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Software Engineering Notes |
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Software Engineering Notes |
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You’re building a SOAP interface that just isn’t working out. You’ve even read the documentation and the darn thing still isn’t behaving correctly. Where can you go for help?
You’re starting a new project and considering using Extreme Programming. Where can you turn for XP experience and advice?
You’re shopping for some new configuration management software for your development team. Where can you go to ask current users how they feel about the software you’re thinking of buying?
You can find answers to these questions and other interesting discussions on Internet forums. Web forums have greatly augmented and in some cases, replaced the Usenet newsgroups on the Internet of old. In fact, this column began as a digest of the comp.software-eng Usenet newsgroup. Over the years, the content of the general software engineering newsgroup declined as individual web sites with discussion forums were created. Accessed via the standard web browser, the web-based newsgroups eliminate the need to use a special nntp client and can offer more focused discussions on a specific topic area.
There are thousands of online forums covering just about any topic you can think of, from medical disorders to home improvement, to pet care. We will concentrate on the software engineering disciplines. By posting a question to an online forum, you can get advice from some of the world’s leading experts in the field. However, you can also get advice from helpful novices and pranksters. If the answer to your compilation problem involves burying chicken bones in the backyard at midnight, you may want to get another opinion. For this reason, some discussion groups such as those at the Internet Society are by invitation only. These private discussion groups will not be covered here.
In addition to the threaded discussions, most online forums offer file downloads, white papers, news, or helpful examples and tutorials. This is a significant improvement over the old Usenet which only offered discussions. The modern online forum can also post files of interest in the files section or point you to a downloadable tutorial to help answer your question. Many of the forum sites also offer integrated search engines to help you find the exact information you’re looking for.
The Usenet newsgroups are served up by a number of news servers. The server administrator selects the groups to carry and the number of old postings to maintain on the server. Once a posting is bumped off the server, it’s gone from Usenet. The Google Groups website captures and archives Usenet postings that would otherwise be lost.
Google has fully integrated the past 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups, which offers access to more than 700 million messages dating back to 1981. This is by far the most complete collection of Usenet articles ever assembled and a fascinating first-hand historical account on just about any topic carried by Usenet.
Long time net surfers will recall this service being offered by DejaNews, which went the way of many dot-coms back in mid-2000. Fortunately, the folks at Google stepped in and picked up where DejaNews left off. In fact, the old DejaNews URL will still get you to Google Groups. Google Groups is also accessible by clicking on the "Groups" button on the Google homepage at http://www.google.com. So in addition to using the Google search engine to research your question, you are just a click away from searching the content of the Usenet newsgroups.
The Sun Java forum is the premier site for answers to your Java questions. It is the first site I turn to when my Java isn’t working the way I think it should. Topics in the Java Technologies Forum include everything from Java coding issues to all of the Java API’s available on the Sun Java site. There are also discussions on Java security, the use of Java in commerce, and Java deployment issues. So in addition to the tough technical questions, you can find help on Java usage in the real world.
The forum attracts a lot of use. It’s not uncommon to see over 100 postings in a topic area per day. It can be a bit difficult to find the information you are looking for even with the site search engine. You must register in order to be able to post a question or response. Registration is free.
One of the nice features of the Sun Java site is the availability of the FAQ’s, tutorials, Java documentation, and source code downloads at the site. I find it very easy to search the documentation, FAQ’s and turn to the forums if I still can’t find the answer I’m looking for.
The Tek-Tips site is a great resource for Microsoft developers. Although the site features a lot of Microsoft-specific information, there are also topic areas covering Macromedia, Computer Associates products, Oracle, and other similar topics. Although the volume of traffic is not as heavy as the Java site, it still seems that most questions are answered in a reasonable amount of time.
The Tek-Tips site is member supported. You can get a user id and password for free, but you are asked to provide a contribution to keeping the site on line. Donations are accepted by mail or by credit card using PayPal.
The Experts Exchange is a unique collaborative discussion web site. The homepage for the Experts Exchange says that the website was designed to provide "CXOs, Senior IT managers, and IT developers with IT solutions to their toughest technology problems". However, judging from the traffic and nature of the content, it appears that the site attracts more developers than senior IT managers.
The Experts Exchange uses a "Collaboration Incentive System" to limit questions and entice experts to answer questions. Membership is free and, upon signup, you are given question points you spend by assigning a point value to a posted question. Experts earn expert points by answering the posted questions. The person submitting the question reviews the responses from the experts and assigns a grade to the accepted answer. The expert is awarded more points for a superior reply. If the user does not obtain a satisfactory answer, no points are deducted from his question account. This system allows users to attract more experts by assigning a higher point value to a question, but reduces the number of questions they can ask if they use all their question points.
Question points are added to your account by maintaining your membership and completing surveys. Expert points allow you to gain fame and fortune by becoming a recognized expert in your topic area and are listed in the Experts Hall of Fame. Experts also earn access to special experts-only areas of the site and the right to participate in contests and rewards programs. Judging from the quality of the responses and the point totals in earned by Expert Hall of Fame members, I’d say the system works quite well.
The content at the Experts Exchange is well very well organized. The experts are polite, helpful and very tolerant of beginners’ questions. I could find none of the carping and flame wars typical of many Usenet forums. Most questions seem to be answered quickly -- a big plus if you are stuck and approaching a delivery date.
The Quality Assurance Forum covers various topics of interest to the QA professional. The site features extensive software testing discussions including discussion groups talking about test tools. Registration is free and required to view any of the topic groups in the QA Forum.
This is an outstanding resource for software testers as well as quality assurance engineers. There are in depth discussions on software unit testing, testing methodologies, metrics collection and software process improvement. This would be a good site to visit when tasked with establishing a software quality assurance or software process improvement program for any new software development.
The QAForums site contains a number of very active discussion groups. Many of the topics areas have thousands of posts and multiple threads. The posts are recent and the discussions appear lively without rancor. The screen shot only lists a few of the resources available. There are a lot more groups listed further down the page that are not visible in the illustration.
Okay, so the GameDev.Net forum is primarily a game developer’s site. However, there is a lot of serious software engineering that goes into the design and construction of today’s video games. The Department of Defense is studying and using some game construction techniques in designing user interfaces for modern combat systems.
The GameDev.Net forum contains many active discussions on topics such as artificial intelligence, 2D and 3D graphics, mathematical programming, and applied physics. In addition, the discussion groups at the GameDev.Net site have answers to questions on graphics API’s such as DirectX and OpenGL.
The Forum Find site is a search engine for finding forums based on the EzBoard bulletin board software. Ezboard a paid subscription service that you can use to start your own forum. Registration is required but there is no charge to read any of the thousands of forums hosted by the Ezboard system. Ezboard claims to host hundreds of thousands of on line communities with over 20 million posts per month.
The Forum Find site provides access to many discussion groups covering topics not found elsewhere. It looks like a lot of small software companies offering tailored products to specific markets use the EzBoard system to host their user group discussions. Naturally, participation in some of these forums is quite light.
If you can’t find a forum that suits your needs, go to http://www.ezboard.com and start your own discussion group.
The Dr. Dobbs on line forum is much more general in nature than the other forums discussed above. Hosted at the web site of Dr. Dobbs’s Journal, one of the longest-running computer periodicals, the greater degree of generality of the Dr. Dobbs forums allow for a much wider scope. Typical Dr. Dobbs topics include database, algorithms, patterns, graphics, and similar issues.
The Dr. Dobbs forums are not well attended, but the discussions parallel the topics covered in the magazine. Also available at the Dr. Dobbs site is the source code for the examples discussed in the journal.
For help with open source software, the best place to look is in the projects at Source Forge.net. The SourceForge site does not have a single page that lists all the open source forums available. The best way to find help is by clicking on the individual project and following the forums link from the project homepage. The quality and content for these discussion groups vary widely by project. The most popular open source projects are very active.
In addition to online forums, there are a number of discussion email lists that offer subscribers the opportunity to pose questions to list members. Email lists are ideal for the dedicated individual who has the time (and space -- mailbox storage space) to participate. In my view, private email lists are best used by a team working on a single project, such as an open source development group. When you start adding large numbers to email lists, the volume of postings tend to overload your mailbox. For example, you can subscribe to the Apache web server email list by following the instructions at http://jakarta.apache.org/site/mail.html. Even with all the hints and tips on how to keep the mailing list manageable, I found I had to unsubscribe to avoid losing my normal email.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to offer a thank you to all the folks who have helped answer my questions over the years. Most of my experiences in the newsgroups and on line forums have been positive and I have always appreciated the help other members of the software engineering community have offered. It’s nice to see hard-working people taking the time to help others.