MMMSS – A Closer Look at Steps

Programming, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 9 minutes of reading
This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Many More Much Smaller Steps

Earlier, we sketched out MMMSS, Many More Much Smaller Steps, laying out the bare bones. Cool, cool, but now we need to thicken our sense of the idea. Today, let’s close in a little more on what "step" means to us. Many Much More Smaller Steps – First Sketch | GeePawHill.Org The first plank of my take on fixing the trade is MMMSS: If you want more value faster, take Many More Much Smaller Steps. Today I want to start […]

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Many More Much Smaller Steps – First Sketch

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 5 minutes of reading
This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Many More Much Smaller Steps

The first plank of my take on fixing the trade is MMMSS: If you want more value faster, take Many More Much Smaller Steps. Today I want to start laying this out for folks. This isn’t gonna happen in one thread, but let’s get started. Before we dig in a little, let me remind you that I’m aiming here for geek comfort good, respite. I am far more concerned with changing the world right now than I am with changing

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Ten I-Statements About Refactoring

How I Work, TDD, Modern-Synthesis, Refactoring / / 6 minutes of reading

HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! In the spirit of my Ten I-Statements about TDD, here’s ten more, this time about refactoring. I’m not covering everything, just hitting some of

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Get Stronger With Geek’s Night Out

Programming, How I Work / / 5 minutes of reading

HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! Programmers will ask me how they can become stronger at programming. A very good way, one I use currently, is to get together once

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Ten I-Statements About TDD

TDD, Programming, How I Work / / 5 minutes of reading

HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! Folks, I see a lot of ideas and opinions about TDD fly around, passed off as holy writ. By way of counter, I offer

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Three Software Engineering Coaches Get Coached By GeePaw Hill (FourScouts TV)

Uncategorized / / 1 minute of reading

How much are you able to learn on your own? For some people, reading books, articles, and going to certain training courses are all they need to keep steadily growing their skillset. For teams however, things are a bit more challenging. Retrospectives are indeed a great help, but these are still from the team’s own perspective. Sending a team to training could help as well, but how do you know what training to pick? Sometimes external help, in the form

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On (Not) Using Mocking Frameworks

TDD, Programming, Modern-Synthesis / / 5 minutes of reading

I’m long past on record that I think the use of auto-mockers outside of legacy rescue situations is bad policy. First, it’s easy to write "psuedo-tests" using an automocker. Psuedo-tests are tests that appear to prove things about your code that they don’t actually prove. Now, note, I’m not saying auto-mockers force one to write psuedo-tests. They don’t. But they do make it awfully easy. How? The combination of "don’t care" arguments in mocked method specs with hardwired returns makes

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Three Short Coaching Pro-Tips

Coaching, Change Harvesting / / 8 minutes of reading

A respondent asked that I combine these three short Pro-Tip muses into one post, so here goes: Coaching Pro-Tip #1: Everything good about agility is rooted in relationship, so everything good about coaching is, too. As coaches, we usually start from negative trust, and our central priority has to be reversing that position. In the early days of most coaching engagements, one sees lots of issues, of various size and shape. The temptation to start issuing criticism and directives is

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Two Mantras, One Theme

Coaching, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

Two recurring phrases in my work are 1) It is like this because we built it to be like this. 2) The code works for you, you don’t work for the code. Two sides of one page, phrased on the front as negative critique, and on the verso as positive encouragement. Before we dig in, I remind you of the relative unimportance of geekery to me just now. This is just respite. Please work for change and support the others

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Path-Focused Design

Programming, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 8 minutes of reading

"Path-focused design", of stories, architecture, code, is design that understands that we can only reach a distant City on the Hill by taking one stride-limited shipping step at a time. Sunday muse-day, comfort food for the geek in me and in you, but please remember, we don’t really just want to change code, we want to change the world. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. In the software design theory of the ’80s and ’90s,

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