Dodgy Developers

The term Dodgy Developer has been thrown around quite a lot over the years. I think it describes quite well the relationship between developers and other professionals working on a software project. The developer is in quite a unique situation in that he isn’t forced to explain his work – it only has to perform within specifications.

There have been many attempts over the years to either cut-out the role of a developer completely with some sophisticated DIY tools that anyone is supposed to be able to use – or force compliance with please-explain-yourself over-the-top documentation bundles. And neither has been very successful.

One result of this effort can be seen in the JDE Toolset’s activity logging. I remember when I first started using the Toolset, very late last century, my bemusement over its check-in/out functionality. It has nothing to do with version control and conversely, versions in JDE are run-time options that have nothing to do with revisions.
So instead of well known, practical source management tools that developers know, the Toolset has a pseudo check-in/out functionality with mind-boggling level of table-based activity logging. A check-out of an application with edits and then followed by check-in will generate a log of all these activities – but excluding any information about the actual change that was made!

There is probably a good explanation for this oddity in the Toolset, but rather than loosing sleep over it, lets make some use of it.

The latest addition to the E1 Page Gallery is an OMW Dashboard. Along with bar chart of projects by status, it uses calendar heatmap control to express new projects, check-ins and status change activities over the last 6 months and check-ins and status changes by user over the last 5 weeks. By clicking on a day in the calendar, a listing of that day’s activity is displayed.

The idea behind the dashboard is to give a quick overview of development status for house-keeping and an idea about what those dodgy developers have been up-to – which surely must be the reason for all this logging.

The dashboard also demonstrates some bootstrap features, such as re-arrangeable cards.

Try it out by downloading latest build and following the install notes.