RailsConf 2008 Saturday Night Key Note: Kent Beck
I got lazy and didn't blog about DHH's key note last night. So, before I get on with Kent's salient story-style wisdom, I'll quickly catch up with DHH's.
He suggests that developers have a lousy work/life balance and that more 'life' would be make us better programmers. He's so into this that 37 Signals now only has 4 day work weeks. Man, I like that. Wouldn't it be cool if that would actually catch on.
He also love/hated the growing fame of Rails and noted that our Rails skills will be commoditized. So, therefore, he urged us to continue to invest in one's self. And, he urges, do it in ways that stretch us beyond our normal boundaries. Take a business class. Learn graphic design. The four day work week allows 37 to better to this.
There you go. Now, all about Kent Beck's keynote.
"Brittany Spears has musicianship. Guaranteed, there are singers worse than her who never made it." --Kent Beck.
Since I was typing about DHH to catch you all up and not paying attention to Kent's intro, I have no idea what the context of that quote was. Somebody comment here to let me know.
Ideas with Impact. That's the theme. Perhaps Brittany's music had impact.
OK. Listening now...
He's telling stories from the 60s and 70s. He read the entire patterns book by Alexander standing up, in the book store (was a broke college student). Alexander showed how design patterns and decisions should be user oriented.
On developer testing, Kent states: "Testing's not the point. It's about responsibility; developers taking responsibility for what they write". Couldn't agree more. I've seen over and over that agile dev's main win is encouraging accountability and a sense of personal responsibility for the code we write.
"Ideas with impact are the ones that seem ridiculous until you try them. ... When I wrote the test first and there was no class to support, I felt like I was cheating." *laughs* He continued to write tests then code until he couldn't think of anymore tests that wouldn't work. "That really transformed me."
JUnit was written, test first, using JUnit. And, it didn't explode... which was a good thing because he wrote it while on a plane. Then Fowler liked it. Eclipse integrated it. The rest is history.
He didn't go into the XP story very much. Too bad, I would've liked to hear more.
About the technology adoption curve - ideas with impact follow it like anything. If you want to continue to make impact, you have to think about how ideas get introduced to successively later adopters on the curve. Patterns have lost steam as an idea. The jury is still out on test-first.
Surprise, he's mentioning Zed Shaw's infamous rant, now... The point of any business memo is in the second to the last paragraph. Zed's second to last paragraph, "Rails really needs to have a transparent services market". He wonders why the uproar about the rant and seems to forgive Zed's rage; suggests that "Rails really needs to have a transparent services market" isn't such a bad idea. I agree.
Come back, Zed (and play nice).
Kent is amazed that Ruby programmers put their Ruby code in an IDE not written in Ruby. Thinks that writing an IDE in the 'wrong' language would eventually rub off! CodeGear was in the room. Their Eclipse IDE is pretty slick - I bet they cringed a bit with that comment. Well, Kent is Kent; he can say whatever he wants.
Kent's taking questions now...
How do you find success in mass marketing of ideas? A: Start with what *you* do that works, then amplify it.
How has Agile watered down Extreme Programming and what can we do about it? A: Accountability. Thinks that most shops excuse business as usual with thin veneer of meaningless 'agile'. He repeats accountability, transparency, responsibility. "What would you do if it was YOUR money paying for what you do? Wouldn't be thinking: 'documentation'".
Aside, now: Principal of Mutual Benefit. Try to find a way for everyone to win in any pursued activity.
A good ending, I'd say.
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