Dear smart geeks: stop worrying so much about whether you’re gonna get it wrong, you definitely are gonna get it wrong. How do I approach this? Hmmmm. Okay, I see a couple of threads that need to be pulled together. This one’s gonna be clunky, I fear. Ahhh well. I’m definitely gonna get it wrong, […]
You’re Gonna Be Wrong Read More »
Think about your last huge unrequited crush. A real one, I m talking. A crush so big you go to sleep thinking of your future together, and wake up, ummm, guilty. The kind of crush that great romantic stories are made from, and for. The wobbly-knee d kind. And a complete non-starter: when I say
Your Design Is Broken: It’s TDD, not TDYAR Read More »
I’ve been mulling over what I do as a coach, for lo these many years, actually, and I feel like sharing some of it. I coach: I create or exploit openings through which individuals, including sometimes myself, can step closer to who they wish they were. I came to coaching early on in the movement.
When I think about teams, I think about them with a strange mixture of metaphors. First I see a thing that is in some respects like one of our classic pictures of an atom. There’s some particles in the middle, and some others that seem somewhat clearly "outside" like the electrons in their clouds. But
The Team And Three Flows Read More »
Friend Matt asked me to elaborate on "the noobification of everything" in the geek trades. This is a floppy vague one as yet, so be prepared to play fast and loose. The so-far endless demand for new software has created a poor skills distribution curve into the trade. Divide ever-so-arbitrarily our ranks into 5, dreyfus-style
The Noobification Of Everything Read More »
Thinking this morning about strange borders, led there by a typically weird geepaw route. If u didn’t know, coaches sit around all the time and bitch about their clients. This is perfectly ordinary and maps onto all jobs I think. Such behavior is "good thing, but". It’s important to do and it’s risky as hell.
Strange Borders (And Bitching) Read More »
Today’s muse, another damned geepawism: RORA technique. RORA means "Runs Once, Run Away". It is the standard technique in a great many software dev environments. A developer is tasked with some story. She codes it using a variety of half-assed techniques, including mostly GAK testing. More geepawism: GAK means "geek at keyboard" testing. You know
RORA – Runs Once, Run Away Read More »
I often say "how am I gonna test this?" but — language being what it is — my meaning in asking that is not likely graspable by a noob. To get at what i’m really wondering when I ask this, I may have to take a few asides & detours. First. Why am I writing
How’m’I Gonna Test This? Read More »
A friend asks what to do about a bad pair. That’s a juicy one, and prods me to muse. Why do we pair? It’s one of the techniques we adopt to increase productivity. That’s measured in geekery by insights per hour, or such like. Maybe if we understand what makes good pairing, we can get
UPDATE: This post has been restructured and made into a video, you can view it here. Here are five underplayed premises of TDD. Why "underplayed"? Well, they’re there. Hardcore TDD’ers model them all the time. But it feels like they just don’t get the camera time. I want TDD coaches and teachers to step back
Five Underplayed Premises of TDD Read More »
