Test Driven Development and a Code Kata

(Please click on the images to get a more readable version).

This week I thought of trying out a CodeKata problem and choose Kata 4 . The kata requires you to read a data file, parse it , extract some values and print the difference between them. A simple exercise one would say.

To explain the problem in brief. A data file containing the results of the football league is provided. The requirement is to extract the name of the team with the lowest goal difference in For and Against goal values. I decided to make this problem a bit more exciting by not just coding along a 'happy path' but also looking out for scenarios where there might be no valid data rows or there might be two teams matching the lowest goal difference criteria.

Using a test driven approach, I hacked out a set of basic JUnit tests to parse a valid data row and extract the For and Against goal values. My data row looked somewhat like this.

and the tests to extract the values from this data row looked like this:

Now that I was getting the For and Against Goal values, all I needed was to calculate their difference and store the team name (& goal difference) in a 'results list'. The tests for doing this were accomplished as below:

updateLowestGoalDifferenceTeam(). This function performs the core business processing in terms of updating the list holding the lowest goal difference team names. This function is given as below.

Is 'Cuil' really COOL?

Late last month Cuil (pronounced 'Cool') became the latest entrant to the search domain. Launched by an ex-Googler, Cuil is old Irish word for 'Knowledge'. Its claim of claim of being the 'world's biggest search engine' and its approach in indexing information based on relavance and content has generated a lot of interest and hype.Barely a week old (It was launched on July 28, 2008), it is seen by some as a threat to Google's monopoly over the search market. WOW!!

In a note on its website, Cuil says that it 'searches more pages on the Web than anyone else---three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.' and 'Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.'

Hmm..interesting claims. I decided to test them out. I Googled the word 'Cuil' on Google and 'Cuiled' the same on Cuil. The findings were even more interesting

Cuil gave me 121,578 results. In the first ten results, only the first 2 referred to itself. Google on the other hand (kudos to them for fair play), gave me 2,200,000 (is this figure an approximation?) results. Out of the first 10, 8 results were related to 'Cuil'. Impressive!!

I guess it will take some time before the claims of 'ranking pages based on its relevance can be met' and on a personal note, the black background will have to go.

Midori Microsoft' new OS

Microsoft has a new game and its called 'Midori '. The new game looks just like an operating system, feels like an operating and IS an operating system. The only difference is that it will work unlike its much loved big brother -Windows in the sense that it is a 'network-centric' os. With Midori, MS is hopeful of opening the doors of cloud computing.To contain panic and dropping sales, Microsoft has been quick to point out that existing Windows applications will be able to survive on this 'network-centric' platform.

Applications on Midori will live as services and will thrive on an Asynchronous Promise architecture.But the most interesting thing for us small time developers will be that we will no longer have to rely on a dual core powered desktop to get things done. I could use a super computer in Carnegie Mellon without being oblivious to the fact. Now we are talking!!

Web 2.0 - What was that again?

With social networking becoming a widely acceptable and usable form of expression, the Web2.0 bandwagon has been able to piggyback into our lives without us really realizing it.

I came across this 50 second video wherein Tim O'Reilly when asked a definition of Web2.0 responded with two nuggets. The network is the platform and users add value.

I guess this is as clear and succinct that one could get when talking about Web2.0.Many organisations are starting to base their business models on Web2.0 and established software powerhouses are rolling out 'Web2.0' based product suites.

I have read and heard many individuals question if Web2.0 has had any 'big' success stories. I guess the very fact that Web2.0 has become a transparent fabric of our virtual world is a big win in itself. Looking for 'big' wins in the form of 'Web2.0' products or applications may not happen with a big bang but the affect of Web2.0 will permeate across the software industry and business models in vogue.

The Web has changed. It is now linking people not content and Web2.0 is the glue. Here is a cool 5 minute video that shows you how..