Improving Wetware

Because technology is never the issue

Real Options

Posted by Pete McBreen 17 Oct 2009 at 20:44

I met Chris Matts a few years ago and his REal Options ideas stuck with me but I never remembered to link to him.

His Blog is called decision-coach, and he has a very interesting approach to copyright

Terms and Conditions for Copying, Distribution and Modification

  1. Do whatever you like.

Chris seems to be going to be using a cartoon approach that shows promise, though it looks as if the book will have professionally drawn cartoons - personally I’d miss the hand drawn versions. The idea of when to design tests is covered in the Information Arrival cartoon, which is a long but worthwhile read.

Uncle Bob on Test Driven Development

Posted by Pete McBreen 08 Oct 2009 at 11:28

Seems that there is still a lot of resistance to using TDD.

Uncle Bob explaining the role of TDD in developing Fitnesse makes for interesting reading.

The bottom line is that TDD is a design technique but should not be the sole design technique. All the old design rules and skills still apply; and TDD is a powerful way to inform and augment them.

Pseudo random links

Posted by Pete McBreen 07 Oct 2009 at 22:14

Queue of things to read

Paul Graham - startup school

Business models

Economics 1

Economics 2

Ruby, Unix and processes

Validators in Rails 3

Artisans and Handmade Software

Posted by Pete McBreen 07 Oct 2009 at 22:09

Not much time to post recently, but have to note an interesting post about Software Artisans and Handmade Software

Had to smile at the thought the calling yourself a Software Artisan was pretentious. If they think that is pretentious what would they think about calling yourself a Software Craftsman?

So Much For "Don't Be Evil"

Posted by Pete McBreen 03 Oct 2009 at 19:14

No Thanks Google

How Do I Disable Sidewiki?

Comments are deliberately turned off on this blog, but now Google wants to enable commenting via Sidewiki so that anyone can put comments directly in view while others browse what I have written.

NOT a good idea.

As Dave Winers says my Website Is My Space

Possible way to disable Sidewiki

Google site states “Sidewiki currently does not support comments over internal or SSL (https) encrypted pages.” So that might be a temporary fix - making the entire site SSL, but again there is the word “currently” which means that it might at some point allow for comments on SSL pages....

Talk About Being Late To The Party

Posted by Pete McBreen 03 Oct 2009 at 07:23

Ivar Jacobsen has an interesting piece in Dr Dobbs - Why We Need a Theory for Software Engineering.

I’d have thought that 40 years after the initial NATO conferences on Software Engineering, someone would already have the theory well developed by now. Setting aside my bias for a while, teh article has some really good questions

Do we really know how to develop great software? The answer for many people is clearly yes. But do we know how to communicate and continuously improve the way that we develop software? Do we really understand the best way to communicate and share our knowledge?

Do we stand on quicksand or the shoulders of giants?

Have you ever taken the time to investigate a new method or practice only to find that it is just the re-branding and regurgitation of ideas that you have seen many times before?

Have you ever got frustrated that every new idea about software development seems to be at the expense and in aggressive competition with everything that has gone before?

Does it seem to you that following that latest software development trend has become more important than producing great software?

I sense a certain amount of frustration in these questions, because over the last 40+ years it sometimes seems that little progress has been made in our ability to reliably develop software. Admittedly my answer to these questions does not include the answer “Software Engineering”, but other than that I find I share the sentiment expressed in the article…

It is clear that we need to stop chasing after fads and easy answers that forever disappoint, and that we need to do it without discouraging innovation and the generation of new ideas. People need to stop constantly re-packaging and re-branding old ideas just for the sake of it. Instead they should focus on helping people understand how to build great software.