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Quoting Watts Humphrey, "Developers are caught in a victim's mentality." We never think it's our fault, it's always somebody else's.
-Jared Richardson |
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That's got to be one of the *best* choice of title since the Mythical Man Month!!
-Kenneth Sizer |
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Ship It! is part manual of best practices, part software methodologies book and part a distillation of ideas and experiences of good and bad projects that the authors have been involved in. It migh...
-Tech Book Report |
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(Aug 19)
Last week I was talking with a friend about a common ailment on development teams today. And it seems to be getting worse.
Perhaps you've seen it already in your shop. Once one person catches an STD, it seems to spread quickly.
STD, of course, stands for Shiny Things Development.
Oh cool! Check that out... it's new and cool. Let's include it in the product! Why? Umm... it solves some problem. And didn't I just say it's shiny and new?
How many shops have you met that have insane development infrastructures "just in case" things get crazy? Anytime the shop has a list of tools and libraries where every single one requires a specific version for anything to work, someone there has STD.
What's the problem with STD? It generally indicates a lack of discretion and promiscuous use of technology. Rather than saving yourself for something that actually works, you're chasing down every new product and technology. Sure, it might be fun to try out new stuff, but over time the fun is far outweighed by the problems. It's never fun in hindsight.
If your product stack is just as complicated to understand as your product is, you're infected. If team members can't get parts of the product working locally, you've got it too. Have you every patched a single toolkit locally? That's okay. When you've patched more than a dozen, it's not the rest of the world, it's you. Have you rewritten large parts of a new toolkit, just to get it working? And it never occurred to you to just dump the new tech? It's just a matter of time until parts start falling off.
But there's still hope. Unlike some human STDs, software STDs can be cured. It takes time and discipline. You'll have to step back and eliminate some of the more trendy technologies from your product. A few doses of YAGNI usually clears things up nicely.
Here are a few guidelines for spotting trendy ideas:
- you've patched anything locally because it just doesn't work
- an update to a toolkit always breaks the application
- you spend more time isolating which area a bug is in than you do fixing the bug
- you have a list of tech for new developers to install that usually doesn't get them up and running
How will you know when you've eliminated the problem? When new team members are up and running in a day. When you spend time adding features and supporting the product instead of trying to figure out whether the latest bug is in LDAP, the database, the application.
When someone introduces you to a cool new toolkit and you can only see the potential problems it can cause in it's zero point one state, then you're on the road to recovery.
Category: Agile
(Aug 13)
Next week I'll be starting an exciting new career opportunity. I'll be working with Jay Zimmerman and a few other key people to provide a "one source solution" for a variety of consulting and training services. The inspiration for the name comes from the No Fluff Just Stuff software symposiums that Jay started back in 2001 and I regularly participate in. The idea is to provide an additional level of superior service to companies who want private training or that last a few days building on the 90 minute presentations offered by a No Fluff Just Stuff show. There are many opportunities to take training to a deeper level and that's what we'll be providing as well as some public classes centered around agile testing, Ruby, and Rails classes very soon.
In addition we'll be organizing several regional Ruby conferences and Agile conferences. The Agile One and Ruby One events will be very similar in size and composition to the NFJS shows. Smaller numbers (capped at 250 attendees) to ensure a great level of interaction between the speakers and attendees.
It's been a busy year, and it's just going to get busier!
Category: Personal
(Aug 5)
Dave Klein, frequent NFJS attendee (who also works behind the scenes from time to time) started an NFJS Alumni group. If you've ever attended NFJS (or thought about attending), I'd encourage you check it out. It's brand new now, but should grow.
If I can speak for Dave (he created the group during one of my talks), the intention was to give people a way to extend the experience and discuss the talks, etc after the show. Maybe even discuss them with attendees from different cities, see what talks are hot this year, etc.
NFJS Alumni
Jared
Category: Misc
(Jul 11)
Ouch. I feel guilty.
The Joy of Tech on 3G iPhones
Category: Misc
(Jul 9)
I was interviewed by Carl Williams via email a few months ago. He's interviewed a few other people as well and put together a short interview piece. It's an interesting mix of perspectives.
Java Experts: Server Side is Where Java Shines
Category: Java
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Back in Boston! I'll be speaking on Saturday and Sunday.
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Back on the west coast. I'll speak (and keynote) on Friday and Saturday in Redmond.
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Any conference in Orlando is good, but this one is great!
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The first Agile Experience was a huge success. Tell your manager about this one.
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