Livets mening m.m.

Da jeg var yngre brugte jeg rigtig meget energi på at finde ud af var svaret var på livets store spørgsmål: Hvad er meningen med livet? Dengang var jeg sikker på at der var et entydigt svar på dette spørgsmål for alle mennesker. Nu er jeg omkring halvvejs og livets mening er rykket lidt i baggrunden. Sagt på en anden måde: Meningen med livet er nogenlunde gået op for mig.

Status: 3 dejlige børn, 1 kone, 1 hus, 1 bil, 1 marsvin, 1 job, 1 familie.

Hvad der bekymrer mig i dag er flere ting og på flere niveauer:

I mit eget liv:

- Mit og konens helbred

- Min søns helbred

I Danmark:

- At vi fortsætter ud af en kurs med mindre demokrati, uforståelig fokus på penge og økonomisk vækst som altings mål. Penge er kun papir!

I Verden:

- Overbefolkning

- Krig

- Sult

- Miljø

Mit håb:

I mit eget liv:

- Helbredelse af min kone og min egen Colitis Ulcerosa

- Styr på min søns fremtid.

- Forening af mine skildsmisseramte forældre. Dvs. at de kan kommunikere.

I Danmark:

- At nogle visionære politikere vinder valget. Politikere der er i stand til at brug balanceret menneskelig vækst som mål.

I Verden:

Det driver jo af kliché men:

- Fred, fordragelighed, religiøs forening, færre våben, fokus på miljø, styr på befolkningsvækst, bedre fordeling af verdens resourcer.

Dan North at JAOO 2009 - Adventures of an Agile Architect

Dan North gave his talk: "Adventures of an Agile Architect". Dan is an excellent performer - and one is quite sure to be entertained by his talks. He had very few simple slides but a bunch of interesting stories.

(writers note: This post was originally intended for today.jaoo.dk but I thought I'd start by posting it here as a draft since nobody reads this blog anyway :-) Thanks to Rolf Njor Jensen for co-authoring this post!)

Have a shaman - be a shaman

Every team needs a shaman. A shaman is person who tells stories. So, when someone in the team asks "Why the hell is this code like this?". The Shaman tells the story of this partibular piece of code, its past and how it fits into the rest of the stuff.

Strip away everything you can

When you start to strip away stuff that has no real value in your codebase. You of course will get a simpler system. But another advantages is that other unnecessary stuff pops up and becomes visible.

Use transitional architectures

Developing software is performing structural changes on existing bodies of code, occasionally adding new pieces of code and chipping away old, unnecessary code. If you want a nice loosely coupled architecture with good performance but your current architecture is a big pile of crap. Then it might sometimes be necessary to take one step at a time and for instance start by removing all God classes. An architecture with no God classes then becomes a transitional architecture (or you could say a temporary solution). This architecture does not fully fulfil the goal but is one step towards the wanted solution. It is very important that everyone are aware of the fact that the transitional architecture is not the final solution.

Dan gave another example of a transitional architecture namely to get from the current build system to Ivy. Maven was used as a transitional solution. Maven is this obsessive compulsive friend. When you bring Maven on a date it brings all its friends from all over the internet. The obsessive compulsive disorder has one advantage: Since Maven is very rigid about the placement of different parts of the source less duplicated code is created (since developers discover that the needed code has already been developed before introducing a duplicate solution). After Maven had done its tricks the team was ready to move to Ivy. As Dan put it “When bringing Ivy on a date, Ivy asks if he can bring one of his friend who will clean up the house during the dinner”.

Avoid Standup Stasis

Dan gave a nice demo of how daily standups should not be performed. It is hard to replicate in words so I will try with a strip instead:

The team that Dan started working on as an consultant had stopped doing daily scrums. Dan asked how they used to do it and the team did as the above strip tries to explain – i.e. everybody on the team just reported. No one listened and no one commented on others statuses – Scrum Stasis. The team refused to start doing scrums again so Dan did a clever trick. The next day he said “Well I've just had this fantastic idea: why don't we meet each morning and have a chat about the rest of the day answering the question - how we can have the best today?”. The team thought this was a brilliant idea and this way Dan North reintroduced daily scrums (without using the term).

Finally, here is a list of points and citations that did fit into this post:

• There is always a reason

• Ensure deterministic deployment

• You shouldn't "buy" architecture

• Nice architects listen, and are not-very-self-important.

• “Take a pile of crap A, take another (larger) pile of crap B, and make them into a nice lightweight group of services.”

Hvidt i hvidt

Jeg er træt af ikke at kunne have mine trælofter i fred. Hvorfor skal alt tapes til med intetsigende gipsplader. Hvidt i hvidt se det er flot! Naej, hvor er det intetsigende flot, og se alt det lys det giver. Hvad var der galt med et hjem med lidt farver og lidt karakter? Hvorfor skal alt være så pænt? Det gælder sgu også alle de kedelige nybygger kvarterer, hvor det hele skal være åh så pænt og åh så intetsigende. Når kvinderne har fået deres vilje over hele landets indvendige og udvendige indretning, så skal jeg love Jer for, at så flygter alle mændene og det duer jo ikke så...

Tag os sammen!

Det må være slut! Du danske mand, tag dig sammen! Sig nej til din kone! Bestem selv over hjemmet så det ikke ender med hvidt i hvidt.

My JAOO 2009 Master Plan

Below is my master plan - it presents which presentations I'm going to attend this year:

Monday

10:15:

Dynamic in a World of Static

Mads Torgersen

Location: C103 Music Hall

.NET Design Functional languages Languages

11:30

Introducing Clojure

Rich Hickey

Location: C103 Music Hall

13:30

Techniques That Still Work no Matter How Hard We Try to Forget Them

Keith Braithwaite

Location: Store Sal

Process

14:45

Making use of Patterns

Martin Fowler

Location: Store Sal

Architecture Design Enterprise Patterns

OR

Something else

16:15

Balancing Agility and Architecture

Barry Boehm

Location: Lille Sal

Agile Architecture Process

OR

Intentional Software

Magnus Christerson & Mats Helander & Rebecca Parsons

Location: C103 Music Hall

Languages

Tuesday:

Concurrency Track all day except:

Yes, you Really Can Have Agility and High Maturity at the Same Time

Gitte Ottosen & Jan Reher

Location: Store Sal

This is a personal must see as a former Systematic employee.

Wednesday:

10:15

Case Study: Wind Sports Mashup on Google App Engine

Jakob Aarøe Dam

Location: Store Sal

OR

Introduction to Objective-C

Kresten Krab Thorup

Location: Lille Sal

iPhone Languages

11:30

Engineering in Five Dimensions

Michael T. Nygard

Location: Filuren

Architecture Enterprise

13:30

Deliberate Practice in Software Development

Mary Poppendieck

Location: Rytmisk Sal

Agile Process

14:45

The Representation of Architectural Knowledge

Philippe Kruchten

Location: Filuren

Architecture Design Process

OR

something else

16:15

Software Visualization 101+

Michele Lanza

Location: Filuren

Design Process

OR

something else

Sprint Ready tilføjet af hvem?

Jeg kunne ikke dy mig og kommenterede på Version2's artikel om Systematics fantastiske effektivitetsforbedring ved hjælp af SCRUM. http://www.version2.dk/artikel/11838-dansk-software-virksomhed-bag-forbedret-scrum-model

Skanderborg 2009 - av mit hår

Skanderborg 2009 - av mit hår

Konen og jeg var på Skanderborg festival i går og det var rigtig godt. Masser af drikkelse, masser af god musik, masser af smukke og glade mennesker og frem for alt ingen børn at skulle være ansvarlige overfor :-)

Drikkelse

Var med på den guidede tour i år - det kan kraftigt frarådes. Vi fik drinks hele tiden så det var svært at ramme den perfekte brandert (den hvor man kun kan se hegnet og har det sjovt...) - med indtagelse af masser af vand og lækkert mad efter rundturen fik jeg noglunde kontrol over min.

Musik

Musikken ville jeg godt have hørt lidt mere af. Jeg skulle have brugt lidt mere tid på at studere programmet - så havde jeg nok haft nemmere ved at ramme det rigtige. Jeg fik hørt Veto og der blev jeg utrolig glad for mit ørepropper. Ikke fordi musikken var dårlig, men fordi deres tunge basgange fik folks bukser til at flagre.

Sidste år på Skanderborg nød jeg rock trilogien Saybia, Carpark North og Kashmir og selvom jeg er stor Kashmir fan var det faktisk Carpark North, der var den bedste koncertoplevelse sidste år. Det var det også i år! Carpark North var for vilde - veloplagte, velspillende og med 10 års fødselsdag gav de den hele armen. Zididada var også en positiv oplevelse dog kun momentvis.

Jeg føler mig gammel.

Jeg føler mig gammel når jeg tager til Skanderborg festival og snakker med folk på under 25 og betragter dem teenagere. Jeg føler mig gammel når jeg har ondt i håret 3 dage efter at have drukket mig kun halvvejs i hegnet.

Indlæg på JAOO blog

Det lykkedes mig at tage mig sammen til at få skrevet et indlæg om hvorfor jeg synes det er fedt at Urs Hölzle kommer til JAOO i år på JAOO community bloggen se http://blog.jaoo.dk