The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

It doesn't have to be one piece to be monolithic

I'm still chugging away on “Project: Sippy-Cup” where, for the past few weeks, I've been hurrying up and waiting as we run through IOT with a few other companies.

The problem I've had with running tests here at the Ft. Lauderdale Office of The Corporation has been just the sheer number of moving parts required to test anything. “Project: Sippy-Cup” talks to component T, which talks to two other components, E and SM. SM talks to a few more components, and so on, and so on. It's difficult to stub these out because then time is wasted debugging the “fake” components and before you know it, you've written pretty much a duplicate component that is just as buggy as the component you are trying to fake, but with different bugs. So I try to use actual components whenever possible.

Only today I found out that the instance of component SM, for whatever reason, is refusing to talk to component T, which I'm using to test “Project: Sippy-Cup.” I've always attempted to use existing SM instances so I don't have to fire one up (when I first started, we didn't have our own SM component; it seems that in the few years I've been here, one has been written—fancy that!) and I've been afraid that something like this would crop up. So now I have to configure the SM component so that the T component is happy so that I can test “Project: Sippy-Cup.”

My complaints about this reached fellow cow-orker B, who wrote the following in email:

There's a word for software that requires every last piece of every last server to be running in order to test any part of it:

Monolithic.

B has a point. It doesn't have to be one piece to be monolithic.

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.