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SPA2006

SPA 2006 looks like another good year. Not least, of course, because I'm rerunning Storytelling with FIT with Mike Hill and Getting to know your Customer with Andy Pols

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Looks like all conference committees are the same

This one is run by the theorists

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Brian Foote has linked back to my posting and now I realise that I've broken blog etiquette by not providing a "via" link, like this one:

via Brian Foote

A sustainable commons

Bill Caputo (hi Bil!) has been readiing Jared Diamond's Collapse. It's possibly one of the most depressing books I've read. Bill writes about how societies cling to established practices, even when they're disastrous in the current situation.

There is another lesson from the book. There are a couple of examples where societies, for whatever motivation, have managed to sustain the resources on which they depend. One is Iceland and its fishing grounds, another is Japan since the Shogunate and its forests. According to Diamond, Iceland maintains very strict control over catches, even sending inspectors out on the boats. If there's any sign of stress in the stock, the relevant area is closed immediately. This seems to work despite huge temptations for trawler skippers to cheat.

Both cases share some characteristics: ownership aligned with exploitation (in the best sense) and a long-term view. Are these also essential for an Agile project (well, any project really)? The One Team practice says that all the right people have a stake in the success of a project. The organisation must do its best to reduce any motivation for people to game the results and concentrate on finger pointing instead. Similarly, an absolute commitment to quality means that everyone realises that the system has a life beyond its initial sign-off. Someone has to support this stuff, and it might be us.

How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days: Tips and Tricks from 4 Grad Students Who Made Over 50 Games in 1 Semester

I don't even remember how I found this artice

I was trying to avoid working on my lecture slides at the time.

Lisp is Sin

I'm not sure I agree with everything, but it's a good post

Of course, I especially liked:

I've been working on a prototype of something at work - where I started off the usual imperative programming style. Realizing that this wasn't going to scale, I rewrote it in functional style making full use of C#'s anonymous delegates and iterators. When I had to make a major change, it was so much easier to add in extra functionality since I was just passing closures around.

via Don Box

Posted by stevef at 10:07 AM