature.  It will also have customization options, something missing from the iPod, that will allow the user to change the UI with images and various themes.

Social networking is really taking off, and it's nice to see Microsoft has picked up on this.  I have been using another music site for a while to "interact" with other users (MyStrands), and I'm hoping Microsoft builds this right into the system.

One of the nicest features I'm looking forward to is the ability to share my music over WiFi with other people!  Although I'm sure this will be limited, It is a great step in the right direction.  Also, the ability to sync with my Zune Library on my PC, or maybe even on my WiFi Storage device, will be awesome!  I hate having to "Sync" things.

The Zune will be tied to the Zune Marketplace.  It will allow users to purchase individual music tracks, or subscribe to a monthly service.  Zune will also allow you to place it in "Broadcast" mode, which will allow you to share your music via WiFi, and leave it open for other Zune Devices!  I currently have an iPod connector for my car that plugs it right into my stereo, however having some kind of WiFi interface would be AWESOME!

Some of the latest rumors are also that Microsoft will be selling a VoIP Add on to the Zune that will turn your Zune device into a VoIP telephone!  This would work seamlessly with your Live Messenger, and obviously pose a nice threat to Skype.

Included with the ZUNE:

• 30 GB Hard Drive
• Built-in FM Tuner
• 3 Inch 320x240 Display
• WiFi built in
• Supporting Formats: AAC, MP3, WMA, JPEG,  H.264, MPEG-4, WMV
• Manufactured by Toshiba

Estimated cost is: $284 USF

Web Developer Tips

I remember when I was creating web pages, and doing some software development back in 1993.  It was pretty awesome back then! It got better and better as time went on but it was always so difficult to do things that seemed like they should be very simple!  Notepad was great for learning html, JavaScript, etc.  Provided a really good foundation!  Then came Hot Dog! from Sausage Software.  A neat tool that allowed you edit html much easier than ever before!  It also had saved code snippets you could to create special effects, which for the most part would later become extremely annoying! Then of course came the Microsoft products, the Macromedia products, and the Adobe products, all taking the game to the next level.  One thing however I have always had trouble with was debugging web pages.  And I don't mean the typical .net debugging, that all works great now.  I'm talking about debugging styles, graphical interfaces, placement of objects, etc.  Here are some "Swiss Army Knife" tools that I have started using that I absolutely love!

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Back in March of 2006 Microsoft released an awesome tool that I can't live without as a web developer, IE Dev Toolbar.  Why it took them this long to release this tool is beyond me.  It finally exposes the inner core of Internet Explorer to web developers and allows you to do a slew of neat things!  Installing the tool is very easy and appears as a toolbar, which you can load and has various features:

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
• Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
  View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS Web feed links.
• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
• Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
• Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.

Figure 1 - Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar 

Google Webmaster Central

Google commands so much respect, as the new Wal-Mart of the Internet.  If you are to make any type of money or impact on the internet, a great listing on Google is key.  Google Webmaster Central will give you the inside track on how Google crawls and indexes your site.  From the ability to create site maps that you can upload to the Google servers for crawling, to following up on how the google spiders see your web site, this site will give you an edge against other competing sites!

Figure 2 - Google Webmaster Central

Music Services

I was just surfing the internet for great music on demand services and found some great ones.  BlogMusik is one of the best sites.  I love my iPod and it was neat to see this rip off interface lol!  Just type in the name, artist, or anything.  Once you hit search, the music selections will pop up to the right of the player.  You can select the track that you would like to hear, and it starts playing immediatly.  I was typing various songs and artists, and it seemed to find just about anything!  Happy music streaming!

The other 9/11

Whenever we remember September 11th, 2001 we should first recall September 11th, 1973.  On September 11th, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a bloody U.S.-backed coup that killed Chile's democratically-elected Marxist president Salvador Allende.

This is how most of the developing countries view the American "Democracy".  Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had been conspiring to remove Allende from office, even bribing the Chilean Congress to ignore the country's constitution and deny him the presidency.  Chile refused.

The democracy of Unites States of America responded by making the World Bank cease its loans to the country, bribing store owners with money to close, and burning sugar to spark rumors of food shortages.

The military junta was then funded by the United States.  Under Agusto Pinochet, suspected Leftists were pulled from their homes and taken to torture centers across the country. These people were electrocuted on metal beds, women were raped while family members were forced to look on. 

Bodies were dumped in ocean, stomachs were sliced open so they would not bob to the surface.  The Americans not only knew this was going on, but supported and funded it.

Although on September 11th, 2001 we remember the tragic death of 2,740 Americans, some of them heroes who died, do not forget the 3,197 people who disappeared during Pinochet's police state - some doubtlessly heroes as well.