In this document we show you the Ruby version of the Smalltalk code published in the pink book.

• Both ssh or telnet into the same (remote) Unix machine and account.
• One enters screen, then starts vim, then the other enters screen -x.
• ctrl-d to exit screen)

Linux Gazette article about screen

"The quantity of meaning compressed into a small space by algebraic signs, is another circumstance that facilitates the reasonings we are accustomed to carry on by their aid."

• Charles Babbage, quoted in Iverson’s Turing Award Lecture

paulgraham.com/power.html

The first person to write about these issues, as far as I know, was Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man Month. He wrote that programmers seemed to generate about the same amount of code per day regardless of the language. When I first read this in my early twenties, it was a big surprise to me and seemed to have huge implications. It meant that (a) the only way to get software written faster was to use a more succinct language, and (b) someone who took the trouble to do this could leave competitors who didn’t in the dust.

Brooks’ hypothesis, if it’s true, seems to be at the very heart of hacking. In the years since, I’ve paid close attention to any evidence I could get on the question, from formal studies to anecdotes about individual projects. I have seen nothing to contradict him.

The Cook’s Tour offers an excellent howto to get yourself and your customers into the test-writing mode.

An intro article by Bill Wake.

…I arrived at the classroom ten minutes before the lecture began. I was worried that there wouldn’t be any seats left, but I discovered one at the fourth row from the front so I hurried over and sat down. The classroom, which can hold around 200 people, filled up almost instantly. By the time I entered the room, Mr. Miyamoto was already sitting in a chair next to the blackboard.

Since Miyamoto was apparently too busy to make any special preparations for the event, it was decided to move from a traditional lecture format to a more informal discussion. To start off things, the instructor in charge discussed CERO [the Japanese game rating system], age restrictions, GTA, Kakuto Chojin, and other topics related to game regulation.

And then Miyamoto stepped up to the mike. Applause…

www.video-fenky.com/features/miyamoto.html

 "I can't do all that stuff you say I should do, but how do I handle the situation ..."
  The response:
  -- IT WON'T WORK HERE doesn't work here.

 >Documents work
 >> because you can use them early (models that build knowledge),
 >> because they persist (you're not crippled by your imperfect memory),
 >> because they're efficient (you don't have to keep repeating the same
 >> conversation with perfect fidelity), because they can capture
 >> details (not just vague impressions), because they can be reviewed,
 >> critiqued, and corrected (unlike your trembling thoughts), because
 >> they remain (unlike you, you job-hopper!), etc.

Excellent points. Extreme programming demands this of the code as well as any documents the customer may require.

Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I’ve known, hackers and painters are among the most alike. www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

I asked David Guembel, one of the fathers of the software to email me a short describtion:

 On an abstract level, the idea behind our ganymede system is simple: To make
 an application run under Wine (a free Win32-API layer and Windows
 executable loader), it is neccessary to know what parts of the Windows API
 are actually required by that particular piece of software. Software has a
 modular structure - in this context, a module is a Windows executable
 (.DLL, .EXE, .OCX etc.) - and every module provides (exports) certain
 functionality and requires (imports) functionality from other modules.
 Thus, ganymede internally creates a dependency graph of an application's
 binaries. This method is static and does not require anything but a fresh
 installation of the software to be analyzed.

 Before x-raying a Windows application, ganymede parses and stores an
 analysis of the soure code of one or more Wine versions. It automagically
 determines the implementation state of the APIs provided by Wine. During a
 software analysis, the functionality required by the Windows application is
 compared to what Wine provides, and missing or incomplete APIs are
 reported. By storing Wine versions and the dependency structure of the
 analyzed applications in a database, automatic or manual re-analysis with
 different Wine versions is possible. Via the API ganymede itself provides,
 the collected data is accessible in several ways. One application of that
 API is our tool named sysiphus, which uses ganymede and a GUI-based
 approach to semi-automatically determine the best possible Wine
 configuration while providing for the possibility to re-use already
 licensed Windows DLLs to fill the gaps Wine still leaves.

• The dealer gives the customer all the chips for this iteration
• Then the customer "shuffles" the cards and lays them down
• As each one is laid down, development uses a different color of chips and places the number of chips that story costs.
• If the customer is okay with it, they then take an equivalent number of chips from their "stack" and place it to the "bet" pile.
• If the customer isn't okay with it, the story can be split (kind of like "double down" in blackjack) and/or cards can be "reshuffled"
• At any time, the customer may "reshuffle"
• When the customer is out of chips and is okay with the current "bets" and card order, the planning session is adjourned

• Both ssh or telnet into the same (remote) Unix machine and account.
• One enters screen, [space], vim, then the other enters screen -x.
• ctrl-d to exit screen)

 >An activity that I /do/ still have trouble with, however, is writing.
 > When faced with having to compse anything more substantial than an
 > email response, I feel the fear start to creep in and I get myself all
 > tied in knots.  Even after I start to put some words down, I often
 > find myself getting stuck because the thing isn't flowing and the task
 > of finishing seems overwhelming.

Yup, writers block definitively, as John Roth diagnosed already. But if you’re able to describe it in such flowering detail as above, there’s no need to have it.

 > So on my way home last night (after another frustrating couple of
 > hours trying to get some thoughts on paper), I was thinking about how
 > I could make my prose writing come as easily as my code writing.  I
 > started wondering if I couldn't somehow employ a TDD-like cycle in my
 > writing process.

I am often writing articles with my business partner, who’s<br>especially good at collecting lots of nice stuff on the web. The first thing I have do with the "drafts" I get from him, is to find the<br>structure fitting best to the available data. This is currently donein a Mindmap using freemind (freely available at sf.net, IIRC). For some<br>time I also tried vimoutliner (www.vimoutliner.org) for this, but found that for this process, the two-dimensional display of a mindmap is better suited to my brain.

When the outline is finished, I start to grow the flesh on the bones. That’s relatively easy, as I confine my work strictly to the current paragraph.>

The next step is easy, if I have the time: I let the stuff settle for a few days, then go over it once more and clean up the unbelievable mess I created then. If I don’t have the time, I need to play about two hours nethack, which erases my brain just as well…

So the steps are:

 - data collection
  - gradually by experience
  - by force (coauthor delivery)
 - data organization
   - mindmap
   - outline
 - draft
   - follow the map
   - work local
 - refactor or polish
   - grammar, spelling, rhetoric
   - present line of thought more clearly

I think that there’s a difference between code and prose showing here. You expect your code to give certain results for a given input, and you are free to not care about the implementation at all. With prose, implementation is almost everything. So the cost of providing a "working release" is higher with prose than with code. At least for me.

 >find myself getting stuck because the thing isn't flowing and the task
 >of finishing seems overwhelming.

Writing is like every other kind of art. It is never finished. Feeling better now?

Writing is like dealing with animals. Don’t be afraid of it, and it won’t hurt you.

Your fellow author in pain, S.

(Source: Ron Jeffries in the XP-mailinglist) Well, Don't do Code Reviews, do Pair Programming. Frankly, code reviews are /so/ much worse than pair programming that a dose of them would make me fly to pair. Let's see if we can replicate my experience.

Here's one path through a network of a million decision points:

To do code reviews, everyone has to read the code beforehand, unless you're doing a walkthrough, see below. I'd ask everyone to come together physically to the review. Then I'd ask them to report truthfully how much time they spent reviewing the code. Early on, I would report truthfully that I had spent zero or very little time, in hopes of getting others to admit the truth. When they admit the truth, I'd dismiss the meeting and reschedule it.

Then, after a while, the only alternative is a walkthrough, since no one is preparing effectively for the review. So we do walkthroughs for a while. They are intensely boring, and few people stay involved. Note in your mind the people who are present but not involved. At the end of the session, say, holding your hand up, "Who else had a real problem staying engaged with this walkthrough?" If there's honesty in the room, hands will go up. Prompting may be necessary. Then: "Any ideas?"

Surely someone will think of "doing this in smaller groups or one on one". Try it. Ask the team whether "we should empower the one-on-one folks to change the code, and under what circumstances." Don't mention that this is pair programming.

Try an experiment. You're "interested in collaborative programming". Interested parties should come to the room to help. On the screen, start writing a program. Ask for help with it, get the room to pair with you. Get stuck (no need to fake this if you are me). Someone will start telling you what to do. Don't get it (no need to fake this either). Get them to come up and do it ... grabbing the chair that is accidentally beside you, while you move over.

Note that reviews often find things. Observe how many of them are resisted by the original programmer, or are "too much trouble to fix now". Build a few BVCs relating to time spent prepping, in the meetings, number of useful suggestions (by person if you can do it without problems), number of changes made in response to suggestions, ...

Code reviews are intensely painful, in my experience, and we were trained by Freedman himself. There will be no need to set them up to be perceived that way, though it will take honesty among the group to express it. After doing enough code reviews, which take way more than half the groups' time by the way, a team who has heard of pair programming should be begging to pair. About all you have to do is make sure that no one treats the review session as nap time, and that you are /early/ in recognizing the people who think it's a waste of time. Because they're right.

 A quote from "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl":
 --You're pirates. Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like
 guidelines anyway.

Then I sit here for 3 hours trying to understand why the dammed computer does not do what it should. It’s that feeling I hate most. You waste time .. I mean I could as well go skiing or drink a bottle of vodka .. would be about the same productivity progress on my code and at least I would enjoy the sun.

After hitting my head long enough and starting to isolate the stuff .. I found it .. I had forgotten one return in a most trivial three line long method. Shame on me. Now I will go back to being test-infected. test-first is even better. Dammit .. sorry for the rant, but I doubt there are many systems like computers where one comma at the wrong place can make everything go boom. Oh well, try to modify the DNA and do not know what you are doing. :-).

Amongst other things this article tells you when best to have children :-). [groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/files/when%20should%20we%20test.pdf]