htroche's blog

I believe that a fundamental skill of a software engineer is to be able to estimate how many lines of code (LOC) a particular piece of software will have. Once you know how many LOC the code will have, you can estimate effort, create a schedule and alocate resources.

Over the last year I have been working on a methodology to estimate LOC of a system based on design patterns. I explain that methodology in my latest developer.* article "Software Estimation using Pattern Analogies." Check the article out at http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/troche_patternanalogies.htm... and let me know what you think.

I got an interesting question Friday from a reader of one my articles. He asked if a Mediator (from the GOF patterns) is always the Controller in an MVC (Model, View, Controller) paradigm.

The answer is not always. A mediator could just mediate the interaction between the two view components. For example, a select box and a series of checkboxes could have one common mediator. This mediator enables or disables checkboxes according to the selection of the select box. In this case the mediator is completely part of the view. This mediator does not handle the interaction between the model and the view at all. It also does not deal with the application flow. The same logic could apply to Visitors.

I will be blogging on the makings of a software shop. There is a high probability I will rant quite a bit about software architecture and its implications (one of my pet topics these days). You have been warned :)

A little about me, I am software engineer (you probably guessed that by know). I wrote one article for developer.*. You can find it here: http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/troche_taskpattern.html

At the moment I am working on two big J2EE projects and my book. More details to follow in future entries. This will be fun.