Thursday, July 23, 2009

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

My students forged the notes. I turned them into a lesson plan.

This is brilliant! Kids writing excuses notes as part of class!


Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?

Tom DeMarco in a 2 page opinion piece has some strong opinions. He starts out slamming his 1982 Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement, and Estimation book. He then writes these gems
  • "To my mind, the question that’s much more important than how to control a software project is, why on earth are we doing so many projects that deliver such marginal value?"
  • "Software development is and always will be somewhat experimental."

I'm a sucker for top 10 lists:
  • Lesson 1. All software is flawed.
  • Lesson 2. Check-in often.
  • Lesson 3. Tests, gotta love them.
  • Lesson 4. Refactor, check-in and repeat.
  • Lesson 5. Coding is easy, humans are tough.
  • Lesson 6. The more eyes on your code the better.
  • Lesson 7. Keep learning and improving.
  • Lesson 8. Simple is beautiful.
  • Lesson 9. Learn software development not coding.
  • Lesson 10. Think about your audience.

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