Getting Your Boss To Buy Lava Lamps

jarich writes "Mike Clark's blog provides directions and code on how to wire up lava lamps to your build system. When a compile or test fails, the red lava lamp gets switched on... The delay in the lamp heating up gives you a few minutes to fix things before it becomes obvious to co-workers that you broke the build. His example uses CruiseControl but you could easily modify it. Very cool stuff and inexpensive to setup."

That...

[rco3]

...might be the silliest thing I've ever heard of. I like it.

cool, but...

[Svet-Am]

granted, this is a neat idea, but how exactly does it make you more productive?

Seem Frivolous?

[Crzysdrs]

Sure, it's a good idea to be notified when the build is broken. But does it really require a lavalamp? I know we here at Slashdot love our little toys, but it seems like anyone who knows how to wire up an LED gets a news story.

X10 Hardware?!

[romper]

Since they require X10 hardware/software, forget it. I won't be supporting those damn pop-under ads.

nice, but

[Dwindlehop]

In my office we use a group-wide email.

Re:X10 Hardware?!

[TheRealMindChild]

Pop under ads? I bought a camera from them before I even did (or so I observed) the pop under ads. I paid for 3 day shipping. Day 5 came, no camera. I called them, and the machine pointed me to email whatever address for tracking orders. So I did that. 14 months later (this is no joke), I got an email with my tracking number. Now the camera came the day after I sent the inquiry, so even if it was a timely response, it wouldnt have mattered... but 14 MONTHS?!?!?! What... the ... hell

Re:cool, but...

[Nos.]

No kidding.
Lets say somehow you convince your boss to buy you one. How long are you going to spend hooking it up. Then how long are you going to spend hooking it up to other things (it must be raining out, the green lamp is on and the red is off). Then how long are you going to spend testing the other apps you've hooked it up to. (New story on slashdot, both lamps are on!).

Quick Fixes

[kjfitz]

I'm not sure I would want to put in place something that would encourage designers to make quick fixes. Once the build breaks the "lava lamp penalty" would encourage a designer to keep the lamp from bubbling rather than spend the time to fix the break in the best and safest manner (i.e. one that may take an hour longer.)

Does your build environment allow you to debug, build, and test a loadbuild break in the time it takes a lava lamp to heat up?

Why doesn't ...

[JooBYE]

SlashDot simply cache the linked sites in their stories. Only the first page off the link. Maybe in a split version like google's cached sites showing the URL and all. That way, if anyone is interested in the rest of the site, they can dig from there.

Yes, off topic. But needs to be addressed. It gets frustrating when links go dead in less than an hour after the story is posted.

Re:cool, but...

[Derkec]

It's good to know when you're build starts to fail. I don't think we really need lava lamps to do it.

Blurb doesn't do justice

[bokmann]

That headline blurb doesn't do this book justice. I was one of the first kids on my block with a copy of this book, and I highly recommend it.

This book is not about lava lamps (although it does talk about them). This book is about using automation to keep your software project on-track... never letting things get broken... using a computer in your office as a 'virtual employee', continually building and running unit tests and letting you know if someone breaks the build.

Yes, there is a reference about automatically turning on a red lava lamp if your unit tests fail... but far more important than that, the build on my project (which uses the ideas from this book) is never broken long enough for a lava lamp to heat up.

If you are interested in Agile process (especially the XP concept of 'continuous integration'), you need this book.

Re:better idea

[DLWormwood]

I meant that you would surely double-check/ trace through the code before you compiled.

You might be meaning "integrated" where you are saying "compiled." Even if the final integration step involves compiling via a master project, you'd still need a test bed or "scaffolding" to compile your code against before submission. Otherwise, you are flying blind and may as well be programming towards the old batch cards systems of yesteryear. (Then again, the project I'm working on now involves separate shared libraries or code modules, rather than something so monolithic.)

Very cool stuff?

[OrangeTide]

Must be a slow news day for this to be cool.

In a related note. Today is Macaulay Culkin's Birthday [wikipedia.org].