Change

MCE #3: Mindful, Collaborative, Experimental

This entry is part [part not set] of 3 in the series Mindful Collaborative Experimental

What matters most when I’m collaborating on activity X isn’t activity X, it’s collaborating. I’ve given this MCE series a lot of thought, which is why the items appear so slowly. My take seems fundamentally different from what others seem to be saying. And it doesn’t feel like a tweak. It’s not one premise of the zeitgeist I would change, but most of them. Some ideas are baked so deeply into the zeitgeist, it is very difficult to use the […]

MCE #3: Mindful, Collaborative, Experimental See Full Post

Endpointing & Nextstepping

In our trade, a great deal depends on the distinction between two ideas, manifested as behaviors, cutlures, practice-sets, attitudes, approaches, whatever you call it. I call these ideas "endpointing" and "nextstepping". The central thesis of endpointing: "There’s a finish line, and it’s what matters most." The central thesis of next-stepping: "There’s no finish line, and what matters most is the next step we take." Even a casual glance will show the extraordinary reach of that distinction. It can be applied

Endpointing & Nextstepping See Full Post

TSD #2: Short Session, Long Notes

This entry is part [part not set] of 2 in the series TSD Development

TSD Development: First short TDD session pushed. I said I’d start yesterday, but instead I played a computer game most of the day. https://github.com/GeePawHill/tsd This was short and sweet, so there’s just three simple points of interest, one noticed infrastructure problem, then I’ll move on to the next part. POI #1: This was textbook TDD, as most toy problems are. Think of a test, write a test, fail a test, pass a test, design it all. No shockers or embarrassing

TSD #2: Short Session, Long Notes See Full Post

TSD #1: Early Thoughts, Tests, Code

This entry is part [part not set] of 2 in the series TSD Development

TSD Development: The first thing to do is make a thing that accepts key-value pair assignments to make a tree. Since kotlin readily supports map-like assignments, the first minor-leage case looks like this: output["key"] = "value" That resembles a map, by design, but it isn’t one. Later cases will elaborate this, but the secret sauce is two-fold, consisting of a sequencing concept and a nesting concept. Sequencing: the order in which keys are assigned values is preserved. Think in terms

TSD #1: Early Thoughts, Tests, Code See Full Post

MCE #2: Mindful, Collaborative, Experimental

This entry is part [part not set] of 3 in the series Mindful Collaborative Experimental

My mindfulness works in large part by way of changing my identity, my sense of "who I am". Before I even inch into this, I just gotta remind you that you’re reading the words of someone who is an obnoxious wise-cracking irreligious unspiritual foul-mouthed dirty-minded unmystical hardcore computer geek. It’s important to say, because after all, we’re about to talk about stuff that is easily associated with an archetype I very much don’t resemble. My own encounters with that archetype

MCE #2: Mindful, Collaborative, Experimental See Full Post

MCE #1: Mindful, Collaborative, Experimental

This entry is part [part not set] of 3 in the series Mindful Collaborative Experimental

The majority of the time, my successful collaborations begin deep within me, and so do my unsuccessful ones. (Part of the reason I’ve been so quiet these days since first talking about collaboration has been finding a way into my take. What is the most important story? How can I tell it? What advice, if any, does it yield? Consider this WIP, but I think I’m ready to take a swing at it.) I am first and foremost a professional

MCE #1: Mindful, Collaborative, Experimental See Full Post

UDispatch #5: What is TSD?

This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series UDispatch

So. What is TSD? It’s a small library whose purpose is to make it easy to collect, render, compare, diff, and test tree-shaped data. Once we get past basic programming, it is very common to have to create orchestras of objects that form conceptual trees. Note, these aren’t literal trees. Hmmm. Better talk about that. Consider my mp3 collection. A Recording has a number of fields. They include primitives, psuedo-primitives (like String and Date), and references to other objects, like

UDispatch #5: What is TSD? See Full Post

Agility, Feminism, and Collaboration

So. Hanna Thomas wrote an excellent article a few days back, here. When Lean-Agile methodologies are brought up in progressive spaces, they’re often met with a suspicious side-eye. After all, as Audre Lorde said, ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the… The article was briefly suppressed, but it was restored pretty quickly, and there it is. I told Hanna I’d have something to say about it, and this is that. 🙂 The article has a lot in it. I actually

Agility, Feminism, and Collaboration See Full Post

Old White Guys and Agility

I’d like to take a second to address a trope I see here and there about the founding of the agile community. It’s the stuff about "old white men". Non-trigger warning: relax. This isn’t a rant. BTW, I hate using the word "agile" for our movement, & usually use circumlocutions to avoid it. I believe that, as we grew, through at least some fault of our own, our peaceful and positive vision has become a horrifying stick to hit people

Old White Guys and Agility See Full Post

TDD Pro-Tip: Make The Tacit Explicit

Refactoring Pro-Tip: When I make tacit relationships explicit I nearly always improve my code. Once I move past syntactical refactorings into semantics, this is often my first set of moves. So what does this mean, "tacit" vs "explicit", in code? Maybe the easiest way to come at it is with a very dumb example. The simplest tacit relationship I can think of is modeling a one-to-one relationship using two lists. The first list is composed of tokens. The second list

TDD Pro-Tip: Make The Tacit Explicit See Full Post

Scroll to Top