[This originally appeared in my personal blog on 6/29/2005. Reposted by request.]

TDD has become as automatic for me as breathing. It’s a beautiful thing when you get to start a new project from scratch and can write every line of code test-first. These days, however, I’m working on a legacy app with very little in the way of unit tests, and it feels as if I’m working at 5,000 meters above sea level and struggling for every breath of rarefied atmosphere.
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We’ve been working on the new site for a while. Its got a new design, and best of all, a new engine that runs it. We’ve chosen Drupal as the engine behind our site for a variety of reasons. Before we get too far into it, yes we’re still Tapestry developers. Yes we could’ve done this in Tapestry. But, the simple fact of the matter is that developing a content management system is a lot of work. Drupal is really comprehensive and though we’re not PHP developers, it didn’t take much effort to figure out how to use and deploy the system. There are still a few rough edges to work out but in all we’re talking a few hours (under 8 hours) of work getting blogging, page posting and a variety of other nifty features running. And most of that time was spent fiddling with the template and reading the Drupal documentation.

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If you haven’t heard any of the free (listener-supported) recordings available on http://www.itconversations.com you are truly missing out. There’s a wealth of information in these podcasts. Topics run the gamut from origin stories to the latest innovations.

For just one tiny example, the interview with Alistair Cockburn is especially fascinating. His expertise in software processes started early in his career when IBM assigned him to make up and document the recommended process for writing object-oriented code in Smalltalk and C++. To accomplish this, he flew around the world, interviewing software engineering teams. You may be surprised to hear about the correlations he found (didn’t find) between the processes they used and the corresponding success rates.

Cockburn also explains the origin of the term “software engineering” (as well as just “engineering”) and how they have been routinely misapplied to what we actually do as software developers. He also talks about the common misconception that creating software is somehow like building a bridge, and why that analogy is wrong on so many levels.

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Tapestry won a Duke’s Choice award for innovation at this years JavaOne. “The fourth Duke’s Choice Awards … spotlight some of the most clever, practical, and inspirational Java technology applications on the planet.” Check out Howard’s blog (photos yet to come): http://howardlewisship.com/blog/2006/05/tapestry-dukes-choice.html

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