A couple of days back, I tweeted about SAFe. It created some stir on the timeline, which was great, as I got to see a lot of perspectives. I want to use that tweet as an excuse to talk about something much larger. This will be a long one. 🙂 Meanwhile, I remind you, geekery’s not as important right now as some other things. Please, stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. We are the only …
The standup is a short recurring meeting used to (re-)focus the team-mind on effectively moving stories through our workflow. Here’s my recommended approach to having standups be useful and brief. The general sequence is 1) address team-wide emergency issues, 2) work story-by-story, 3) distribute new work, 4) address team-wide non-emergency issues. Note that, quite often, there is no part 1, and no part 4. Sometimes there’s not even a part 3. Some general tips, then. 1) Don’t over-engineer standups. Stay …
The ultimate making app for a shipping multi-service system is actually a one-machine monolith with a UI. If your team is experiencing the most common pains from working in a large SOA environment, the productivity payback will be enormous. It’s important for me to take a second to remind you that there’s much more to this world than geekery. Please keep working for change all around you, including, especially, outside the monitor. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. …
My rice’n’garlic advice, "take many more much smaller steps," can be said another way: reject any proposed path that requires a step size larger than the limit you’ve set for that particular domain of activity. Time for Sunday geek comfort. It’s meant to be respite. There are more important things than geekery, so please remember to think outside the monitor. Stay strong, stay safe, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. "Rice’n’garlic advice" is blind advice, for when people ask …
Once armed with the idea of a shipping app and a making app, a whole range of possibilities open up. Among the most powerful: give your making app a UI just for making. It’s Sunday, which is geek comfort food day for me. Remember, tho, to think and feel and work outside the monitor. Please help me in opposing the multiple ongoing efforts to suppress the votes of millions of American citizens. Black Lives Matter. A "making app" is when …
In a data-rich environment, we can use the Builder concept to make DSL’s for our Making application. This often makes testing the hard business core of our code both faster and easier. Folks, I love sharing my geekery with you. For me, it brings much comfort. I hope, tho, you’ll join me in working for change that isn’t just about code, but about the larger world. Black Lives Matter. We’ve spoken in the past about using our codebase to do …
Approaches in software development — or anything else — that don’t take ordinary human failings as their starting point are prone to dramatic failure. "The Impossible Human" is, well, noticeably uncommon. Let’s dig in on that. More geek joy comfort food from me today, but please think & work outside the monitor by enabling and encouraging change in our wider world. Black Lives Matter. Some years back, I made content for a CMS that had a whole lot of overlapping …
HOT TIP! Click the image below to get $75 off Ted Young’s new interactive online class running March 8th-11th 2021. Use special code "GEEPAW" at checkout. Thanks! Listen to this Blogcast: "It puts the database on its browser skin, or else it gets the hose again." This task occupies the daily life of a great many programmers. Today, I want to throw out some random sparks of advice for people working in that setting. Folks, my ideas about changing code …
HOT TIP! Click the image below to get $75 off Ted Young’s new interactive online class running March 8th-11th 2021. Use special code "GEEPAW" at checkout. Thanks! When we talk about transitioning to microtest TDD, we have to figure out how to provide the right experiences in the right order. That’s why I propose we start by getting the experience of changing a well-microtested graceful class. Folks, my ideas about changing code are thoroughly entangled with my ideas about changing …
In microtest TDD, we describe collaborations as "awkward" or "graceful". The distinction is critical to understanding how the Steering premise and the Pieces premise work together to make TDD a productivity tool. Let’s dig in. Here in the states, it’s Black History month. I urge my friends and followers to pay attention: American history and Black history are deeply & painfully intertwined, and we won’t move on until we go through. Black Lives Matter. We talked the other day about …
