The First Contact with FO.NET

I had a training recently on XSLT and XSL-FO. We were using java Apache FOP there. I was quite interested in the technology and was keen to give FO.NET a try.

Yesterday, I got to it finally. I found two drawbacks so far. Attribute width on inline element had no effect and I only found a workaround by using table. Then I discovered that block-container is not supported by FO.NET. But since you can have nested blocks, it is not a big issue.

I only worked with relatively simple document, so I guess there may be much more issues when using FO.NET. Still I was pleased with the output. I think FO.NET (and XSL-FO in general) might be a good option for creating PDF documents, especially when the source data are in XML.

Pair programming begins

I suggested a colleague to try pair programming and he agreed. After one week, we reviewed our first impressions.

First of all, I was interested in quality of the code we produce. However, it is difficult to say, what the quality is. We chose maintainability term instead. Zdenek (my pair) consider it significantly better in pair, I think it is somewhat better.

As for velocity of development, Zdenek finds it really faster, I find it somewhat faster. However, these are only our first impressions. I think we can explain much of velocity gain by ongoing focus. I mean, if you start losing concentration, your pair takes over so there are much less slow downs comparing to working alone.

I feel a little bit less of personal comfort, while Zdenek did not observe that.

I was also interested in the level of learning. Zdenek is extremely satisfied, because he is new to project and pairing helps him very much to get to it. I feel like learning less, but that is mostly becuase of different style of work now. Especially, I am the driver most of time, although it got better in last days.

We both expect the higher probability of success of the project.

There are some practical issues regarding pair programming. We have no specific keyboard sharing rules yet. Mostly, the one who feels bigger focus is a driver. We already changed a workplace a bit (moved a piece of furniture) to make us feel more comfortable at a single table.

Basically, our first impressions are mostly positive and we want to go on with pair programming. We extremely appreciate ongoing focus and ongoing code-reviewing.