Coding: Tools/Techniques influence the way we work at Mark Needham. Dave Astels mentions in his BDD paper that the way we use language influences the way that we write code, quoting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis “there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.”
In a similar way, something which I didn’t fully appreciate until the last project I worked on is how much the tools and techniques that you use can influence the way that you work. Distributed Source Control Christian persuaded the client to allow us to use Mercurial for the project and it was interesting to see how we almost instinctively moved to a style of development which involved checking in much more frequently than we would have had we used Subversion. I’m sure there are ways that we could have used Mercurial even more effectively than we did and my current thinking is that by default we’d want to use a distributed source control tool over any other.
Incremental refactoring. Why is ‘Buy’ not always better than ‘Build’ Building software is hard.
I’ve been involved in building business systems for 13 years and it’s probably fair to say that I’ve been involved in more failures than successes, and I’m pretty sure that’s not merely the function of my effectiveness (or lack of it) as a software developer. Any business embarking on the development of a core system is taking on significant risk, because the core competencies of building software are probably not the core competencies of the business. After all the business of building software is a huge problem domain in its own right with a large and complex body of expertise. Recognising this, many businesses when faced with a Buy vs Build decision will do almost anything to avoid Build; purchasing Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) systems is always the preferred decision.
If your business need is a common one, then purchasing a COTS system is almost always the right choice. You have a graph somewhat like this: Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way t... The Cathedral and the Bazaar. This directory gives you access to almost all of the contents of my evolving book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Enjoy — but be aware that I have sold O'Reilly the exclusive commercial printing rights. The papers composing this book (like their topic) are still evolving as I get more feedback. I made extensive revisions and additions for the first edition of the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and expect to continue adding and revising in future editions. Even if you've heard me do the stand-up version, you may want to reread it.
These papers are not `finished', and may never be. If you like these papers, you will probably also enjoy my How To Become A Hacker FAQ (also in the book). Here's the XHTML. My thumbnail sketch of the history of the hacker culture, maintained since about 1992. Here's the XHTML. Translations Here's the XHTML. You can download RealAudio recordings of the stand-up version of this talk from the Kongress (about the first 30 seconds is missing). Forrest J. Evaluating software estimates: sure signs of un...