Agile Otter Blog

I started the new job at Industrial Logic. In addition to receiving online training from my peers here, I'm getting into the source code of our products (some cool stuff in there). Yesterday I got to exercise my google and stackoverflow skills as we dug into a windows-based product. My .NET work until now has been web, not native, so this was new territory for me and I had a great time. In addition, I'm getting involved in contract work here and strategy. It's only day 4, and I'm feeling like I'm really a part of the team. You would not believe how much we are in contact even as remotes. I probably talk to my coworkers ("boss" included) much more often than you cubicle-dwellers do. I still get think-time alone, but I'm getting to know and enjoy people pretty well. Enough of this, there's code waiting...

Your agile otter has joined Industrial Logic. We have so much in common that it didn't make sense not to join forces. I will be neck deep in products, courseware, metrics, and all of the other work that makes them so cool. This will be like chocolate and peanut butter, friends. I can't wait to join all my new best friends!

The latest Clean Coders video by Uncle Bob Martin covers Chapter 2 of the book Clean Code . This is a chapter that is near to my heart, since it bears my name and Uncle Bob even presents some flattering introductory material with a decidedly unflattering picture of me (all in good fun). The video is $12.00, but is quite well done and interesting. The less entertaining version which was the source for the well-edited version in Clean code is still available, and has examples in Python rather than Java. Bob's presentation has some thoughts not included in my paper (and which I endorse). The paper is not a replacement for watching Bob's zany and entertaining video but it can give you some of the same material while you ponder spending your hard-earned ten-spot-and-change.

With my last employer, we had noticed that our retrospectives were starting to lag in effectiveness and attendance. People felt like they were too busy delivering stories and solving problems to do anything substantial toward meeting retrospective goals. I knew that it wasn't the kind of company that would accept stalled improvement, yet developers were instinctively afraid to invest time. To resolve the problem, I talked with the CIO. Our discussion ended up with this set of triage rules for retrospective follow-ups: If it is free, just do it. There is no reason to delay implementing some changes, including (but not limited to): posting a graph, composing a "top-ten" list, swapping pairs more often, trying pomodoro technique, changing how stand-up meetings are performed, making better use of QA, tech writing, or Customer resources instituting changes to coding standard There is no reason to delay this kind of work. The CIO told us he considered it our job to ...

Here is the table from Agile And Beyond last weekend. There are a few interesting features here. You can see the cool phones, the notebooks, the Agile In A Flash cards being shared on the table, and to the left of the diet coke is an Agile Otter business card. I attended only two talks, and spent the rest of the time hanging out with my peers and having fun. The two talks were Mary Poppendieck's talk about where she sees post-agile going (a nice talk, btw, well given) and Dr. Michael Norton (docondev's) talk about technical debt. I was ill-rested, over-caffeinated, and a little eager. I had motormouth, but it was still a great time )for me). I hope that Mike Hill, Tracy and Angela Harms, Matthew Weitzel, Patrick Wilson-Welsh, Michael Norton, Zachary Spencer, Nayan Hajratwala, Matt Barcomb, Jon Stahl, Bill Tozier, and all the rest (drop me a note if I forgot to mention you) all had as much fun as I did. Best wishes to my colleagues on the other side of the lake!

Let's begin with this simple assertion: command.com sucks. It has always sucked, and always will. Powershell might be nicer, but most people haven't learned how to use it, and it's only available in one operating system anyway. If I say "command line" to a Windows-only person, they're thinking "command.com." Avoiding that command line is a huge part of making their lives pleasant. I am not slamming on hating the windows command line. All of us Unix/Linux geeks hate it too. I never feel much less productive than when I'm in command.com. I avoid it too. I started back when CP/M was the killer operating system. Its command line was not so great either, but it had a strong free software community who shipped programs to each other on floppy disks. As a result, we had this language called "submit" (and later "supersub") which you could actually do stuff in. It was like a real language. The command line suddenly was pretty dec...

I started teaching my youngest son python years ago. I started him with the turtle package and he drew circles, lines, and squares. He had a great time doing things like creating variables that carry his brother's name and setting them equal to "llama butt." Now he's older, and wanting to do some more programming. We decided to start with a simple guessing game, and picked "battleship." I also decided that he's old enough to get a handle on tests and classes. Tonight we decided what the rules were, and wrote some tests for creating ships and blowing them up. We'll be revisiting the stuff we've done, but by watching me and copying the text I typed he was able to run the tests a few dozen times, create a class, and start dealing with syntax and logic errors. It's just a start. We'll have to get into it more deeply before we'll know if he really likes it, but I'll keep you posted.