Monthly Archives: February 2018

How retrospectives ban shoes

At the end of each sprint, we hold a retrospective. The book “Agile Coaching” by Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley says: An iteration retrospective should help the team explore the following: What insights do they have from the last iteration? … Continue reading

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No True Humpty-Dumpty

Words change meaning. Technical words change meaning. Sometimes, you need to check out a specific commit of a word’s meaning from the version control, to add context to a statement. “I’m talking about Open Source in its early meaning of … Continue reading

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It’s about the thinking

At some point in the past, programmers used to recommend drawing flowcharts before you start coding. Then they recommended creating CRC cards, or acting through how the turtle will behave, or writing failing tests, or getting the types to match … Continue reading

Posted in architecture of sorts | Tagged | 1 Comment

There is no browser, only Zuul

My short-lived first plan for a career was in Physics. That’s what my first degree was in, but I graduated with the career goal “do something that isn’t a D.Phil. in Physics” in mind. I’d got on quite well with … Continue reading

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To become a beginner, first become an expert

We have a whole load of practices in programming that only really work well if you’re already good at whatever the process is supposed to help with. Scrum is a process improvement framework, but only if you already know how … Continue reading

Posted in advancement of the self, software-engineering, TDD, tool-support | 2 Comments

machoo – Object-Oriented Programming in Object-Oriented Programming in the GNU HURD

For the last few weeks, my when-I-get-to-it project has been machoo, which is sort of an object-oriented system on the HURD but mostly an excuse to learn about how Mach messaging works. I decided to build a Smalltalk-style “give me … Continue reading

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Discovery

I think the last technical conference I attended was FOSDEM last year, and now I’m sat in the lobby of the Royal Library of Brussels working on a project that I want to take to some folks at this year’s … Continue reading

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