Agile Otter Blog

Messages from the past have a way of reaching into the future and getting your attention. This week everyone is talking "apocalypse." This is because of an ancient mayan calendar which quits tracking time on Dec 21st. The joke (I hope we all know it's a joke) is that it stops because that's when time ends. Of course, my calendars used to run out every year (before Google Calendar). The word "apocalypse," according to my sources, was a theatrical term. It referred to the moment when the curtain was pulled back and all was revealed. When I learned that, the title of the biblical book "Revelations" finally made sense, as did more of the text within. Today I'm facing my own apocalypse. An ancient message (from two years ago) has come back and presented itself to me. I like this team. They're good people, and they understand their business. They write quite a lot of code, and they get along. There is nothing to dislike, and much anyone...

The excitement (aside from work and family travel) lately has been at Agile In A Flash , where we released a new blog and card which reveals a process for naming tests . After the naming papers I've written while at Object Mentor, and the chapter I supplied to Bob Martin's Clean Code  and the subsequent video episode , I am known as a "naming guy."  I'm expected to always have a choice name in mind, in line with my own naming rules , for any circumstance in which I might find myself. True to form, anyone pairing with me runs the risk of being exasperated at my constant two-step of "What's that for, really?" and "Can we rename it right now?" My coworkers are often surprised when they see me use a silly or meaningless name early in a test or body of code. Why would I not know exactly what to name a variable, class, method, or test? How is a test fixture not obvious to me from the very beginning? Roy Osherove , in initial shock at the...