Not in code

This eloquent reminder of why I love agile methods hit me hard enough to prompt a post rather than a plain old del.icio.us entry.

In the Elements of Style, William Strunk describes one of his pricinples of composition Omit needless words by saying

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

These words resonate with me; I hold a similar view about how software should be written and as I read this book a number of its rules & principles seem to apply equally to writing good software. This makes sense since the majority^ of code we write is in English. It seems to me that every developer who aspires to be their best would do well to aquire this guide; so, I’ve added this book to my list of books every software developer should own.

^I recently discovered that most of SAP’s code is written in German.

My lecturer in Software Quality, Graeme Carbines repeated this several times during the past year. I couldn’t agree with him more. When you learn something new, it’s fresh in your mind. If you apply it once you’ve learnt it you refine your understanding even further. If however, several months pass before you have an opportunity to apply it, chances are you won’t remember many of the details – making this knowledge less useful.

Seems to me that when you learn something, is as important as what you learn. – something I should try to take into account as I select my subjects for the upcoming academic year.

I blogged recently that I am starting a new job in a team that strictly practices Agile techniques (XP). It’s seems like this will be the perfect opportunity to apply what I’ve just learnt at Uni (in the Agile Project). It might be a little harder to apply the Software Quality stuff that I’ve learnt, atleast not all of it and not as directly. I might attempt to stay in touch with this by doing more research in the area, perhaps contrasting Agile techniques with more formal & heavy weight models such as CMMI that I studied about. Hmmm, I wonder…

Listen to those who speak
Speak to those who listen

I found this classic whilst reading the XP Evaluation Framework page at C2.com. Enjoy.

Ok, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. It’s the busy time of the year at work and I am also back at uni for my second semester.

Things are shaping up really nicely at uni and I think I’m starting to get a much better idea of the direction I’d like my course to take. This semester I’ve decided to study a subject on Software Process Improvement and the Agile Development Project , a new subject at Swinburne that focuses on applying a variety of “Agile” approaches with the aim of gaining a better understanding of how they can used practically.

Agile methodologies seem to be gaining popularity rapidly and it’s an area that I’ve been meaning to learn more about for a while now. The other subject that I’m doing focuses primarily on CMMI, and a few other process improvement models. The main reason that I chose this particular combination of subjects is so I could gain an appreciation for the relationship between practical approaches like XP (and the other agile methodologies) and quality models like CMMI, Six Sigma etc. I’m going to try and blog a bit more about this topic as my understanding of this area grows.

Thanks bren