Sunday, May 24, 2009

Bachche....Man Ke Sachche....

Time for some timepass....found this in an email...

Application to the principal ... FOR ???
Well... read it out to bring back that smile on your face


To,
The Principel
Govarment School, Patiyala,
Panjab.


Sir,
Gal E Hai Ki School wich hun Dil nai Lagda, Te Ratta Nu neend nai Aaandi Kyuki School wich kudiya Ghat rahi hai, Te Saddi Class wich ek vi ni hai, jo hai wo bhi Inni mariyal hai ki dekhan nu ji nai karda, te nakhare Asmaan pe. Madam vi koi enni khas patakha nai hai.
Kuch nai te tennu 4 kaam walian hi rakh lawo. Tainnu Bahut Dhanyawadi Howange.

Your Faithfully
All 3rd standard Students

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Lessons from "The Cathedral And The Bazaar"

Here's a summary of all the lessons learnt (acc to the author himself) in his seminal "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".

1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
2. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
3. ``Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.''
4. If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
6. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
7. Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.
8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone
9. Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
10. If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource
11. The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
12. Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong
13. ``Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.''
14. Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.
15. When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible—and never throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!
16. When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.
17. A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.
18. To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
19. Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.

The Agile Manifesto..and the principles behind it..

For anyone who is starting to work on Agile SW Development, or already managing an Agile Projects, this is where it should all start...even if you have never heard of Agile but have been in Software Development, you'll immediately understand why Agile has become the "catchphrase" now...

First the MANIFESTO ()

"We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value
:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan


That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more
."

And now for the 12 principles behind the Manifesto (equally powerful ...if not more)

1) Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

2) Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer's competitive advantage.

3) Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.

4) Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.

5) Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.

6) The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

7) Working software is the primary measure of progress.

8) Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

9) Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.

10) Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done--is essential.

11) The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.

12) At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.

Here's my 2 Cents to this: Take your time and read the manifesto and the principles several times(atleast 10 attempts) and try to assimilate or challenge each of these based on your experience...you'll realize that these ring the right bells in your mind..

That would be a right start for your move towards "Agile Reincarnation"...

Friday, May 8, 2009

A Primer to Open Source SW Development Ideas..

A nice modern Zen poem to start the blog:

To follow the path:
look to the master,
follow the master,
walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master.

Have been doing some study on the Open Source Initiative.

For those who want to have a primer (and it's a lovely read too), here's the most revered article on the subject. It's titles "The Cathedral And The Bazaar" and is written by Eric Raymond.
Coming from Unix background, he was taken in surprise in 1991 by the Open Source movement and became a beliver himself by 1996. He has actually drawn heavily from the experiences he had with Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman and these have heavily influenced his writings.



Eric is the person who popularised the line "Given Enough Eyeballs, All Bugs Are Shallow". It's actually a one line summary of the concept of a Bazaar (which is how Linux was developed)...where there is no given protocol and ANYONE can say (contribute) whereas the Cathedral mode of development is when there is a Open Source development thru guidelines and frameworks.

Also interesting to note, when you read the article you will start seeing the myriad ways in which Open Source Development is so similar to Agile SW Development Practices.

I found the following ideas of open source development very similar to that of Agile Development.
4. If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
6. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
7. Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers
8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone
10. If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
11. The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
13. ``Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.''
18. To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you
19: Provided the development coordinator has a medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one


So much for today...see you soon