So as a semi-unemployed individual, I have a new project is brewing. The Robot Development Lab (RDL) will launch in August of 2024. We will begin accepting applications at GOAT CONF ONE!
We need a multi-disciplinary team and will start with smaller robots and simulated robots before we move you on to the big leagues of programming the real robot dog:
More Details to Follow 😉
We need funding for spare robot parts and renting the studio space required to program dog properly. Please consider becoming a gold sponsor of GOAT CONF or buying sticker on the dog! 500 per joint per year:
As an older gentle-person, I’ve seen the marketing change over time for describing what computer programmers do. When I was child it was Rapid Application Development or RAD. I think this is best term. I like the “extreme” sports nature of it and it fits with the title of this post.
Agile is a modern software development methodology emphasizing adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement. It promotes flexible responses to change and collaboration among self-organizing cross-functional teams.
Agile is perhaps the single biggest contributor to shit code-bases and jaded work-forces. 2-week sprints are hilariously impotent. Especially when you have 6 meetings between sprints and your management-chain infects the process daily. They just yap and you gotta drink it.
Short-term gains become long-term losses as you churn on things that matter to no one but the guy managing the jira/kanban board. But, by all means, keep doing it. It will give me time to catch up.
Because everything is planned and binned in ~2 week sprints, and everyone is RUNNING, nobody stops to smell the flowers. Stopping to think and say, “hey maybe this is architecturally wrong.” There is no time to fix systemic issues in an agile environment. You do look like you are working really hard though and getting it done!
You keep marching towards a false goal and you can’t stop!
Agile is a management technique, not an engineering technique.
Waterfall
Agile was sold as the solution to waterfall. Waterfall is the traditional approach of planning everything out and then after a Critical Design Review (CDR) you then begin to “cut metal” or type code. I believe this approach is still superior because it forces people to think about the entire journey. Not just where they will fill up for gas next.
Agile is a hedge for management that won’t/can’t specify up front what they want/need, because often they don’t know. Only develop what you need as you need it. It would probably work if everything in software wasn’t connected.
While remodeling a house, there is no way that hanging a picture or painting a wall can cause the light-switch to now not only turn on the light, but now it flushes the toilet as well
Scrum
When a word comes from a sport like Rugby. What do you expect this process to look like? It is a giant clusterfuck. All these yappers talking about coding and project management. They are distracting you!
There is no clean code, there is no silver bullet. Work hard, pay attention, ITERATE!
MVP
The Minimum Viable Product is the only thing that Agile may be good for. Thrash, Thrash, Thrash and get something going. But a stable mature “Product” should never probably never use agile. I may die on this hill. Fail as fast as you can and build MVP in a sprint. But don’t ever call it Agile, it isn’t!
Companies / Software Ruined by Agile:
Excel
… now accepting submissions in comments
please help me fix this article into a coherent rant instead of an old man yelling at the clouds 🙂
Freestyle development is when you just have a blank text file and an idea, and you go make something out of nothing. This is the way to get started to make dreams into reality.
As we continue our backslide into live-journal and .plan files, lets focus our attention to the pin board. This technique probably started by drawing lines in the sand or putting charcoal to a cave wall that has some sunlight a single part of the day.
Maps on paper are fairly short-lived. Sand even shorter. The map is part of a plan. The map is not the territory. Use it that way at your own peril.
Mood Boards or Pin Boards?
Analog is better than digital here (to an extent)
Mood Boards
Colors
Props pictures
entire room photographs
anything and anything
Throw Stuff in and out Really Fast
Don’t move towards the “real” world until you have a healthy pinboard or moodboard going. Physical or Electronic. Spreadsheets are very useful pinboards!
Have fun, fail fast, move on to the real challenges!
I try not to start a git repository before I have something worth saving. Sometimes I will work without the safety-net of an enterprise version control system. Copy pasta of directories with names. Poor man’s version control.
design_old
design_old_may20
design_archive_jan10
Sometimes you don’t know what you have is worth keeping. The Beatles would famously never write down songs and force themselves to recall the good ones over a period of time. If they couldn’t remember it, why would a fan find it memorable?
With this as our setting, lets drop some media I’ve been creating with my brother in law:
CommandPattern.org 