Arlo’s team wanted to be extreme, and they started with one of the XP practices, pair programming. Going extreme meant that they would pair program all the time. No code produced by a single person was allowed to be checked into the repository.
But, pair programming is also a pretty new and relatively undefined practice. There were still a lot of questions open, among them:
How long should each pairing session last?
The most interesting and eye-opening talks at EuroPython 2007 were probably Arlo Belshee’s talks on agile methodologies and his team’s experiments and results in that regard. The following blog posts summarizes what I learned from listening to his talks, doing his XP workshop, discussions with him, and digging up related information on the web (such as a paper and a podcast). I strongly believe this could be the next phase in how we develop software, and I hope I’ll be able to whet your aptetite for change as well 
Enough is enough.
Say no to Microsoft OOXML becoming an ISO standard by signing this petition.
ODF is a completely free and perfectly viable format for such information. Despite Microsoft attempts at stating otherwise, it has already been proven to be able to store any information MS Office needs to store; there’s not even any reason for OOXML to exist. It’s such an obvious attempt at confusing the public; let’s show we’re not confused.
Some cool REST links I’ve come across lately:
I have good luck with this trick on several Sony Ericssons (including W800i and now K800/K800i):
ABDeviceCommandSets.plist in the /Applications/Address\ Book.app/Contents/Resources/Telephony.bundle/Contents/Resources/ directory with the editor of your choiceK700 and create an identical line underneath it, replacing K700 on the new line with your (hopefully compatible) model number; in my case I added two lines, one for K800 and one for K800i, just to be sureRestart the AddressBook, and SMS away.
In early May 2007 something amazing happened. Hollywood’s most guarded secret, the key to decrypt HD-DVDs, was found and released on the Internet, via the site digg.com. At first Kevin Rose, the Digg founder, felt pressured by Hollywood lawyers to take down the key, but this made Digg users go completely ballistic, and in the end Kevin posted the code himself saying something to the sort of “this may be the end for us, but at least we went down fighting” (see original post). The key in hex, in case you wonder, is:
09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
Even the iphone didn’t generate this much attention, the blogsphere was flooded with reactions from the two factions: “digg surrenders to mob” and “the truth will not be silenced”. I’m afraid I, with most techies and new media people, belong with the last group that thinks DRM is the Next Big Evil.
People went out of their way to spread the code, to the point of creating songs. The first song wasn’t really that good, but then Geoff Smith created a song called “Digg the Code” that Cali Lewis of the GeekBrief.tv podcast put video on…. What can I say, it’s awesome:
There are currently more occurences of this “secret code” on the net than there are HD-DVD players in the world.
I’m a slow reader, but I’ve found a way to catch-up: podcasts.
Of the podcasts I’ve listened to recently, these two were really interesting. Both were from the excellent IT Conversations and they talk about how these very successful startups came about. The John Newton one also talks a lot about open source business models in an industry that’s quite dear to me: content management.
This is just awesomely creative:
I never really got into web browsing on the phone, especially not without a qwerty keyboard; it’s just too painful to type in those long URLs.
But, the other day I was just idling waiting for someone for dinner, and I thought I’d try Google Reader, which is Google’s web based RSS/Atom reader; I use it as my RSS reader when I’m on the Mac, and I’m quite happy with it.
Turns out (no surprise, I guess) that Google Reader has a mobile version. Unlike their Google Mail for mobile, this is not a Java app, it’s just a different set of templates that fit better for a smaller screen. It worked… really well! Time passed quickly. Try it out!