ThoughtWorks Home Office Day

ThoughtWorks Home Office Day apparently hasn't happened in a while... like, a year or so (although Chi-Fridays happen every month?) Anyway, one of them happened today. I met Ronnigan, who's also a new hire starting in January. I introduced us as Newb One and Newb Two. I met a ridiculous number of people whose names I don't really remember, including the head of TW in the Americas, to whom I said "well, shit." I think that falls under the category of putting my foot in my mouth rather than speaking truth to power. He didn't seem to take it badly.

Joanne explained that TW has a very "flat" structure... which basically means that 1. I will someday get to meet Martin Fowler !!!!!!!! 2. It's normal to mingle socially at company events with people who are serious firepower.

I went to a session on Mingle, which is software that TW made to manage Agile projects with. It looks like it'll actually be useful. I like large parts of the UI. However, I am severely disappointed by how slowly that chart rendered. Seriously, it took over two minutes. Nothing should take over two minutes. Especially something that you need to do all the time...

I went to a session on noSQL, which as cool... mostly review for me, but shiny. MongoDB is a big thing at TW, it seems.

Went to a session on "the cloud" which was interesting. Lots of stuff about how it can apply to current and future TW projects, and things to watch out for... i.e. reserved vs. non-reserved instances.

I wonder what my life would be like if CleverSafe (a cloud services company) had hired me. I hope they fix the problems that the one marketing guy left behind. I still wonder how their algorithms work, dammit. (InStep Software called me to schedule an interview a couple days ago but I told them that I was currently employed. I am charmed that they called, though.)

I went to the lightning talks. I liked the one that was basically a State of the Union talk on what's up with Oracle and Java. It's all a little complicated... There was also a talk from the women's shelter people that the in-office hackathon was benefiting. And one from Julie and her Grace Hopper peeps, so that was cool.

There was a large session which focused on the three columns... breaking up into groups, etc. Post-its are awesome is the lesson here...

I went to the birds of a feather meetup and sat in the dev circle... it was pretty awesome. When Ron said "Flash" he got a kinda incredulous/eew reaction. When I said "crypto" I just got a hell of a lot of perfectly straight faces...

By the way, it turns out that the Borders that I pass on my way to TW has a bitching hacker section in their CS books. It's on the third floor... somehow, before tonight I was under the impression that there were only two floors. -shrug- Now I know. I intend to make some serious purchases someday soon... probably on Amazon, because those books are fucking expensive in-store.

As for further festivities at TW... there was beer pong, and a wine tasting... and excessive amounts of tasty beer, including Sierra and Blue Moon. So I can't fault their taste, although if there had been Guinness or cider I would've chosen that over anything.

After TW, I went to the IIT acappella concert. It was glorious. I think that it's the first time in perhaps several weeks that I've felt genuinely moved by something. They're having some trouble producing and delivering the CD that they took many pre-orders for, several months ago. I wish they would just distribute it on Bandcamp.

One of my friends bought a welding torch and he and some of the guys were practicing pulling good welding beads... on the kitchen floor... which is now scorched... sigh. Well, that can be covered up. I have to say, I'm excited to have access to a torch. (Yes, they also have a helmet facemask shield thing.) I plan to take pics of the welding in action.

Extreme Programming Applied by Auer and Miller

I got this book in the mail today. I don't think that it's the one that TW will want me to buy and read, but this is a fucking excellent book and I'll read their favorite when they tell me what it is, because they haven't done that yet (it's not like it'll take me until January to read it, so that doesn't bother me.)

Extreme Programming Applied by Auer and Miller http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Programming-Applied-Playing-Win/dp/0201616408

Frankly, I bought it because 1. Fowler linked to it and 2. It was $0.01 (+shipping) used.

It is- let me say this again- awesome. It has stories. Which is to say, short biographical case studies. I skimmed the table of contents and then started skipping around in the book. It is tasty. Writing style is important, dammit.

"Suppose the best programmer on your team gets run over by a truck." p.170

I mean, I totally always start with that assumption...

"If I could write code that you couldn't understand, then I was, by implication, smarter than you. You can imagine the stinky code that came out of this group!" p.213

Anyway, the book might not be as entertaining as I think it is right now, but meh. Will see.

Agile

I read http://martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html and it was pretty excellent. I even took a few notes. It prompted me to do a few things, like add some dev books to my Amazon wishlist. And join this mailing list. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/

I learned that XP stands for extreme programming, which is a flavor of agile dev. I met this XP website: http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ which has a list of "rules" i..e progceedures- very useful! I haven't read them yet. But they'll be useful. http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html

To be honest, I feel like my brain is a little fried. It's kinda late in the day and it might be time to have a drink and not stare at a glowing screen. My laptop is running hot. I want hot cocoa.

Here's a site which is less simple and usable (to my eyes) than extremeprogramming.org but the article titles look like I want to read them. http://xprogramming.com/index.php (burn down vs. kanban board? locating bottlenecks. Scrum. http://xprogramming.com/articles/kate-oneal-burning-down/) Aha! pics on Google Images tell me that I have seen kanban boards before, at dfr's old workplace and at TW. (What was the name of dfr's old company? Dammit.)

Here is yet another shiny website. For some reason it has book reviews, but there are also Tests from a Hat! Mmmm. Shiny. http://www.xp123.com/g4p/hat/
Also, Scrum on a page! I think I've seen this before, though hell knows where. http://xp123.com/xplor/xp0507/Scrum-dev.pdf There's one for XP but it looks like an undergrad made it for a giveaway project. Oh gods, I probably just stuck my foot in it hardcore. But it does. Let's make new versions. ...Man, I constantly think of things that my professors could have done better. But if they had done all of those things, the students would have had a nervous breakdown. Or balked like overloaded goats.

Anyway. I just ordered this book (Fowler linked to it) because, honestly, it's one cent on amazon, plus shipping. And the description looks like it'd be useful. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201616408/
Alistair Cockburn (Scrum/agile guy) has a blog but none of the recent titles caught my attention. Should review it delta time. http://alistair.cockburn.us/Blog?view=dlist

http://pettichord.com/ This guy mentions Selenium, which I've at least looked at although not used, and Watir, which I've never heard of. Time to change that.

Ah, Mingle. I think there's a free dl; it'd be interesting to run it locally. Free for up to five users, or for one year? Someone is pretty sure that the product will hook the customer. http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/mingle-agile-project-management

Tasty essay to read later "What is software design?" http://www.bleading-edge.com/Publications/C++Journal/Cpjour2.htm

Basically a white paper on why people are important when doing dev. Probably related to the concept that a teally topnotch guru can program 1000(more more)x faster than a basic. http://alistair.cockburn.us/Characterizing+people+as+non-linear%2c+first-order+components+in+software+development Too complicated for me right now. Maybe later.

Agile Alliance homepage! Very StarWars-sounding. http://www.agilealliance.org/

Golly, Fowler has written a lot. http://martinfowler.com/articles.html If I ever run out of books in an airport I know what I can do with my time.

I think that CS ppl believe that the future is inevitable and that trying to slow it down is [negative word here: silly/stupid/futile/etc]

Omg the manifesto! Must read. Heh. http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ I think that this is the coolest link from that article.

Red/Green refactoring- makes sense. Also, code "smells" (I recently learned what these things are and therefore think that they're cool.) http://jamesshore.com/Blog/Red-Green-Refactor.html

Anyway, I've run out of tabs now.