September 2013 "shorts"

Stuff thats too long to tweet, too short to blog.

F1 2011 (xbox)

This month i have mostly been playing the 2011 Formula 1 game. This version is a few years old, but apart from a few changes to driver names its pretty much current. Available online for less than a tenner.

F1 2011 is a unique racing game, it aims for authenticity with the dynamics of an actual F1 car. With all the driver aids disabled the cars are twichy, powerful and precise. Unlike most driving games you cannot plough into a corner and slide the car with a jab of the handbrake. For example, the front wheels will lock under heavy braking and without traction control the car will spin the moment you apply to much power. Sometimes you need to wring the cars neck, other times you need to be gentle and wait for the car to be ready.

I enjoy the difficulty, turning off all the driver aids makes coming 3rd feel like an achievement. The instant replay system which allows you to rewind if you crash stops the game from becoming to frustrating. Hard, but not impossible.

SuperDry Jacket

Keeping with a motorsport theme, i brought myself a superdry jacket about a year ago, and all in, i am a big fan! The jacket is comfy and warm with a brightly colored green intenoir. The fleece fabric works well with my sensitivity and the labels and not intrusive!

The multitude of zips is somewhat confusing, but thats about the only downside.

House buying.

Damn, solicitors don’t provide much feedback. Still waiting, but aiming for a move at the end of September!

Work

I’m contemplating going part time at the BBC to give myself some time and space to scratch the accsessbility and freelance itch. Will see what the future holds… if your interested in talking to me about this… get in touch!

Published: 7 September 2013 Permalink

Documentation Driven Development in BBC Frameworks.

Every development team have their own process, there is a mix of formal processes (such as BDD) and more adhoc processes which have grown organically.

The process followed often depends on what the team is building and how the build (or product) is managed. These factors and many other effect which development workflows will work and which will not.

In the BBC Frameworks GELs team we follow a process we call Document Driven Development. I joined the team a few months ago, here are my thoughts on DDD so far.

Why DDD?

DDD as a process is pretty simple. You write the documentation first.

To many developers, this is a little crazy, for most projects the end user documentation deals with the user interface and explaining the user interface is not something the developers are required to do.

For these situations, the UI is often abstracted into user stories and acceptance criteria. Behaviour is defined to varying degrees, sometimes very clearly (cucumber and BDD) and sometimes not at all (hand wavy product owners!). For a product with a UI this makes sense.

However, in the GEL’s we mostly build APIs and shared tools. Our end users are other developers, we aim to make their lives easier.

By writing the docs first, we start the process with our end users (other developers) in mind.

At first, straw man proposals are put forward and discussed. Out of the discussion comes an agreed API and a collection of terms. Next we create the end user documentation, detailing the API, all the possible parameter values and corner cases (including errors).

Once the documentation is agreed within the team, we push it out to other teams for comment. We also use the documentation to think about what acceptance and unit tests are required.

From here on, we follow a more typical TDD approach. We work iteratively, writing tests first then implementations.

Things do change during development, so small API changes can be quickly picked up and iterated on as they happen, starting with updating the documentation.

In practice

I have personally found the approach to be very useful, writing the docs upfront keeps our end users needs in mind, but we have the flexibility to evolve our solution as we develop.

Having a document to refer to can help explain more of the context. By forcing the full length prose explanation complex and confusing options quickly become apparent. If i cannot explain what i am proposing to build in a few sentences, then thats a strong hint that something is wrong.

All in this approach is not that different to BDD, just for our end users, user stories don’t really provide the right format for feature description and ideation.

Using DDD we end up higher quality, coherent and consistent, documentation. The documentation quality reduces our support workload and allows us to focus on delivering value to other developers around the business.

Published: 28 August 2013 Permalink

Autism: Homeless to homeowner in 6 years.

6 Years ago, this week, i stopped being “homeless”.

I moved into supported living and back into education. I completed my A levels , while running my company ,+ Lion, along side my studies.

4 years ago I moved out of supported living. Spent my time studying alongside my work with + Lion.

2 years ago, I took my first job (at the BBC) and moved to London. I wrapped up and sold my company, I risked everything and spent every penny I had on the promise of my dream job.

Yesterday morning, I agreed to purchase my first home*. Homeless, to home owner in 6 years.

There are too many people to thank. Starting with Alun Rowe who belived in me years ago and supported me through the rough patch. Paul Boag for giving me confidence, Ian Pouncey and Henny swan for giving me esteem. Finally all the friends who have, over the years, helped me to explore the world on my own terms.

6 Years ago, i said to myself. “Do i have autism?”. Thinking about it, i was terrified. But as an identity and as a framework for understanding myself it has allowed me to embrace my strengths and cover my weaknesses. Way back then, i wrote about my goals for 2007.

I want this year to be happier, I want this year to be the year when i start to feel comfortable as jamie, Autism and all. This year i will look who i am, and i will learn the skills to be alone for my life. I hope to be able to get the help to understand those things i do not understand. and i hope to be able to make more progress in my chosen field

It took longer than a year, it will take a lifetime to truely understand myself. I’m so excited.

• My offer was accepted, subject to survey and what not.

Published: 13 July 2013 | Categories: Opinion , Autism & Me Permalink