Multiple Programmers one Application

[cpgood]

My company is considering the practicality of adding another programmer to help maintain our Alpha Five application. It is an extensive application that has been developed over many years. It has about 15 users on a well maintained, very up to date network. The data resides on a dedicated server running the latest MS server OS. All development work is done on a separate server from the data server. This server is also used for testing prior to posting updates to the production server.

In this environment what is the practicality of two programmers working on the same application at the same time? Is there a risk of clobbering each other's work? Is there anyone out there that has practical experience doing the same thing in a sizable production environment?

Thank you for your input,
CP

[MRichard]

Re: Multiple Programmers one Application

My company is considering the practicality of adding another programmer to help maintain our Alpha Five application. It is an extensive application that has been developed over many years. It has about 15 users on a well maintained, very up to date network. The data resides on a dedicated server running the latest MS server OS. All development work is done on a separate server from the data server. This server is also used for testing prior to posting updates to the production server.

In this environment what is the practicality of two programmers working on the same application at the same time? Is there a risk of clobbering each other's work? Is there anyone out there that has practical experience doing the same thing in a sizable production environment?

Thank you for your input,
CP

Yes, I have.

It can be done, but it requires good planning. Both programmers should know what the other is working on. That can be done in working meetings with information exchange, or it can be done by dividing sectors in the application amongst the developers.

Unfortunately, Alpha does not provide specific team working features or controls. You can not log in, or log out of components as a developer, blocking it for any other developer.

It also does not provide for separate testing and production environments. You could however create those depending on the level of professionalism you need to get involved.

Alpha is not quite a development environment as the .NET platform, it is perfectly suitable as a RAD environment.
That, however, brings its own specific requirements in terms of how you work together or how your release strategy is designed.

The advantage is, that you can react very swiftly on changes in the organization to adjust your application.

Kind regards,

[Finian Lennon]

Re: Multiple Programmers one Application

This question has been asked before but, for the life of me, I can't think of a good search phrase that doesn't return many, many pages. It would be worth searching those replies out.

Alpha doesn't work with the standard tools (like SourceSafe etc) used to manage multi-developer projects. In order for it to work properly without using a code management tool - I would postulate the following:

Only the development manager can make changes to the master copy of the application.

Each developer, including the development manager, has their own local copy of the application and can work independently on projects.

Certain development rules are enforced.e.g. no code, beyond a script or a function call resides on any form/or other structure.

Break your code out into code libraries based on functionality (in our case libraries for the schedule, e-insurance etc). We use 7 separate libraries, some very large, some small. It does affect the loading time of the application somewhat, but not the performance.

Use xdialogs anywhere a form or dialog box is needed. Do everything else with scripts and functions so that you editing existing forms or layouts is kept to a minimum once finalized.

Overwriting a data dictionary should never be done if it can be avoided. Use either Alpha's "Copy To" or my utility (which was developed with exactly this scenario in mind) to "Copy Objects" between or within databases. It is available in the code archive.

In this scenario, when a programmer has finished a piece of work, it can be emailed or placed in a shared folder for the manager to first incorporate into the master copy, then shared widely for testing purposes. Only when a "final" version is decided upon is that version incorporated into the master.

These practices have served us well for many years.