EDIT: Just reviewed your Twitter. It's 2000 tweets of snark and criticism of everything you come across - GoT, other coders, Agile, politics. I doubt we will get anywhere constructive on this thread but my original post remains below.
Original post >>
"Doesn't give him the chops or credibility to tell others how to program or solve problems."
...that cannot be serious. Am actually smiling at that. Also laughing at the idea that modern coders think they have nothing to learn from Grady Booch.
Plinkplonk you are absolutely someone I would never want on my team or contributing to a product I was involved in. Aggressive, combative and dismissive of the precedents that laid the foundations for modern software engineering. You need to mature (my opinion). Your post has not painted you in a flattering light.
But feel free to prove me wrong - in your eyes what DOES give someone the chops to support others with engineering advice? What do they need to have accomplished?
We've banned this account. Personal attacks, name-calling, and flamewars, all of which you've made an egregious hash of in this thread, are not allowed on Hacker News.
If someone has built significant cutting edge software and/or has proven himself to be a 1 percent engineer, I'll gladly listen to her on matters of engineering. That doesn't make her an expert on say designing space craft.
The point is Booch hasn't written any cutting edge software. He just sold methodology (and books and consulting). Which makes him an expert in selling books and consulting.
I don't want agile gurus/methodology vendors telling me how to do programming. I'll gladly listen to their advice on how to build a career around a methodology. Just a personal preference.
I mean if I wanted to know how to write a 3d game engine, I'll listen to John Carmack or Tim Sweeney, not a methodology consultant. If I wanted advice on investing, I'd listen to someone who has proven chops as an investor - say Warren Buffet.
again, just my personal preference.
I'll ignore the personal attacks and your comments on my twitter account etc, which has nothing to do with my comments here and is borderline stalker behavior.
Whatever floats your boat. All good. This is the internet
Not borderline stalker; was just interested in your experience. Was hoping you would blow me away with cutting edge engineering you speak about. shrug
Agile vendors don't tell you how to do your job. They tell you how your job fits within a whole and that whole can be delivered quickly if you play nice with others.
Not surprised you struggle with the concept given your tone. Clearly not a growth mindset and fixated only on your technology.
Nice summary of Booch by the way, neatly side stepping his programming experience and Master's in electrical engineering or his work supporting design patterns. eyeroll
The hate is strong in you.
I would also add, with a little glee, Agile vendors are not going anywhere and you will be listening to them for a long time to come; you know why? Your boss listens to them. Don't be bitter at consultants, the game chose them.
" They tell you how your job fits within a whole and that whole can be delivered quickly if you play nice with others."
These guys have no special expertise in this either. They haven't (mostly) worked on high performance programming teams or led successful companies or launched killer products. But if you give them a chance they'll try to sell you 'methodologies' on all these and more.
They make their living selling ill thought out ideas to clueless middle managers. What makes them experts in "how your work fits into a whole?"
Lol getting a masters in electrical engineering and having written forgotten books on design patterns makes you an expert in how to 'master programming' and work in high performance teams? News to me!
You understand Booch did not write the master programming list referenced by the OP. (No doubt you will edit to remove that erroneous reference but shrug)
Saying Kent Beck, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland etc has not led successful companies or worked in high performance programming teams he he he. That's class.
I hope this post is immortalised :-D
So if Agile is ill-thought out, what is not ill-thought out? By all means, you have the stage...
>However, you also, worryingly, faked 3 comments at the bottom of your own blog post, one pretending to be a Scrum Master saying they are taking the money. They are time stamped and clearly written by you.
WTF?
you spend your time digging up my old blog posts from years ago, accuse me of faking comments on my own blog post, (lol what? evidence? or are you just high and imagining things?) and then call my behavior abnormal?
Heh. Whatever man. This is getting creepy.
I've had an anti-agile point of view [1] for a long time now. so you went hunting and found a blog post which I wrote years ago elucidating that view. So what? This thread is getting meaningless and you are beginning to creep me out with this behavior and personal attacks, so I'll exit this too-long thread and leave the floor to you.
I simply searched for the people you referenced and the word Agile. I had no idea your blog would be ranking first page for anti-agile rants.
You find it creepy that you list your twitter profile and you publish an online blog and people then read your Twitter and online blog?
I def believe and am willing to bet a month's salary that you faked those blog comments. I am more sure of it than my own name. We both know you did. It's transparent.
I am not blindly following it. I think it is sound practical advice given by a titan of engineering.
I have yet to read anything of yours which says why I shouldn't listen to Kent Beck.
For every well respected opinion or technology there is always a group of naysayers. A cadre of individuals who offer nothing of insight in return.
In 1906 John Philip Sousa claimed the phonograph would ruin music. Don't be that guy.
Don't be the guy that says GUI's will never take off, that touchscreen phones will not sell, that the Godfather was a bad movie etc.
You are being contrarian for the sake of it. Kent Beck has a massive canon of work which advances the predictability and success rate of software development. You can challenge bits of it, improve it and contribute.
You are being that guy that makes sweeping generalisations which advance nothing.
What, specifically, do you think needs improved in the OP's article?
I didn't mean the entire Kent Beck bibliography, this is obviously a different thing than his books or he would've referred to his books. I just would like to see this particular outline expanded slightly is all.
All spoken brilliantly as someone who has not seen the nuance beyond the post. The Facebook note was written by Kent Beck, father of eXtreme Programming (XP) and original Agile manifesto signatory.
He is not saying follow this methodology because a company made money.
Invert your thinking; he is saying the majority of companies that utilise the following values and techniques have far fewer failed projects and deliver far more projects to scope, meeting customer requirements in a suitable timeframe.
To say that this man needs to consider other approaches is akin to saying Muhammad Ali should have considered other boxing styles ;-)
The man created a methodology [1]. That is wonderful but (imo) it doesn't give him the chops or credibility to tell other people how to program or solve problems.
Think about it.
Does Grady Booch (builder of yesterday's, now forgotten methodology) have some kind of special wisdom to dispense? If not why does Kent Beck? "Mastering" Programming, heh.
That said, sure no one can argue against such 'motherhood and applepie' statements at such a high level of abstraction.
Here is one from me "Think about what you do and act accordingly". you are saying "well duh?"? Exactly my reaction to this pablum.
Not sure any of these aphorisms are particularly relevant in practical work. Still, whatever makes people happy. If you find these useful, good for you.
[1] Not ignoring his work on JUnit which I used extensively when I used to work in Java. Of all the agile gurus, I respect Kent the most, because he has actually written useful code. Just playing devil's advocate a bit..
> If not why does Kent Beck? "Mastering" Programming, heh.
He is also the person who (re-)originated test-driven development. And his day job for the last few years has been mentoring Facebook's new engineers.
And you ignore that he answered your question in the first paragraph of the piece. You might agree or disagree with his explanation, but ignoring it just looks sloppy.
"From years of watching master programmers, I have observed certain common patterns in their workflows. From years of coaching skilled journeyman programmers, I have observed the absence of those patterns. I have seen what a difference introducing the patterns can make."
Is this the paragraph? I fail to see how such self declarations of uber competence and self labeling as "master programmer" should be accepted by others on his say so. Sure he originated/pushed TDD.(and what happened to that project on which all these 'masters' worked?) You seem to think it is a good practice, worthy of elevating Kent to 'master'. Which is fine I don't.
If his day job is to train FB engineers, and he enjoys it, good for him. If Facebook needs its engineers thus 'leveled up' by TDD etc, good for them. It is a free market.I have no quarrel with any of this.
However in my experience, the very best programmers (in any subfield of programming - Linus/Carmack/whoever, or even very good anonymous programmers working on simple CRUD systems) don't go around calling themselves 'master programmers',putting themselves at the top of imagined pyramids, or offering pithy aphorisms about how they can 'coach' other 'journeyman'(and so lesser skilled as compared to 'master' programmers) into 'mastery' by following "patterns".
This is just standard agile coach/methodologist talk. If someone calls himself a 'master' programmer, he better have world class code/coding skills on a consistent basis to back it up. Methodology religion propagation doesn't cut it (imo, ymmv and that is all right).
He claims he coached 'skilled journeymen' programmers.
The 'master - journeyman-apprentice' pyramid jargon is part of the 'software craftsman' movement. In this structure, 'masters' train 'journeymen' who serve an 'appreniceship' and help them breakthrough into 'mastery. Lots of jargon from the old guild structures.
So Kent is implicitly (imo) claiming to be a 'master'. At the least he is claiming to better than "talented journeymen" engineers at FaceBook.
That said, I grant you he may be using the words without that implication. Not likely, but possible.
Whatever. All these agile/methodology guru types like to pass themselves off as skilled programmers without any supporting evidence and should be (imo) ignored totally when they pontificate about how others should program etc
He is claiming to be a coach. Coaches don't have to be master players to be good coaches. The rest is stuff you are making up because you have an axe to grind.
Which, fine, grind your axes. But maybe you could stick to ranting about what people have actually done and written rather than just barking about things you imagine. For somebody very concerned about the credibility of others, you aren't working very hard on your own.
Except we don't all do boxing and we aren't all Muhammad Ali. But some of us may be masters of our craft nonetheless.
These 'guidelines' would mean very little to someone who programs microcontroller chips - Not saying these guidelines aren't useful, but in some environments there are more important aspects like will my program fit in flash memory? Do I have time to refactor this code or should I just patch it quickly and work on something more urgent/important?
The average IT hire for a permanent role costs nearly $8,000.*
This includes the use of temp workers, recruitment fees and management time.
If lost productivity is included the figure can be $50K or more.
The reason you think the price of the service is expensive is because
a) You likely haven't had exposure to enterprise organisations spending habits. No shame (see anecdote below).
b) The makers of the service have not put the cost in the proper context for you.
What they should have done is re-stated the cost of a bad hire and given a value statement on the splash page.
"The average cost of hiring the wrong employee is $23,000. Get it right first time with CodeBlimp for $50."
Or
"1 in 3 hired employees never pass their probation period. Use CodeBlimp and make it 1 in always."
Etc
>> Here comes the anecdote: I was a coach at Lean Startup London and some guys had a great product offering. They were current/former Cucumber devs. Amazing engineers and super smart but no idea really how to sell.
They had a cool new service that was ready to go to market that weekend and a salesman joined them during the weekend and Skyped some potential customers.
When a charity senior exec asked them "We love it, how much does your new service retail for?"
They shrugged and said "Ummm $250 a year..?"
The exec looked baffled and said "I literally don't know how to give you such a little amount of money. Do you want my personal credit card?"
The moral is don't underestimate how much businesses will pay.
Space is only at a premium because it costs more to have more space.
The real question is "how much space are you willing to sacrifice for energy self-sufficiency?"
In the UK, electric bills hover around $1200 a year for electric/gas households and $2000 a year for full electric.
Renewable households will have a HUGE potential market.
U.K. Residential market is 26
million houses. Theoretical price point of $1500 dollars (one years energy cost) = 39 billion dollar market not including the massive combined secondary services in maintenance, installation training providers, parts, etc.
USA residential would be 6 times that and the provision of renewables to corporates is almost incalculable.
It's an entirely new economic ecosystem divorced from petrochemical.
It a price point higher than $3000 dollars we are getting into a market cap of many trillions worldwide.
IF you can get a solar system and batteries for £1k, then that starts to look feasible. But that's a big if.
I had a 3.8kW solar system put in for £5k last year and have yet to really run the numbers on savings; the payback period is 10 years of feed-in tariff cheques. If I went off-grid that would be reduced. I don't really see why I'd want to go off-grid for its own sake, I'd rather better explore the possibilities of net metering and sharing power with the rest of the city.
It's not self-fulfilling. It's fulfilling.
The same way Doctors wrote down the treatments that worked for patients and it became medicine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHVVKAKWXcg