Ted Johnson on Programming & Architecture

I like most people, I suspect, especially software architects and programmers, dream of white boards on every wall floor to ceiling. I have wanted this for some time for my office so I could doodle hours away in my office getting dizzy on the dry erase fumes. In the past I had looked for a quality product and failed, until now. Visiting my undergraduate college ( St. Olaf ) the computer science for it's brand new shared building has for entire rooms painted a white board surface onto the walls. STUNNING! Want to convey an idea, design a group project, doodle, noodle, or whatever, just walk up to a wall. I hope it holds up and I hope to get around to painting my office soon. I think they are using one of the more expensive products, IdeaBoard , but I am emailing the school to double check. Finally a canvas large enough to hold all of the crazy UML diagrams and brainstorms.

Martin Fowler and Markus Völter on DSLs - JAOO Conference Somewhat interesting discussion by some DSL leaders. There is a small bias around a specific vendor's software, but interesting to listen too. What they talked about, my notes: DSLs: - Internal - External - IDE/Language Workbench - MDA is vaporware Eclipse GMF/EMF/Textual Languages CASE Tools, COBOL, Fantasy that programmers are not needed. Levels of DSL/DSM tooling - Documentation/Testing/Execution Custom Syntax (External DSL) vs Internal Syntax (Internal DSL , Lisp/Ruby) Method Chaining, Cool! 1 notation or many notations (Excel, Boxes and Lines, etc) Power in how to combine the notations. Divergence, Experimentation, and then Convergence. UML is not a factor, so they think. Here is the book in progress that Martin Fowler references, it was in draft form at time of my writing this post. Fowler's DSL book draft

I have followed the DSM (Domain specific modeling) happenings online for sometime now and at best the community is scattered and most discussions/happenings limited to conferences. However, the DSMForum.org pulls this information together for easy consumption. Don't be fooled by the dated last century website design, all nerdy modeling website look that way. The DSM Publications page provides the best set of links for DSMs on the web, including podcast, conferences, and papers. Dispite one of the co-founders working for MetaCase a tool I am not currently focusing I found their coverage not too biased. The tools page they provide is nearly accurate, playing down eclipse and rational contributions a little bit, but the list represents the major players to my knowledge. RSM/RSA now has a UML Profile Tooling capability and eclipse GMF has beta WYSISYG editor the list could use rework, but a minor complaint. They also have a Linked-in group, although it is not that active.

I am voting earth , this blog post is my digital post for balance. You don't have to eat grass and walk to work to be green. Tonight I will go for a walk at 8:30 once the lights are turned off and then play cards, heck I won't have to code/program. I enjoy life, and I do it smart, they are not XOR or mutually exclusive. The phrase reduce, reuse, recycle is in order for a reason. 1. Reduce your consumption: If a person were to buy an H2 Hummer maintain it and drive it for a life time it would be better for the environment than a person who buys a new hybrid every time it comes out. The most expensive part of a car environmentally is typically its construction, assuming it is maintained (ya know keeps a muffler). I buy quality items that will last a long time so I am buying fewer things. I also make an effort to buy fewer things in general, less to clutter my house and the landfills. Like tonight at 8:30 I am turning the lights/heater out. Don't accept the free print

Have questions about UML/Modeling, then go on over to StackOverflow . I monitor the questions there and provide answers for two reasons: 1. UML outreach for people starting out, not the easiest thing. 2. Some questions require research, which I enjoy, and I find that those questions go unanswered. You can follow the questions I answer with RSS http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/user/30231 Additionally, you can follow items by tag, like UML: http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/uml Give Stackoverflow a try, you can get answers very quickly and with often very good quality for free, other than the keystrokes and mental effort in describing the question.