Our public education system is broken, but fixing it is possible. That’s the message of Waiting for Superman, a new documentary that I went to see last Wednesday night in Chicago.

I think a lot of people will become emotionally moved by watching this movie. The film's creators hope that leads more people to get involved in public education issues.

To me, “Waiting for Superman” was 90 minutes of “preaching to the choir” showing the costs of poverty, the costs of prison vs education, the impact on the American economy caused by our education system falling behind those in other countries.

Its conclusion was “better teachers” are needed.

Its message was, “there are lots of parents who really want to send their kids to good schools, but there are not enough good public schools, and not enough open slots in good charter schools.”

If you visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection library, you can find links to many web sites with more information on poverty, poorly performing school, the drop-out crisis, etc.

I’ve been reading articles like this for the past 35 years. Why? Because I became personally involved with an inner city boy as a volunteer in a non-school tutor/mentor program and I stayed involved for the past three decades. The longer I became involved, the more I was exposed to articles about poverty, and the more personally committed I became to helping the kids I was working with.

Because I was leading a program, not just serving as a tutor, I had to step back a level, and think of ways to recruit kids and volunteers at the beginning of the school year, and keep them connected to each other throughout the year. Because I was a volunteer with limited time, I had to innovate ways to motivate other volunteers to share part of the leader load.

Because of my workplace experiences in corporate advertising at the Montgomery Ward Corporation, I began to understand how mass communications could be used to support groups of 200 or more volunteers. I began to understand how computers could be used to build attendance sheets and to analyze participation patterns. I also began to see how media coverage of poverty might draw a lot of attention for a short time, but it did not provide the type of consistent support that retail stores need to build a customer base, and that non profits need to build a volunteer and donor support system.

I would not have been at Waiting for Superman if I had not been part of a non-school tutor/mentor program and if I had not been using the internet to connect people involved with tutoring/mentoring in Chicago with similar programs in other cities, and if I were not building a library of information that people could use to become better informed of ways they could become involved to help kids from poverty move through school and into jobs.

After I saw the movie, I visited the Waiting for Superman web site at http://www.waitingforsuperman.com . I encourage you to do the same, and then take a group of friends to see the movie.

The web site is intended to act as an intermediary, drawing people to a GET INVOLVED page, and pointing them to other web sites where they could learn more about the problem and become part of the solution. It divides into two sections:

Take Action: Help a School

In this section the message is “act locally”…meaning support your local school. This is good advise, but it won’t do much to change the performance of inner city schools located in high poverty neighborhoods unless more people from beyond poverty are giving time, talent and dollars every day to help people who do live in poverty neighborhoods.

This is one of the shortfalls of the movie that I saw. Most of the young people portrayed in the film were minority kids living in inner city neighborhoods of big cities like LA, Houston and New York City. The kids featured in the movie attend public schools in poverty areas, and have a parent, or guardian, who would pay for better education if they had the money.

They might also do more to show kids the importance of college, if they had a college degree themselves. But that’s what poverty is all about. It’s people who don’t have high paying jobs, college degrees, etc. How can they be providing the dollars to help teachers? How can they find the time to be mentors? How can they model jobs and college if they have not finished school themselves?

The solutions proposed in this section don’t show how people who don’t live in high poverty might be personally involved in helping youth and families who do. The actions proposed don’t take in consideration the geography of poverty and poor schools and don’t provide a road map for Superman to go from neighborhoods of affluence to neighborhoods of poverty.

This section does include a “be a mentor” link that points to the web site of the National Mentoring Partnership. However, it does not say “be a donor” so more mentoring programs might have the staff and infrastructure to add more volunteers, and provide high quality mentoring to those they already have. This is a missed opportunity in my estimation.


Fix the System –

This is the second section in the Take Action section. There are links in this section that focus on education standards, the Dept. of Education Race to the Top competition and getting involved with a local school board.

There is also a link to a Dept. of Education Innovation Portal, where anyone can submit ideas and connect with others who have submitted ideas. This has potential. I introduced the Tutor/Mentor Connection and posted a request for help in funding our maps and technology. I’ll let you know if I get any responses.

There’s also a section titled “Join a discussion” which points to the Edutopia community forum where people can join in discussion with others on education issues. I also joined this forum and introduced myself. I did not see any section that was focused on helping non-school organizations be available around poorly performing schools, so I emailed Edutopia to suggest they add such a section.

In total, I think Waiting for Superman has a lot of potential for increasing the number of people motivated to "fix the public education system", but the web site is missing some major opportunities.

Understand the issues and opportunities –
I think there are a broader range of web sites where you can learn more about the problems of our education system, and the poverty causing some schools to perform less well than others, and potential solutions. A starting point in your learning would be the Tutor/Mentor Connection library, where we point to more than 1600 resources such as these in our Research and Resources category.

Volunteer involvement, expanding the number of people who personally care.
I think the movie, and the forums, are efforts to engage people who care in discussions and actions that lead to solutions. However, these don’t provide enough entry points to get adults who don’t live in poverty personally connected with youth and families. In a recent study titled "Untapped Potential: Filling the Promise of Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Bigs and Littles they Represent, the authors point out how there were more than 240,000 active BBBS volunteers in 2009, and that many of them have become more concerned about the challenges facing the kids they mentor, because of their involvement as a mentor.

Thus, strategies that encourage more volunteering in well organized volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs would be ways to increase the number of people watching movies like Waiting for Superman, and spending time to “fix the system”.

However, for that to happen a more consistent flow of operating dollars needs to be going to every single program so they can recruit and retain leaders who can effectively mentor the mentors so they stay involve, build this level of empathy, then grow to be leaders who reach into their own business, alumni, faith and personal networks to get even more people involved.

This is what the Tutor/Mentor Connection focuses on. We're not yet listed as one of the resources on the Waiting for Superman web site. We're not yet invited to any planning meetings by CEO Ron Huberman of Chicago Public Schools. We’re not on their radar.

However, that can change. If you know about our work, or read this blog, pass on this message to leaders in your own network, the way Sara Caldwell did on this web site.

We can bring supermen and women to inner city neighborhoods by what we do to encourage people who have the talent and the resources to help this strategy grow in Chicago and other cities.

Thank you to Waiting for Superman for helping draw attention to this issue.

This video shows to of the parents of Cabrini Connections' students, talking about the mentors working with their kids. If the parents support the program, can you become a donor or benefactor who does the same?

Year-End Dinner 2010: Parent Speakers from Cabrini Connections on Vimeo.

See the Donor Page on the Cabrini Connections web site to see ways to contribute.

Visit the Tutor/Mentor Jam web site and see ways you can help us support the growth of tutor/mentor programs in all poverty areas of the Chicago region.

An article on Bloomberg.com reports on an Obama initiative for small business lending that passed the house last month and could go to vote this week in the Senate. President Obama is once again pushing to get more money into the hands of small business owners in hopes of boosting the sluggish economy through job creation. The Obama administration claims that there are approximately 30 million small businesses in the country, meaning that they employee less than 500 employees. The employees in these small businesses account for about 64% of all new jobs that are created.

Once again a horrific act has moved violence to the front page of Chicago's Sun Times newspaper, with the headline "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH".

In the article Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis is quoted saying “So I say, enough is enough. We are coming for you. We will find you, and we will bring you to justice.”

The article also quotes St. Sabina’s pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who said "it’s not enough to pray, not enough to lower flags every time an officer is killed."

How many times must we read the same headlines? How do we move beyond the prayers, marches and flag-lowering, to the research, planning, brainstorming and action steps that are needed?

On Thursday, October 08, 2009, Arne Duncan was quoted as saying, "This is the time to look in our collective mirror and ask whether we like what we see or whether we can do better together."

This is not a new problem. However, it's a problem that our leaders can't stay focused on every day, because there are so many other problems.

That's why I think it's important for another level of leaders to emerge, who are totally focused on building a better community understanding, and response, to the problems and solutions.

I've been issuing this invitation for the past 17 years, since we formed Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, in the weeks following the shooting of Dantrell Davis in Chicago back in October 1992. I keep the front page of this Chicago SunTimes story in my office, as a reminder of my responsibility.

I've developed my own actions steps, and posted them on this blog in the past. Here they are again:

If we want to stop this violence, we have to act now, and keep acting to solve this problem for many years. We have to think spatially, that is, look at the entire city and suburban problem, not just one neighborhood. At the same time, we need to act locally, because none of us has the time, or the resources to help each of the kids in the entire Chicago region who live in neighborhoods where poverty is the root cause of the violence.

Here are some ways to remind yourself. Think of ENOUGH, is ENOUGH

E – educate yourself – most of us do not live in high poverty neighborhoods, so we only understand the root causes of senseless shootings from what we read in newspapers. We also only read negative news in the media, so we’re now really well informed on where these events are taking place most frequently. Finally, while there is a perception that there are plenty of youth programs, we really don’t have a good understanding of the distribution of different types of youth programs, to different age groups, in different zip codes. The only way this will change is if each of us pledges to spend one hour a week reading books, articles and web reports, that illustrate the root causes of these shootings, or of poor performance in schools. Through our learning we can draw ideas that we use in our own actions. We can also begin to contribute information that other people use to support their own decision making.

N – engage your network – find ways to draw others who you know into this shared understanding. Recognize people who volunteer time and talent, or who help kids through the programs they operate. If you are a business leader, or a church leader, engage your corporation or your congregation. You can use your web site, advertising, point of purchase materials, etc. to point to web sites that show all of the agencies in the city who do tutoring/mentoring, such as www.tutormentorconnection.org. If you do this weekly, year after year, your friends, coworkers and customers will become involved in solving this problem with you.

O – offer help, don’t wait to be asked. As you build your understanding of where poverty is most concentrated, and what social services are in those areas, choose a neighborhood, and reach out with offers of time, as a volunteer, talent, help build a web site, do the accounting, or offer Public relations services, and dollars, if the web site of an organization shows they do good work, you don’t need to ask for a proposal of h ow they would spend your donation, you need to send them a donation so they can keep doing that good work

U – build a shared understanding. Form groups of peers to share reading and learning assignments, just as you meet every Sunday to read passages of scripture and build the group’s understanding of the Word of God. Use the many different resources of the T/MC Links library as the starting point for your search for wisdom, and understanding.

G – give until it feels good – people who generously donate time and dollars to causes they believe in feel good about their giving. If we’re going surround kids living in poverty dominated neighborhoods with extra learning and adult mentoring networks, donors will need to give more than random contributions of time, dollars and talent. On the Bolder Giving web site donors are inspired to give to their full potential and those giving 50% or more are given recognition. Can we inspire donors who support youth services to give at this level?

H – form habits of learning, and pass these on to your kids. Imagine how much more successful teachers were if youth came to school every day asking questions about where to find information, or how to understand information they had researched on the Internet the previous day? We can model that habit if we build it into our own activity. Keep a chart, such as the OHATS on the Tutor/mentor connection web site, where you can document actions you take each week to same sure that this time ENOUGH, really means ENOUGH.

If you document actions, you can review what you’ve done at the end of each month, and each year, and begin to see a growing mountain of actions you have taken to solve this problem. Some of these will be actions that got other people involved, so that the good work you do is multiplying because of the good work others are also doing.

Through this process you help build this shared understanding, which will lead to better public policy. Without this habit of learning, and without learning to use the Internet to find good ideas from people in all parts of the world, we won’t be able to problem solve as well as we need to, and we won’t be able to teach this habit to our kids.

If we do this, we’ll not only reduce the root causes of youth on youth violence, we’ll also address one of the growing issues facing America in a global economy. We will begin to create a nation of learners, problem solvers, creative thinkers and innovators, who use learning and information as the basis of creating opportunity and keeping America great.

Read Leadership ideas here and here

Here are other articles I've written on this topic in the past few years.

Just read this article in the New York Times: Graduation Is the Goal, Staying Alive the Prize.

This article talks about the muti-million dollar program launched by Chicago Public Schools to "get ahead of the next killings". According to the article, "the schools conducted an analysis to identify the 250 students most at risk of being shot (by studying profiles of 500 recent victims). Since December, each of those students has had an advocate on call to offer caretaking and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The 60 advocates hired so far function like a high-energy amalgam of parent, tutor, friend and life coach, sometimes tackling simple assignments like homework. But more often they delve into the heart-wrenching details of the students’ lives. More than one has sat bedside in a hospital emergency room after bullets ricocheted through a charge’s body."

This is great if the money is there to keep these advocates connected to these kids for the next few years.

The Times article quotes Ron Huberman, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, who says, “Giving them a meaningful adult relationship, advocating for them and giving them incentive is the key to changing their behavior, since some of the students most at risk of being shot are also most likely to perpetrate violence."

According to the report, "Each advocate is assigned no more than four students and is paid $12 an hour for one-on-one time with the students."

What’s wrong with this picture?

There are 200,000 k-12 youth living in high poverty areas of Chicago, and thousands are at risk because of this long-term combination of highly concentrated poverty, racial segregation, and poor schools.

Spending millions of dollars on 250 of these students without a comprehensive plan to expand the number of other students who have “meaningful adult relationships” that Huberman describes, is short sighted.

What type of skills and experiences is a $12/hour mentor/advocate bringing to this job? What networks do they have to open doors at colleges or in area jobs for the young people they are working with?

At Cabrini Connections and at other volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, students are also connected to adults who are forming “meaningful relationships”. However, these are adults who hold a variety of jobs, ranging from high paid attorneys, to software engineers, artists and film makers. Many are already college graduates. Some hold advanced degrees. They don't live in poverty. They come from many different parts of the country. They can model opportunities and careers and aspirations for these young people, because they already have these jobs and experiences.

What kind of experience does a $12 hour social worker/mentor/advocate have? Are they still connected and committed to these young people when the money runs out to pay them? Are they still connected 37 years after their first contact, as I am with the boy I met in 1973 when he was in 4th grade?

Not every volunteer stays connected to a youth for as long as I have. In fact many don't stay involved for more than a year. And many are not as well supported as they need to be.

Why? The non-school tutor/mentor industry has the same challenges as the public school system. Not enough good leaders. Not enough well-trained and committed volunteers in tutor/mentor roles.

However, as this article shows, mentoring connects adults who might never be involved with issues of poverty, with kids, and then opens their eyes to the challenges those kids face. If we can expand the support for well-organized tutor/mentor programs, we can expand the number of volunteers who get involved, and stay involved. We can expand the number of people who are concerned about the violence in big cities and the poor schools that feed this problem.

Read the articles on this blog and follow the links. Learn how you, your company and your faith group can take lead roles to help make volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs available in more of the neighborhoods with high poverty, high violence and high numbers of poorly performing schools.

Then help mobilize resources for each of these programs to be operating this fall, and to constantly learn from each other, and from their own work, so they are constantly expanding their impact.

If you can help find donors to support the Tutor/Mentor Connection, we can continue to provide our own vision and leadership to this effort and we can continue to provide the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator resource to everyone in Chicago.

In my previous blog I mentioned adding a single method to the cslim library: cslim/include/CSlim/SlimListSerializer.h: void SlimList_Release(char *serializedResults); cslim/src/CSlim/SlimListSerializer.c: void SlimList_Release(char *serializedResults) { if(serializedResults) free(serializedResults); } Now I’m going to explain how I came across this need, what it took to figure it out and then why I picked this solution. Background In FitNesse, Query Table Results are a list of list of list:

• The outer-most list represents “rows”. It collects all objects found. It has zero or more entries.
• The inner-most list represents a single field. It is a key value pair. It is a list of size 2. The first entry is the name of the field (column to FitNesse). The second field is the value. Both are strings.
• The middle list represents a single object. It is a collection of fields. It has zero or more entires.

I understand the need for this representation and it takes a little bit to get it built correctly. So much so, I built a simple tool to do it in java.

C++ is no different. In fact, the authors of cslim though the same thing and they created a C Abstract Data Type to help out (and an add-on method to create the correct final form):

• SlimList
• SlimList_Serializer

They use C because it can be used by both C and C++. I’m using C++ and I wanted to make building query results even easier, so I built a QueryResultAccumulator. The most recent source is in the previous blog and I’ll be putting it on github after I’ve had some more time to work on it.

Here’s the progression to my QueryResultAccumulator class:

• Wrote a Query-Table based fixture and followed the example provided with cslim (thank you for that!)
• Moved the code from functions into methods on a class
• Extracted a class, called SlimListWrapper, which made the fixture code easier to follow.
• Went to get takeout and realized that I had named the class incorrectly and that it was really accumulating query results (thus the name). The SlimList was a mechanism, not an intent.
• Refactored the class into QueryResultAccumulator (I left the original alone, created a new class, copied code from one to the other and changed it around a bit.

Now it might sound like I didn’t have any tests. In fact, I did. I had my original Acceptance Test in FitNesse. I kept running that, so in a sense I was practicing ATDD.

I was not happy with that, because I was not sure that I had properly handled memory allocation correctly. In fact, I had not. The final result is dynamically allocated and I was not releasing that. So I “fixed” it. (It needs to be released after the return from slim back to FitNesse, so the typical pattern is to lazily delete it, or release it in a “destroy” method called after the execution of a single table.)

I have a memory leak?! I am simplifying this story a bit. So I’m skipping some intermediate results. Ultimately I wrote the following test to check that you could use a single query result accumulator for multiple results correctly: TEST(QueryResultAccumulator, CanProduceFinalResultsMultipleTimes) { QueryResultAccumulator accumulator; accumulator.produceFinalResults(); accumulator.produceFinalResults(); }

This caused a memory leak of 60 bytes. It was at this point I was up too late and banging my head against a wall. About 3 hours later I figured that out and went to bed. I fixed the problem and sent a patch to authors of cslim in maybe 45 minutes. So I should have gotten more sleep.

Where is that damn thing In any case, I visually checked the code. I debugged it. I did everything I could initially think of, and I was convinced that my code was correct. (As we’ll see it both was and was not due to a preprocessor seam in cslim.) I got to the point where I even tried different versions of gcc. (I found a parsing error in g++ 4.5 when handling templates, so in desperation and late at night I wasted 5 minutes switching my compiler.) I had the following code in my class: if(result) free(result);

This was the correct thing, but it was in the wrong location. Again, this was related to a preprocessor seam in cslim.

Eureka! I looked at the cslim code and confirmed it was doing basic C stuff, nothing surprising. It was at that point that I remembered something important: cslim depends on CppUTest and uses a different malloc/free

Ah ha! That’s it. So I tired to recompile my C++ code to use the same thing. However, I was not able to do that. CppUTest’s memory tracking implementation does not work with many of the C++ standard classes like <string> and <vector>. So I could not compile my code using the same approach.

I’m glad this happened becuase it made me realize that it was the wrong place anyway. Here’s the logic:

• CSlim has a preprocessor seam, comile with or without -Dfree=cpputest_free, -Dmalloc=cpputest_malloc
• I’m using a class in cslim to do the allocation, where the policy of allocation is stored
• I should not release the memory but instead allow the cslim library to release the memory becaue it has the allocation policy, and therefore the release policy.

About 2 minutes later, I had added a single function to the library: cslim/include/CSlim/SlimListSerializer.h: void SlimList_Release(char *serializedResults); cslim/src/CSlim/SlimListSerializer.c: void SlimList_Release(char *serializedResults) { if(serializedResults) free(serializedResults); }

I updated my QueryResultAccumulator to use SlimList_Release and my false positive disappeared.

It also turns out that this improved symmetry in the library. To allocate and release entries in an SlimList you use the following functions:

• SlimList* SlimList_Create()
• void SlimList_Destroy(SlimList*);

Now to serlalize a list and release the memory later you use:

• SlimList_Serialize
• SlimList_Release

As I write this, I think there’s a better name. I’ll let the authors give it a better name (like SlimList_Release_Serialization_Results). But in any case, if you use a function in the cslim library that allocates something, you use another method in the cslim library to release it.

Since the libray has a preprocessor seam, that symmetry removes a false-positive memory leak.

What took so long? I had an interesting time with this. Originally I had not released that memory in the class but rather in the unit test. I was working too late and not thinking clearly. I realized that my class needed to manage that.

When I called free in the unit test, it was calling the correct version of free, cpputest_free, becasue it was a unit test using CppUTest. When I moved the code into the class, which has no knowledge of CppUTest (nor can it), the flow of the code was correct, but the compilation (preprocessor symbols) were different and it caused a false positive.

Since I changed the code, I assumed it was a problem with how I changed the code. To me more clear, I though it was a code-flow problem, not a preprocessor seam problem. So I spent a lot of time verifyig my code. Once I determined it was correct, I then moved into debugger mode.

It was not long after that when I finally figured out what was going on.

Conslusions As with many things in life, this is intuitive once you understand it!-)

That cslim depends on CppUTest might be questionable. However, if I treat cslim as a (mostly) black box, and I don’t know its allocation policy, I should not assume a deallocation policy.

By putting the responsiblity in the correct library level, it fixed the problem and added symmetry to the overall solution.

I also really enjoyed this (after it was done). I’ve come across memory leaks using CppUTest in the past. Often they were my fault. Sometimes they were not. This was interesting because it both was and was not my fault. I originally had written the code incorrectly. When I put he correct steps in my code, I still had wrong code because I put the responsibility in the wrong place. It really was only correct after I moved the actual implementation into the library and then called it from my code that I had finally written it correctly.

I continue working on these. I was stuck in the airport for 5 hours. Between that and the actual flight, I managed to create three different test examples against a C++ RpnCalculator. Each example uses a different kind of fixture. I had a request from @lrojas to publish some results on the blog. So this is that, however these are in progress and rough.

I’m still trying different forms to figure out what I like the best.

By the way, that lastValue stuff in the fixtures has to do with the fact that all of the hook methods return a char* but I’m responsible for cleaning up after myself.

A Decision Table !|ExecuteBinaryOperator | |lhs|rhs|operator|expected?| |3 |4 |- |-1 | |5 |6 |* |30 | And Its Fixture Code #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string> #include "RpnCalculator.h" #include "OperationFactory.h" #include "Fixtures.h" #include "SlimUtils.h" struct ExecuteBinaryOperator { ExecuteBinaryOperator() { lastValue[0] = 0; } int execute() { RpnCalculator calculator(factory); calculator.enterNumber(lhs); calculator.enterNumber(rhs); calculator.executeOperator(op); return calculator.getX(); } static ExecuteBinaryOperator* From(void *fixtureStorage) { return reinterpret_cast<ExecuteBinaryOperator*>(fixtureStorage); } OperationFactory factory; int lhs; int rhs; std::string op; char lastValue[32]; }; extern "C" { void* ExecuteBinaryOperator_Create(StatementExecutor* errorHandler, SlimList* args) { return new ExecuteBinaryOperator; } void ExecuteBinaryOperator_Destroy(void* self) { delete ExecuteBinaryOperator::From(self); } static char* setLhs(void* fixture, SlimList* args) { ExecuteBinaryOperator *self = ExecuteBinaryOperator::From(fixture); self->lhs = getFirstInt(args); return self->lastValue; } static char* setRhs(void* fixture, SlimList* args) { ExecuteBinaryOperator *self = ExecuteBinaryOperator::From(fixture); self->rhs = getFirstInt(args); return self->lastValue; } static char* setOperator(void *fixture, SlimList* args) { ExecuteBinaryOperator *self = ExecuteBinaryOperator::From(fixture); self->op = getFirstString(args); return self->lastValue; } static char* expected(void* fixture, SlimList* args) { ExecuteBinaryOperator *self = ExecuteBinaryOperator::From(fixture); int result = self->execute(); snprintf(self->lastValue, sizeof(self->lastValue), "%d", result); return self->lastValue; } SLIM_CREATE_FIXTURE(ExecuteBinaryOperator) SLIM_FUNCTION(setLhs) SLIM_FUNCTION(setRhs) SLIM_FUNCTION(setOperator) SLIM_FUNCTION(expected) SLIM_END } There’s a bit of duplication. I’ve been experimenting with pointers to member functions and template functions to make it better. I really should be using lambdas, but I’m not there yet. I have them available in some form since I’m using gcc 4.5. I simply compile with the option -sdd=c++0x. Even so, I’m not quite ready to do that. A Script Table !|script |ProgramTheCalculator | |startProgramCalled|primeFactorsOfSum | |addOperation |sum | |addOperation |primeFactors | |saveProgram | |enter |4 | |enter |13 | |enter |7 | |execute |primeFactorsOfSum | |check |stackHas|3|then|2|then|2|then|2|is|true| And Its Fixture Code #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string> #include "RpnCalculator.h" #include "OperationFactory.h" #include "SlimUtils.h" #include "SlimList.h" #include "Fixtures.h" struct ProgramTheCalculator { ProgramTheCalculator() : calculator(factory) { } static ProgramTheCalculator* From(void *fixtureStorage) { return reinterpret_cast<ProgramTheCalculator*>(fixtureStorage); } OperationFactory factory; RpnCalculator calculator; }; extern "C" { void* ProgramTheCalculator_Create(StatementExecutor* errorHandler, SlimList* args) { return new ProgramTheCalculator; } void ProgramTheCalculator_Destroy(void *fixture) { delete ProgramTheCalculator::From(fixture); } static char* startProgramCalled(void *fixture, SlimList *args) { auto *self = ProgramTheCalculator::From(fixture); self->calculator.createProgramNamed(getFirstString(args)); return remove_const(""); } static char* addOperation(void *fixture, SlimList *args) { auto *self = ProgramTheCalculator::From(fixture); self->calculator.addOperation(getFirstString(args)); return remove_const(""); } static char* saveProgram(void *fixture, SlimList *args) { auto *self = ProgramTheCalculator::From(fixture); self->calculator.saveProgram(); return remove_const(""); } static char* enter(void *fixture, SlimList *args) { auto *self = ProgramTheCalculator::From(fixture); self->calculator.enterNumber(getFirstInt(args)); return remove_const(""); } static char* execute(void *fixture, SlimList *args) { auto *self = ProgramTheCalculator::From(fixture); self->calculator.executeOperator(getFirstString(args)); return remove_const(""); } static char* stackHasThenThenThenIs(void *fixture, SlimList *args) { auto *self = ProgramTheCalculator::From(fixture); for(int i = 0; i < 4; ++i) { if(self->calculator.getX() != getIntAt(args, i)) return remove_const("false"); self->calculator.executeOperator("drop"); } return remove_const("true"); } SLIM_CREATE_FIXTURE(ProgramTheCalculator) SLIM_FUNCTION(startProgramCalled) SLIM_FUNCTION(addOperation) SLIM_FUNCTION(saveProgram) SLIM_FUNCTION(enter) SLIM_FUNCTION(execute) SLIM_FUNCTION(stackHasThenThenThenIs) SLIM_END } This one is a bit more regular. I am using the updated auto keyword in this code. The fixture is just holding the calculator and its OperationFactory (not my preferred name, but that’s what students wanted to call things like +, -, etc, operations not operators). The Dreaded Query Table It’s a bit of a pain to produce query results. So much so, I wrote a simple library in Java to make it easier. I can create a well-formed query result from a single object or a list of objects and even do basic transforms (in names and in paths to data). I started using the jakarta bean utils, but my use was so simple (2 methods), I ripped out that library and just hand-wrote the methods I needed. It was not a case of “not invented here syndrom.” I started by using the library, and I had tests. I didn’t like the size of the library relative to how much I was using it, so I just got rid of it.

Well here I am working C++ and I felt compelled to make it easier work with query results in C++.

First the FitNesse table, then the fixture and finally the support class. I have tests for it as well, I’m not going to show those, however. !|Query: SingleCharacterNameOperators| |op | |+ | |* | |/ | |! | |- | And Its Fixture Code #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <vector> #include <string> #include <memory> #include "RpnCalculator.h" #include "OperationFactory.h" #include "Fixtures.h" #include "SlimUtils.h" #include "QueryResultAccumulator.h" struct SingleCharacterNameOperators { OperationFactory factory; RpnCalculator calculator; SingleCharacterNameOperators() : calculator(factory), result(0) { } ~SingleCharacterNameOperators() { delete result; } static SingleCharacterNameOperators* From(void *fixtureStorage) { return reinterpret_cast<SingleCharacterNameOperators*> (fixtureStorage); } void resetResult(char *newResult) { delete result; result = newResult; } void conditionallyAddOperatorNamed(const std::string &name) { if (name.size() == 1) { accumulator.addFieldNamedWithValue("op", name); accumulator.finishCurrentObject(); } } void buildResult() { v_string names = calculator.allOperatorNames(); buildResult(names); } void buildResult(v_string &names) { for (v_string::iterator iter = names.begin(); iter != names.end(); ++iter) conditionallyAddOperatorNamed(*iter); resetResult(accumulator.produceFinalResults()); } QueryResultAccumulator accumulator; char *result; }; extern "C" { void* SingleCharacterNameOperators_Create(StatementExecutor* errorHandler, SlimList* args) { return new SingleCharacterNameOperators; } void SingleCharacterNameOperators_Destroy(void *fixture) { delete SingleCharacterNameOperators::From(fixture); } static char* query(void *fixture, SlimList *args) { auto *self = SingleCharacterNameOperators::From(fixture); self->buildResult(); return self->result; } SLIM_CREATE_FIXTURE(SingleCharacterNameOperators) SLIM_FUNCTION(query)SLIM_END SLIM_END And the Helper Class QueryResultAccumulator.h #pragma once #ifndef QUERYRESULTACCUMULATOR_H_ #define QUERYRESULTACCUMULATOR_H_ class SlimList; #include <vector> #include <string> class QueryResultAccumulator { public: typedef std::vector<SlimList*> v_SlimList; typedef v_SlimList::iterator iterator; QueryResultAccumulator(); virtual ~QueryResultAccumulator(); void finishCurrentObject(); void addFieldNamedWithValue(const std::string &name, const std::string &value); char *produceFinalResults(); private: SlimList* allocate(); void releaseAll(); void setInitialConditions(); private: v_SlimList created; SlimList *list; SlimList *currentObject; int lastFieldCount; int currentFieldCount; char *result; private: QueryResultAccumulator(const QueryResultAccumulator&); QueryResultAccumulator& operator=(const QueryResultAccumulator&); }; #endif

I know there are too many fields. The counts help with validating correct usage. I also wrote it so one instance could be re-used and I tried to make sure it was in a “ready to receive fields” state when necessary. In any case, this error checking helped find a defect I introduced while refactoring.

QueryResultAccumulator.cpp #include "QueryResultAccumulator.h" #include "DifferentFieldCountsInObjects.h" #include "InvalidStateException.h" extern "C" { #include "SlimList.h" #include "SlimListSerializer.h" } QueryResultAccumulator::QueryResultAccumulator() : result(0) { setInitialConditions(); } QueryResultAccumulator::~QueryResultAccumulator() { releaseAll(); SlimList_Release(result); } void QueryResultAccumulator::setInitialConditions() { releaseAll(); list = allocate(); currentObject = allocate(); lastFieldCount = -1; currentFieldCount = -1; } SlimList* QueryResultAccumulator::allocate() { SlimList *list = SlimList_Create(); created.push_back(list); return list; } void QueryResultAccumulator::releaseAll() { for (iterator i = created.begin(); i != created.end(); ++i) SlimList_Destroy(*i); created.clear(); } void QueryResultAccumulator::finishCurrentObject() { if(lastFieldCount >= 0 && lastFieldCount != currentFieldCount) throw DifferentFieldCountsInObjects(lastFieldCount, currentFieldCount); SlimList_AddList(list, currentObject); currentObject = allocate(); lastFieldCount = currentFieldCount; currentFieldCount = -1; } void QueryResultAccumulator::addFieldNamedWithValue(const std::string &name, const std::string &value) { SlimList *fieldList = allocate(); SlimList_AddString(fieldList, name.c_str()); SlimList_AddString(fieldList, value.c_str()); SlimList_AddList(currentObject, fieldList); ++currentFieldCount; } char* QueryResultAccumulator::produceFinalResults() { if(currentFieldCount != -1) throw InvalidStateException("Current object not written"); SlimList_Release(result); result = SlimList_Serialize(list); setInitialConditions(); return result; } Note, this code uses a method I added to the cslim library: SlimListSerializer.h – in include/CSlim void SlimList_Release(char *serializedResults); SlimListSerializer.c – in src/CSlim void SlimList_Release(char *serializedResults) { if(serializedResults) free(serializedResults); }

I needed to add these methods due to a false-positive memory leak indicated when using CppUTest to test this code. That’s another blog.

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Title says it all: http://schuchert.wikispaces.com/cpptraining.GettingStartedWithFitNesseInCpp

First draft. If you have problems, please let me know.

As of July 1st, there are some changes that you should know about if you are a college graduate that is carrying federal student loan debt. Beginning last year income based repayment became available for student loan holders. The program capped the amount loan holders had to pay, depending on the amount of their loan and their income. Your monthly payment, if eligible, is no more than 15% of your income. If you make $16,000 a year or less you can completely defer your payments. The program was put in place to help keep loan payments manageable for those loan holders who do not have high incomes.

In yesterday's Chicago Tribune I saw an article about the Mayor of Chicago taking part in an anti violence march in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago. One person was quoted as saying "They need to spend some resources to open a youth center here, give kids someplace safe to go."



This is a map of the Woodlawn area created about a year ago. I included it in this article. It was built using the interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator.

My purpose in sharing this is to encourage business, faith and community leaders to use the Tutor/Mentor Connection maps and ideas in their own planning. Invite us to your meetings.

This section on Collaboration illustrates our goal of helping every high poverty neighborhood have a variety of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, supported by the people who do business in the area, or who drive through the area as they go in an out of the city.

School starts in a few weeks. Tutor/mentor programs are looking for volunteers, and dollars, to provide their services. It's up to the Mayor, and other leaders, to use their visibility, and these marches, to draw needed resources to all of the programs that need help to continue services in 2010-11, and to all of the neighborhoods where new programs are needed.

it's getting formulaic to set up the framework for each client's #sales and #marketing plan. I love building #startups http://bit.ly/9sUsco # Powered by Twitter Tools.

In one of the workshops at the May Tutor/Mentor Conference, media reps were criticized for mostly telling stories of bad news, and not enough of the good things kids are doing in neighborhoods.

One suggestion was that on media web sites, links could point to sites like the Chicago Program Links, which host nearly 200 web sites of youth organizations in Chicago. I was contacted by Tracy Schwartz of Red Eye this week, who was following up on that ideas. I hope it happens.

However, unless tutor/mentor programs are using blogs, or some other media, to tell of the work that is taking place in their organizations, this strategy won't have the intended benefit.

At Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, we encourage all of our staff and interns to write blogs. Last week we had a lot of things happening, so here are links to the stories that were written.

Edgewood College visit - Karina Walker, our new Northwestern Public Interest Fellow wrote this.

Golf Benefit stories written by Willow Yang Liuqing and Jenny Liu Chong, our interns from China,


One year reflection- Bradley Troast, our 2009-10 NU PIP fellow, summarized what he has learned from one year

Follow up to golf benefit - El Nix wrote this story

These stories change each week, based on what is happening at Cabrini Connections, and what is happening in the world. Each writer has a different perspective, and a different network of friends, family and alumni who will read these stories and pass them on to others, expanding the network of people who support Cabrini Connections even when the media don't point at our work.

If other tutor/mentor programs learn to tell their own stories this way, we all are building more understanding of what happens in a tutor/mentor program, and why volunteers and donors should help us.

If Red Eye and other media point to the Chicago Program Links, readers who are motivated to do something because of bad news stories, will find plenty of reasons and places where they can help turn bad news in to more good news.

The rocky economy is polarizing our nation’s consumers when is comes to credit scores. The latest study from FICO Inc. found that there are more and more Americans with really poor credit scores and really good scores, but fewer and fewer people with scores in the middle. There are now 25.5 percent, more than a quarter, [...]

Just received my Listening Post eNews from The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies

The title of this news was "RECESSION TAKING A TOLL ON NONPROFIT WORKERS AND PROGRAMS"

One statement in the summary said "Nonprofits have been stretched to the breaking point," noted Peter Goldberg, chair of the Listening Post Project Steering Committee and president and CEO of the Alliance for Children and Families. "It is crucial to take steps now to help sustain the vital work of America’s nonprofit organizations."

We're holding our annual Golf Benefit tomorrow, and it's great to see that many of the golfers and sponsors are people who have supported us in past years. However, many are sponsoring at lower levels, and there are not enough new donors to help us offset losses from grants and other donors.

Today was the third day of our annual 3-day workshop with graduate students from Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. I encourage you to read what some of our interns and staff wrote about this.

These experiences are invaluable, yet at risk because of the recession and its impact on donations.

You can help change that by telling people you know to visit our web sites and see how we're not just helping kids in one neighborhood via Cabrini Connections, but trying to help kids in many neighborhoods via the Tutor/Mentor Connection. If we expand the network, we expand the donor base.

We keep doing this work.

I encourage you to read Bradley Troast's one year reflection article, showing what he has learned from the year he has been with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Our goal is that many adults, young and old, go through this process of learning and reflection, and that they continue to stay involved for many years. I've been involved in leading a tutor/mentor program for 35 consecutive years. That's what gives me the perspective, and the passion, that I bring to this work.

This animation shows how volunteers and staff who stay involved in a tutor/mentor program for multiple years grow in their understanding, and in how they serve as leaders, to expand the number who get involved.

We need benefactors who understand the value, and the potential, of a network of leaders with this depth of experience, who will provide the operating dollars at Cabrini Connections, and many other programs, to enable this.

Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman is calling for small businesses to get the help they need financially so that they can create new jobs. He is urging regulators and banks to find ways to lend to small businesses, saying that the economy needs this boost to help restore employment. He feels that to date not enough has been done to help financially secure small business owners who could play a major role in turning around the economy and unemployment.

Using CppUTest, gcc 4.4 and the Eclipse CDT.

Rough, as usual.

The Video Album

Might redo first one with increased font size. Considering redoing whole series at 800×600.

Today Chicago mourns another police officer killed in a Chicago neighborhood. According to the editorial in today's Chicago SunTimes, the wife of slain officer Thor Soderberg "took a moment to call us to a higher purpose."

She said, "Here is what you can do. If you have the opportunity to do something and change someone's life for the better, do it.

Start by taking care of every child. Thor and I knew that each young person needs five important adults and one strong adult to provide a positive influence in their lives.

Everyone one of us can do a tremendous amount of good to impact a child, even one that isn't ours."

This is what the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been saying for the past 16 years. Every child needs a range of extra adults in their lives, and kids in high poverty neighborhoods need churches, community centers, local businesses, and/or non profit organizations to provide organized, structured spaces, where those extra adults can connect, and stay connected, with kids for many years.

Volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, like Cabrini Connections, and many others who have web sites in the Chicago Programs Links Library, offer such structure. However, we can't do this without more donors stepping forward to provide the money to pay for the rent, insurance, staffing, technology and other basic costs of these programs.

If you use the T/MC Program Locator, you can zoom into different parts of the city where there is high poverty, and too many poorly performing schools. You'll see that there are far to few places in these neighborhoods where kids and extra adults can connect. Furthermore, in many of these neighborhoods, there are too few extra adults because everyone is dealing with the impacts of poverty and violence.

Thus, it's up to the greater Chicago region to respond. I encourage you to look at this transportation map, showing high way and Metra routes, linking the LOOP with the suburbs. Every day thousands of potential volunteers and donors pass through poverty neighborhoods on their way to, or from, work.

Heed the call from Jennifer Loudon, wife of Thor Soderberg.

The articles on this blog, and the links we point to, provide information that can be used by anyone who wants to do more to respond to this call for involvement. Form a learning group. Make time every week to read a little, talk about these ideas with friends, family, and co-workers. Then build an action strategy, and stick to it.

Learn more about how you, your church, your business, and/or your alumni and social group can make these networks of extra adults more available to youth in the high poverty areas of the Chicago region, and to all other youth who need extra help from structured tutor/mentor programs.

VA loans are a top benefit of military service, and with good reason. They are the last traditional loan program to offer 100% financing and refinancing on mortgages and have the most flexible credit guidelines available. But even though the program has amazing things to offer, many veterans are unaware of the full magnitude of [...]