Nothing New

What Jim is observing is a problem, but I don't see this as a decline
from a previous position. This has been a problem all along...

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/11/decline-of-agile

"James Shore has declared agile to be in decline. He cites the many
teams doing 'sprints' and stand-up meetings, without adopting any of
the technical practices necessary to produce high-quality software
over the long-haul. In his estimation, this has led to thousands of
Scrum teams doing agile so poorly that they will almost certainly
fail, and possibly take the agile movement with them.

James lays a large portion of the blame on Scrum, and the
misapplication of Scrum. He compares Scrum with Extreme Programming
(XP) and notes that Scrum intentionally leaves out the engineering
practices that XP includes. Scrum is silent on topics such as pair
programming, test driven development, continuous integration, and test
automation. Without such practices, a team can quickly build a large,
buggy, and unmaintainable code base. This then becomes a weight around
the neck of the team, preventing them from responding quickly to
change, as an agile team should.

James thinks it's not all the fault of Scrum, however, as each team
must take responsible for its own success or failure. Many are
choosing to adopt only the superficial, and easy, parts of Scrum such
as short development sprints and daily stand-up meetings, while
ignoring harder, yet critical practices such as reflecting and
improving. Via this process, teams are empowered to identify and adopt
the engineering practices that they need to deliver shippable software
every iteration. Unfortunately, many teams fail to take this step."

Edison

Back a long time ago when I'd just started my full-time professional
programming career I was using Common Lisp and a couple of different
Modula-like languages. My employer, Data General, also had an Ada
compiler which I dinked around with. And we had a home-grown
compiler-compiler and a home-grown Ada-ish like language. Not long
after the Mac 512 was out and I had ExperLisp, MacScheme, Manx C, and
who can remember what else.

I was immersed in languages. Reading the journal "Software Practice
and Experience" I believe was the first time I encountered Per Brinch
Hansen's language, Edison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Brinch_Hansen

"The Design of Edison" (pdf): http://brinch-hansen.net/papers/1981b.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-personal-computer-Brinch-Hansen/dp/0137302673

I absolutely fell in love with Edison for many months. I built a
mini-Edison compiler and run-time in Common Lisp. The Edison book had
all the source code, in Edison.

Edison is Brinch Hansen's really nice attempt at a minimalist
Concurrent Pascal. If you can imagine a Pascal that is more Pascal
than Pascal, then you've imagined Edison.

"In designing the programming language Edison I tried to do two things:
(1) to achieve simplicity by questioning the necessity of a number of well-
known language concepts, and (2) to gain new insight by deliberately ap-
proaching language design with a philosophy that is completely different
from the spirit in which Concurrent Pascal was designed."

"The first viewpoint gradually led to the omission of many language fea-
tures..."

"reals
subrange types
variant records
files
pointers
unnamed types
goto statements
case statements
repeat statements
for statements
with statements
cycle statements
init statements
multiple class instances
parameterized classes
monitors
process modules
process queues"

Ultimately Edison did not hold my attention as a minimalist language.
I was discovering Scheme as a minimalist Lisp about the same time, and
Scheme did hold my attention. I never had a full Edison running, but I
still think building something large-ish in it would have been time
well spent.

I've been building a very simple, minimalist Lisp in ActionScript 3
based on a renewed interest in building simple operating systems in
Lisp. I started re-reading "The Design of Edison" from SP&E, and I
just ordered the Edison book, as it's been 15-20 years since I sold my
original.

http://twitter.com/patrickdlogan/status/960085525

Good times.

Service Frame-querks

More from Patrick Mueller's sudden blogginess...

"The level of functionality we have today, provided by the browsers, for components/modularity of javascript code is <script src="">. Basically, all the power, flexibility, and functionality of the C preprocessor's #include statement (good and bad). But I'm looking at my calendar to see what year this is again. Doh!

The big JavaScript frameworks build their component stories on top of this, and the whole thing just gives me the willies looking at it."

http://pmuellr.blogspot.com/2008/11/javascript-service-frameworks.html

Patrick also mentions Java's service frame-querkiness with class loaders, jar files, etc. I don't know much about OSGi - which he and others suggest plugs some holes.

Dang. I agree these are issues. I am wondering though how simple a language can be, and fill the service frame-querkiness some other way. For one thing, language-level frame-querks don't play well together across multiple languages. Unless you cram them together into a single VM and make them all conform to some base-level language concepts.

Patrick heads in this direction when he writes about GoogleGears WorkerPools as a potential mechanism for better service isolation...

The great thing about the WorkerPool stuff is that it brings another dimension to the JavaScript story - separate environments / contexts / spaces. The ability to have a bunch of code running, separated into protected object spaces, with very explicit communication channels open between these spaces.

There is little that's language-dependent about that. And this lowers the burden on what must be "in" the language per se.

We Have A Problem: Citi

From portfolio.com...

"America, we have a problem. Citigroup is the largest bank in America,
with a balance sheet of over $2 trillion -- and it's also the most
dysfunctional. Since Vikram Pandit took over, Citi has lost not only
$20 billion but also more than 70% of its market capitalization,
making it now worth significantly less than, say, Genentech.
...
Citi might well turn out to be Hank Paulson's largest and biggest headache."

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/11/13/citis-desperate-straits?tid=true

IntelliJ now supports Flex

http://www.jamesward.com/wordpress/2008/11/13/intellij-idea-80-adds-flex-support/

Whatsits

Patrick Mueller writes...

It's time to stop thinking we can apply bandages to the status quo and make everything better. We want to believe. Just another gadget or framework is going to make everything better! We've brainwashed ourselves.

Big Picture: A+

Big Picture honors Veteran's Day and current military with an incredible sequence, including the following...

What struck me most are the A+ marks on this soldier's boots.

Now in print from Lulu: "Practical Artificial Intelligence Programming in Java, third edition"

http://markwatson.com/blog/2008/11/my-new-book-practical-artificial.html

Purchased PDF and print, based on reviewing the free book (same content):

http://www.markwatson.com/opencontent/

Instant Runoff Elections

(Now with correct spelling of the Democratic party. Surry.)

Oregon said no the measure for "open primaries". I was mixed on this
measure. I joined the Democratic party this year specifically to vote in
the primary. I have yet to drop my party affiliation, although I still
consider myself an independent. And in spite of the fact that I vote
Democratic nearly 100% because the few politicians I actually believe in
are Dems, and because the others tend to come across to me as the
better of bad choices.

I voted no on the measure for two reasons: I'd heard mixed reviews for
open primaries run in other locations, so on that count I decided to
be conservative by keeping the current closed primary. My ultimate
reason for a no vote: I am more interested in "instant runoff"
elections than "open primaries". I believe if we had passed this
measure then the odds of getting a measure for instant runoff passed
in the next few years would be significantly lower.

From Blue Oregon, "it's time for instant runoff"...

http://www.blueoregon.com/2008/11/its-time-for-in.html

Instant runoff seems to provide a means of encouraging "third party"
candidates, and of supporting voting for those candidates without
"wasting" a vote.

Cool For A Day

"For a day, at least, newspapers were cool again."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/politics/2008/11/the_people_want_papers.html

I stopped at a store early Wednesday evening to buy a paper, for
reasons unrelated to the election. I was surprised to hear the clerk
say they were sold out, and she said so was the drugstore a block down
the street.

A President's CTO?

From Bob Warfield...

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/who-should-obama-hire-to-be-americas-cto/

I don't think a single CTO or CIO, whatever that would mean in the
context of an administration, makes sense whatsoever.

What would make more sense to me would be a collection of people
meeting peridoically in a "roundtable" like format for ongoing general
topics a president should be aware of. Or perhaps a "technology
council" to address specific issues that would benefit an
administration by producing a "recommendation" on that specific issue.

-Patrick

New PC Business Model

From James Robertson...

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=The_Ground_Shifts_in_the_PC_Space&entry=3403023822

I wonder when Apple will be forced into that market. I'm sure it will
be distinguished nonetheless.

The business model is interesting. If these boxes will come with a
WiMax antenna, then a contract with ClearWire / Sprint / whomever
would be interesting.

Oregon's Two Dem Sens: Go Mount Hood!

Oregon now has two Democrat senators.

http://www.blueoregon.com/2008/11/smith-concedes.html

It's not easy to replace a senator, especially in Oregon. Now there
are two Democrats. The pair are both relatively young and could remain
in office together for many terms.

Not so long ago Oregon had two fairly moderate Republicans who did
very well serving together for a long time. Mark Hatfield served five
terms and especially stands out for me as a true "maverick". He stood
up to his party and the senate generally on several military issues
including the Vietnam War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hatfield

Bob Packwood had his share of problems, but all in all was on the
better side of the senator scale.

Wyden and Merkly can do good things for Oregon and the country. For my
own interest, we should get a decent wilderness bill passed. Oregon is
woefully low on land actually designated as wilderness. In the
Portland area specifically they should come up with a better Mount
Hood Wilderness act than Wyden could get with Smith. And they should
be able to get it passed through a Democrat Senate and House.

Feeling Like Joe Berkovitz

I read Joe's blog for Flex/Flash information. But he captured my
position well this morning...

"I don't know who Barack Obama really is, or what he will do about the
dire place our country has been taken to. All I know is this: for a
change we elected someone who is candid about our problems, and is
obviously an intelligent and kind person. In America, something as
simple as this is something to be proud of: look at where we've been.
Elections are in the realm of appearances, but we are emerging from an
era in which we have both appeared and acted monstrously, to others
and to each other. So, for a moment, I'm celebrating this result.
And hoping for some real action to follow."

http://www.joeberkovitz.com/blog/2008/11/05/a-brief-moment-of-pride/

It's going to be a tough row to hoe. Obama seems to have the
leadership skills and disposition to make good things happen. Put
working across the aisle aside for a moment... the Democrat party in
and of itself is extremely diverse. Even with decent majorities in
Congress this will be a fair bit like herding cats. Tigers and lions
maybe.

WTF

From a tweet by Patrick Mueller...

Our Westford, MA office actually has a building named "WTF4"? Is there a WTF1..3 also? WTF?

California Prop 8

California Prop 8 is leading. Sorry California - you seem to have as many ignorant asses as the rest of the country.

Do we get to keep the married friends we've already gathered?

To LtU w/Love

"Via Patrick (who was once a LtU contributor), two interesting blog posts:..."

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3052

Still an avid reader - just had to drop off some extra-curricular
activities a while back.

Word Play

Please to be explaining this one to me from the Financial Times...

In recent days, lawyers for the nine banks that received the government funds held talks over how to respond to calls for pay restraint from Congress and state regulators, according to people familiar with the situation.

The companies – Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo – said they would not spend public money on compensation, the people added. Wall Street executives say that banks will pay bonuses from earnings and existing cash resources, like in previous years, and use the government capital for acquisitions and to replenish their depleted balance sheets...

The banks declined to comment on the conference call. Wall Street executives say that after one of the worst years for the industry, average bonuses will be down sharply this year.

However, they argue that they will still have to pay substantial compensation to star bankers and traders in order to avoid a brain drain from the industry into rival sectors such as private equity and hedge funds.

Let's say I have $100 and the government bails me out with another $100 and says, "You cannot spend this on booze." But then let's say I spend $100 on booze, saying, "I used my own money."

Did I follow the instructions of my benefactor?

For crying out loud. I think we can afford to let these folks go, or live on a few billion less in bonuses.

Open Source Bridge in PDX

Here's a presentation from the first meeting of folks organizing the Open Source Bridge conference for Portland next summer...

A blog and etc. is in place.

NPR's Slip of the Pen

Hilarious slip-up...

Former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein tells Fareed Zakaria that he will vote for Barack Obama. Duberstein lambasted McCain for selecting Sarah Palin on MSNBC today.

Yesterday on Talk of the Nation, Lawrence Eagleburger -- Bush 41's Secretary of State -- said he will vote for McCain even though he does not believe Sarah Palin is "prepared to take over the brains* reins of the presidency." He added that, given some training, she would be "adequate".

*We apologize for the error. NPR's rush transcript was inaccurate.

Not to mention thsi makes two more less-than-ringing endorsements of McCain's leadership.