A response to objections about multiple return statements in my recent post on Minimal Coding Style, covering the history and my thoughts on methods.
Notes from a Tool User
Minimalist Coding Style
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” – Antoine de Saint Exupéry. If you’ve ever invited me do some pair programming with you, you probably have a good idea what this quote is all about. I often wind up asking questions like: […]
Agile and Scrum Smells
Smells are a series of simple patterns in Scrums that describe a problem, which can then lead to potential solutions.
Minimally Agile
Recently I had a conversation with a long time friend that made me realize that in my writing and conversation I often come across as a fanatic. Oppppsssss. Time for me to hit the big red reset button. I’m opinionated and passionate but I also believe that you can do good work even if your […]
Mythbusting – Collective Code Ownership
While researching “Are there weaknesses with Collective Code Ownership?” for InfoQ, I was struck by the number of myths around Collective Code Ownership.
Test Driven Development vs “Plain Old Unit Testing”
Responding to ‘Test Driven Development considered harmful.’ The primary benefits of TTD are simplified design, cleaner APIs, decoupling, and reduced bugs.
Solve your Task Estimation problem in Scrum
I’m often asked about improving the estimates of task hours generated during planning meetings. Years of waterfall development have taught us – if we improve the estimates we will do a much better job of tracking the sprint progress. When this comes up I like to ask two questions: why estimate task size at all? […]
Tools, Tools, Tools
As software developers we have this innate belief that another tool will solve all our problems. To that end many agile practitioners search for a tool to track their projects for them. However in using a tool we miss the benefits of cards posted on a whiteboard/corkboard in a public place. Let’s compare the options […]