Improving the world with software

Essays from November 2005

7 essays from November 2005

1. 01

   What if writing code would be like writing a novel?

   On the field of analogies here is one that is quite well presented: Writing code is like writing a novel. Check it out at Kevin Barnes‘ blog. Analogies are only useful if they give insights on the activities you are studying, like coding as part of software development in my case. This one is simple …

   22 November 20051 min read

2. 02

   Software development as film making

   And to prove that I’m not original :), here is a post where the analogy between software development and film making is made.

   20 November 20051 min read

3. 03

   Waste and the methodology-police

   Old-school methodologies grow until they become the proper goal of the software development process. When an old-school methodology is created, a set of rules come into existence. Those rules are believed to make the software development process successful as promised by: Professors, Consultants, MBA’s, etc.Since those methodologies come with such a high recommendation they obviously …

   20 November 20052 min read

4. 04

   Repeatability in software development (or why people are important)

   Software development processes try to achieve the impossible: “repeatable success despite who implements them”. How about this thought: Repeatability comes from people, not from processes. Why? Software development processes are procedural rules to follow when developing software. Let’s, for the sake of argument, ignore the fact that those rules rarely focus on the actual work, …

   16 November 20052 min read

5. 05

   The uncertainty principle in software development

   While surfing the web I came across this post from Kevin Barnes. It’s hilarious! Great insights can be easily conveyed through humour! 🙂 From now on you can use this to say: “You either have software requirements or the actual software, it’s proven by scientists!”

   16 November 20051 min read

6. 06

   Is IBM changing ?

   I never thought I’d see a post from IBM/Rational that stated that “more process” is not always a good thing. Especially since they have been pushing Rational Unified Process so strong. But, here it is:“Anti-patterns: Precise plans/estimates, track against static plan management style. More process is better. Always use the same degree of process throughout …

   14 November 20051 min read

7. 07

   Old-School development methodologies

   The Software Development industry is in it’s adolescence The software industry is fairly young, the first Personal Computer together with the Operating System that made it wide-spread (MSDOS) was only available in 1981 [1]. Since then the industry has evolved very, very fast which allowed many “snake oil” sales men to take it over (I …

   12 November 20054 min read

Nothing matches that yet.