(Uncle) Bob Martin made a keynote address at Agile 2008 where he spoke about many of the concepts in his book Clean Code. In that talk, he proposed amending the Agile Manifesto to add the value of “Craftsmanship over Crap.” He later realized that this wouldn’t work because no one actually values crap. He later changed his proposal in a blog post where he suggested “Craftsmanship over Execution”. In that post he offered up a challenge to find a better word than Execution.
I hereby offer my entry as Craftsmanship over Compromise. I like it because we all value compromise, just like we value processes and tools, comprehensive documentation, contract negotiation, and following a plan. Compromise is a necessary part of the software business. However, we should value the ethic of creating an effective, lasting solution over shortcuts that are instantly gratifying, but are more costly in the long-run.
As I’ve made my transition from the Microsoft desktop platform (x86, Windows, .NET, C#, etc.) to the world of handheld devices (ARM, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, .NET CF, etc.), there have been a number of fairly basic things that I’ve had to learn the hard way. They are so basic to being productive in the compact world that there ought to be a brief guide to bring an experienced desktop developer up to speed in short order. I didn’t come across that; so, I intend to provide that here for the next guy (or gal) who comes this way.
The sorts of things I plan (so far) to cover include topic like… What is CE and how does it relate to Windows Mobile? What is the memory model on CE? What are the memory limitations and strategies for working within and around them? What do you have to do to run your .NET code on the handheld device? How do you do unit testing with CF code? I’m also going to document a few potholes that initially slowed me down.