Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Along with a number of others, Alan Knight was interviewed for this book. Check it out.

Update

In case the link doesn't make it clear, this book is in German

Analysts and industry pundits all have the same blinkered view of software development. They say that no one should be doing Smalltalk, because everything will be either Java or .NET in 12 months. That's funny, because they were saying something awfully similar (but without .NET) 2 years ago. In this commonly held view, I presume that all the PERL, PHP, Ruby, and Python development are a mistake as well, since they aren't part of the mainstream. But hey, what's a little fact checking on usage statistics and actual utility to developers if you have the right chair? Why bother thinking about the 70% failure rate of Java projects - as reported by Gartner - at all, so long as you tell people what you think they want to hear? The main reason the analysts give for using Java is that everyone else uses it. Well. What did your mother say about things everybody else did?

But I found this rant amusing. Someone break out the Prozac!

Take a look at this CNET story

"The U.S. Defense Department should think twice before embracing open-source software, a trade association is advising. The Initiative for Software Choice, which counts Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Intel among its backers, said in comments filed Tuesday that the department should 'avoid crafting needless and potentially detrimental IT policy to promote the use' of open-source software. 'Open source' means every software developer can view the source code for software, modify it, and use it for free. The initiative, which launched in May and is chaired by a group called CompTIA, an organization that has close ties to Microsoft, is worried about a recent report that concluded the Defense Department relies on open-source software and recommended its further adoption..."

and then take a look at this from the Register

I am currently doing some new media projects in an emerging market country. As one of the reasons I was sent there was that I care about cost, I decided to develop the projects based on Open Source. The main reason for choosing Open Source software was:

1. Licensing Cost for Server Software
2. Openness, i.e. the ability to change software to fit our purpose
3. Security & Reliability and (last not least)
4. Low hardware requirements.

The fourth reason was very important as I didn't want to buy any new hardware for the servers and instead reuse existing old hardware and extend its lifetime by using Open Source Server software. We decided to Use FreeBSD, Apache, mySQL+PostgreSQL, Perl+PHP The company I am working with is a pure-Microsoft company, i.e. they only used to use Microsoft software, and they even didn't know anything about Open Source. It was a painful but successful transition. But this is not the reason I am writing. The reason is Microsoft itself. When the local Microsoft rep "heard" (someone inside the company tipped them off), they asked to meet my team(!) and discuss the reasons for our Open Source use.

That much attention means that the industry powers are worried...

for the next week. I am headed to the XP conference in Brazil, and I have no idea what kind of network connections to expect. I'll have my wireless card; gosh knows if the show is big enough (like OOPSLA) to provide wireless connectivity. So if you see no postings for awhile, you'll know why...

My hotel here in Sao Paulo has a broadband connection, so I'm able to get on with decent access. I even got some sleep on the way down - the miles needed for a business class seat were well worth it. I'v got some interesting stuff on stagnation in the Java world - the JCP specifically. but I'm waiting for my source to pass me a live link - all I got was an html doc. Here's an excerpt though:

Even as IBM releases its latest version of its J2EE-based Websphere application server with several key supports for web services, a key IBM Websphere exec says it's tough for J2EE vendors to push the web services envelop because Sun and current JCP (Java Community Process) rules are "blocking innovation."

This story make a lot of good points I agree with. Sun managed to deal with MS every bit as well as Brer Rabbit's enemies dealt with him. No, no, don't throw me into the briar patch...

Sun spent several years in litigation with Microsoft for purposes of nullifying Microsoft's Java license. Vast sums of money (far more than $20 million) were spent on legal fees for purposes of trying to prevent Microsoft from using Java any longer. Sun declared a victory. Now Sun, having gotten a settlement forbidding Microsoft from further work on Java, is back in court. It's suing Microsoft again. It wants a court order forcing Microsoft to include the Virtual Machine in XP distributions.

anyone else getting dizzy from all the twists and turns here?

I'm on my way to the XP show here in Sao Paolo - if I have network access, I may have some comments from the show. It should be interesting - I speak Friday, so I have plenty of time to watch other speakers and get a feel for the show first.

and took notes. He had a good talk, and after the audience opened up, lots of questions. an amusing thing happened (which I only found out about later) - whenever Kent said Smalltalk, the translation came back as personal conversation. That will have to get addressed before I speak, or my talk will be baffling. Anyway, here are the notes I took:

Kent Beck - "Learning to Steer"

1. introductory caveat - software development varies with culture, ymmv
2. Driving metaphor - driving is not about aiming the car, it's about making constant adjustments - speed, direction, etc.
3. asks audience for some questions, will put on paper and address them

Questions:

1. XP in 5 or size words?
2. How was eXtreme programming born (creation myth)
3. Is the experience (inexperience) of the team important?
4. what is the relationship between XP and RUP
5. Conversational dev?
6. applying pair programming?
7. Is CMM relevant, and can it work with XP?
8. Initiation of an XP project?
9. XP - relationship with Q/A and testing?
10. How much planning is enough?
11. Risk management with regards to contracts?
12. How does XP scale by project size; is there an ideal size?
13. stories and project management
14. Documentation?
15. How much of the dev process does XP cover?
16. Partial Adoption of XP?

In the course of the talk, Kent will address the top three

---

System Dynamic - reference to physical design and manufacturing

1. break product into discrete steps
2. keep machines busy building parts - build up an inventory
3. no feedback, so more waste

Premise - this is about software, not hardware. The more inventory, the more waste and the less feedback. This is bad One possibility - keep less inventory in order to reduce waste
Question answered - What is the goal of XP?
What is the goal of Software Development - getting a steady flow of quality Kent now admits that he is not talking about machines or manufacturing - but instead about the design/development process, and all the people providing services (analysts, designers, etc). For the last thirty years, we have been pushing for more inventory (documents) Even in manufacturing, little to no inventory is now the goal Refutes commonly held assumption that XP does not involve design - it just attempts to reduce the inventory Work in Process Inventory

-- Unrecoverable investment (Opportunity cost)
---- Types
	Code
	Tests
	Design decisions
	Specifications
	Documentation
	Defects
-- Detail not yet in production

(Jet lag caught me here - dozed off for about 10 minutes or so)
Very, very difficult to accelerate your development schedules, based on developer expectations alone new style of marketing, sales, customer service, and engineering
what if you have a website, and want to push a release every two weeks?

1. Have to move towards a more continuous release process - one without
2. formal code freezes
C3 - one defect in 9 months of bi-weekly releases LifeWare - What if you want to release DAILY?

3. Ultimate in YAGNI - no code in system that hasn't actually been used by a real customer - workflows not requested have not been implemented
4. You HAVE to believe that your tests actually cover everything
5. Have had one rollback in last two years

Standish Group - 85% of features in typical IT systems are never used. The key is to pick what you don't implement, and you go 7X faster Inexperienced teams will have a larger inventory, since they haven't learned what they need to know yet. "Does XP work for inexperienced teams? NOTHING works for inexperienced teams." "How do we use analysts (experts) to help inexperienced developers? XP has many feedback loops, and test-first is the first one. Pair programming is another" This builds experience quickly by constantly improving skills "Do programmers on XP projects need experience to accomplish anything? By definition, half the developers are below average. You will have this issue regardless of the methodology in use" "What good is the coach? Akin to a sports coach - keeps the team moving and motivated. Not having one is no excuse, but it helps "

---

Part Two, after a break Questions from the audience

1. XP with non-OO?
2. XP and Open Source?
3. How to estimate cost
4. CMM and XP?
5. how and when to trust the customer
6. documention with XP
7. uml and XP?
8. client commitment
9. stories and requirements management
10. overview of XP
11. timeframes for XP projects
12. what is value to customer
13. config management
14. cost estimation for XP projects?
15. how much planning is enough?
16. Gradual implementation of XP?
17. XP around the world?

Addressing the questions directly, not going from slides at this point XP elevator speech: - it's a long elevator...
"Imagine if software development were as simple as magic 3x5 cards. When I write something down on the cards, it should take me only a week to implement each card. First thing - given a ship date. I say - we have 12 weeks of work. You say - We have 8 weeks. I say - which 8 things would you like then? Picks the absolute minimum (9) things. I say - sorry, which 8 do you want first?" We call this a satisfied customer. Every monday, team gathers. The coach asks - What do we want to see next? Team says, "these two". Coach says, pick one. Repeat the next week. Discard new ideas that come up, pushing them back to future. XP is your best effort applied to the customer's greatest needs. Continual give and take between parties as to what we can and cannot do in a reasonable time. "My question - how do you deal with big failures, politically disfficult to kill?" Very hard, usually fail. example - 5 years, $100 million Euros in infrastructure, and no software of value yet. Company is in trouble. Future value has with what you have invested in it thus far. CMM - Copy of the manufacturing maturity model for physical development. But this doesn't correlate well with making money (inventory issue). Increases the volume of documents (inventory) and creates a floor - you cannot go any faster than CMM allows CMM - "How can we write more documents in order to make things run more smoothly?" i.e., increases inventory, while XP attempts to decrease inventory short answer - CMM and XP are incompatible. CMM is about repeatability - but in software, we are always building something different. i.e., repeatability is not that useful "The team owns it's own process" we move people between teams in order to harmonize UML and modeling - Rose (etc) take a long while to start, involves a lot of context switching. UML is also very complex - recommends a simpler method of whiteboard modeling "GML - galactic modeling language ;-)" Line, Box, Label. What more do you need? Semantics - whatever you mean when you draw it Maintenance and UML - NO. Use code as the communications mechanism - and that includes the tests. gradual implementation - ask the team what inventory can be dropped by working backwards through the build/dev process Puzzle - In India (and other low labor cost areas), high tech risk management did not apply, since labor (developers) was so cheap. Wages being low, competing against low wage people doing CMM. Is the higher productivity swamped by the sheer wage differentiator? Can a 10x productivity boost still matter?

All in all, it was a good talk, and I enjoyed it a lot. The local audience liked it as well, and asked many questions once they got warmed up.

There were other good talks today as well - Lowell Lindstrom of OMA was talking about XP in the organization, and Scott Ambler was talking about Agile Modeling at the same time. Cool quote from Scott:

"I keep telling people that there are two languages - Smalltalk, and things that aren't Smalltalk"

Alas, as he says, no one listens. I decided to go to Scott's talk, and it was interesting stuff - I didn't take notes, but he had little good to say about UML:

"What does does UML say about Databases?"
Nothing "What does UML say about the User Interface?"
Nothing "How many of you have ever worked on a system that didn't have either a UI, a database, or both?" Audience laughs

It was a good talk, and I enjoyed it.

When I'm home, my wife makes sure I get to bed at a decent hour. When I'm on the road, no matter what my original intentions were, I end up staying up late. Off to bed...

I listened to Scott Ambler's presentation on data(bases) and agile methods this am - there was a lot of good stuff on the issues. Here are my notes:

Scott Ambler - Agile data, Agile databases

Metaphor from this morning - the data (dba) community is packing for Antarctica. Unfortunately, the rest of us are traveling in the desert or the jungle

1. Agile Data Method
2. Agile database techniques
3. Summary

Data people - want all the info (data model, etc) up front (Antarctica)
Developers - want agility and incremental (Jungle)
Two reactions to the dba
love them - willing to adapt, change
hate them - insists on up front logical data model, paper, validation, slow to change
Same kind of issues between local project teams and the enterprise planners (IT)

---

Premises
The data and developer communities can, in fact, work together
Part of the problem was the early attitude of the OO community towards the data (RDBMS) community
Developers are not working in a vacuum - there is an enterprise architecture that has to be considered
The enterprise staff is theoretically supposed to support, not control, developers
Not them vs. us - only us. have to work together as a team
Need to find the sweet spot - don't fill the backpack to overflowing

Example - Scott's team (Antarctica) died 11 miles from the ship - carrying too much stuff

There is more to modeling than data modeling
Likewise, there's more to software than coding

---

The Agile DBA Application developers need to understand the basics of Data Models
Likewise, an Agile DBA must understand the basics of programming Otherwise, they cannot communicate effectively. Similar to the translation issue of this presentation - the audience is listening to a Portuguese translation, things might get lost. If we were to work together, we would learn a bit of each other's languages.

---

Enterprise Architects
There to support the team, not to produce large documents and models. There to help the team implement a vision that fits into the overall scheme. Should roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty (like a guide on an expedition). One size does not fit all in methodologies and data

---

Agile Database Techniques for Agile DBA's Database refactoring is, in fact, as necessary as code refactoring but it's much harder What is it?
The act of making a simple change to the database schema The database is highly coupled to your application code, other application code, data import/export routines, reporting tools, persistance frameworks, documentation, etc. Thus, refactoring is hard What do you need?

1. Strong configuration management system
2. Full regression test suite
3. Willingness to work together
4. Acceptance of your situation

There actually are testing tools for databases. Use them.

delivered by Kent Beck. He had an interesting talk, and got a lot of feedback from the audience. My notes:

Keynote - Kent Beck

The Spirit of Extreme Programming Asked the audience for some expectations - questions related to topic of talk

1. How do you deal with the question - How dare you challenge the conventional wisdon?
2. How do you handle personality issues?
3. Do you always find an appropriate system metaphor?
4. How often are clients really involved in the process?
8. How do you convince an organization to use XP?
9. Pete McBreen - Software Craftsmanship - square with XP
11. From a client perspective - what is the value of XP?
13. how to iterations work with project manager schedules?

How did XP get started? (Creation Myth)
Always been a programmer, father was a programmer. Always immersed. Was in the Smalltalk world, where it's easy to learn about programming. Technical expertise is just not enough - projects mostly fail for political reasons. Wanted to expand his viw beyond the programming to the whole context of programming. Question - what is the least I can do (besides programming) and still succeed? Only once - 1994 - got in at the start of a project. typically gets in after deadline, when everyone hates each other, and when the money is gone. This project is where SUnit, lots of testing, and frequent refactoring were born. It was a typical mainframe to mid-range project. After 4 months, much progress - but management liked it so well, that they explained the actual goal, as they say it - get the calculation engine running on the mainframe. So goals are important - but they change Next - brought into Chrysler for the payroll project. The goal was to fix the performance problems. Asked - where are the tests, so I don't break anything? Answer - we don't get correct answers yet. Said - I can make it run fast, so long as you don't care what the answers are. So, half the team left within 3 days, contracters were kicked out. IT chief asks for answers:

1. Cancel it
2. keep going the way you are going
3. Throw away all the code, give everyone a week off, and start over.

picked option 3, so long as Kent was in charge. He objected, as he said he was not a project lead. CEO convinced Kent with large sums of cash. inspiration - a combination of preparation and panic Now had plenty of panic. Interviewed entire staff so as to get to know them better. Came up with iterations (3 weeks), stories (to flesh out iteration goals) with first person. As things progressed, came up with acceptance tests to validate. Then came up with Unit tests as a developer task to help get to acceptance test Kent: I was just making this (expletive deleted) up Open workspace, people sitting together, continuous integration, unit testing - it all just came together on the Chrysler project with the team. Mental Model Do what they would normally do, but at maximum effort took 3-4 months of coaching to get to all those steps at once take everything I knew about software development, and turn it all up Thought this was having the knobs all the way up Since then, have moved to 1 week iterations - fits with the human notion of a unit of time that is imaginable.

All successful ventures have a creation myth

Companies and nations have them - projects can use them as well.

---

Questions from earlier: What about personality issues? Kent - started out shy and introverted. The more people I meet, the more I learn and the better I get at what I do. Having different sorts work together helps. This is why the requirements come from the customer representative.

---

Question from earlier: How often do clients really get involved? Software as sexual reproduction? Male - business representative Female - Developers Male - leaves 9 months later - the software is born Hurts so much, you aren't even going to try that again soon. (Business rep comes in with a new spec immediately...) Answer - How often are males really there all through pregnancy? What about software as ballroom dancing? Male - business Female - partner work - together If one leaves, it's not dancing Using dancing as a metaphor, software doesn't work unless the client gets involved. You need to get this metaphor embedded, and then it guides the process Metaphors are hard to come up with

---

Close by talking about another question - What is the value to the customer? Total Effort - No Excuses. Focus and Intensity. Turn the knobs up. Be willing to recognize and try to kill doomed projects

Rob gave a talk this afternoon on XP and coaching. My take on the XP coach is that it sounds a lot like a baseball manager - the job isn't to play baseball, but to make the other guys play baseball to the best of their abilities. now, like any metaphor, this one doesn't hold completely - while both jobs can be seen as transient (just look at how long the typical baseball manager lasts!), they aren't really the same. The coach is looking to train the team and go - the manager is really not hoping to work himself out of a job. In any event, Rob did a better job of conveying this than my notes indicate. It was a very interactive session, with a lot of feedback solicited from the audience. Here are the notes:

Rob Mee

XP and Coaching What is it - if XP is self organizing, why do we need a coach?

1. Someone who has done it before
2. Bootstrapping
3. Observing (everything)
4. enforcing discipline
5. Course correction
6. Participating in all team practices
7. keeping the balance

i.e., much like a sports team coach Attributes of a good coach?

1. Communication
2. Flexibility
3. Diplomatic
4. Aggressive
5. Persistent
6. Supportive
7. Creative
8. technically Competent
9. Likes to share power and responsibility

Questions: What about business domain knowledge?

You won't come in with it anyway. Will have to learn

What about coaching the customer team?

(Lowell)Could be a separate person. Just as we need competent programmers, we need competent customer

What is the most challenging of these skills for you?

difficult to answer in three minutes

Coach is a separate role from programmer - does he program?

Yes, participates and pairs (hopefully with everyone)

---

Tips, Techniques, Patterns How to win over a reluctant team (individual)?

Promise to go away after a fixed time Ask for temporary cooperation They can do it their way when you leave

good cop/bad cop (Rob, Kent - audience laughs) The integrator bunny Use a fun or provocative token for integration. breaks the ice. Team building Used a bunny - too small, got lost. Then used bunny ears (wearable) Pattern - Ronaldo (soccer) work is not everything The coach needs to make sure that the team makes non-work time part of the culture Live your life normally, and do your job better Relax, get away from work, get refreshed Strategic Retreat As soon as you start coaching, you are on your way out

1. Start delegating
2. lead meetings less often
3. Stop giving tech advice
4. Make fewer decisions

Experiences - question on failures references Kent's project cancellation story from yesterday Quote - XP is more suited to party people than other processes (Kent) - as a coach, it's important not to get sucked into the personality conflicts of the staff Experience - XP at a Silicon Valley startup, $25M funding large, ambitious browser based system Currently about 3000 unit tests hundreds of acceptance tests Flexibility

1. removed WebLogic EJB 3 weeks before going live
2. Planning module - 4 dim rotating model, designed to handle 3 million nodes -- changed to handle 350 million in 3 weeks
How to replace the coach?
1. start finding possibilities early
2. intensive mentoring
3. handing over of responsibility
4. encourage XP community contribution (articles, talks, etc.)
Experience - XP in Germany
1. 100 year old insurance company
2. 4 yrs
3. 70 developers
4. how much money did you say?
5. nothing delivered
Fired all staff, waited a week, hired 12 back 1st meeting - mgrs, 12 staff - We need you to teach us XP Results
1. initial fear and dismay
2. most doubtful - cried, even - became biggest champion
3. team evolved into best estimators ever seen
4. 8 weeks to a deployable system
Tests Customer tests - Fit Unit tests - independent - no db contact, no 'container' (Tomcat) contact Why did it work?
1. realistic goals
2. one week iterations
3. OS packages (over 10)
4. Sane working conditions
5. beer
who to become new coach?
1. one diplomatic, flexible, communicative
2. another refactorer, aggressive
3. third - technically brilliant
Answer - coalition of all three Audience questions - how long to get there?

typically 2-3 months if team has no XP knowledge With some background, small team - could be 3-4 weeks

Kent - principle behind XP is one of creating social networks, not hierarchies Coaching is not about "power and glory" Job one - make the coach go away Job two - create a replacement

Lowell Lindstrom of OMA spoke on a very interesting topic, and one that seemingly gets overlooked a lot - the customer side of XP - what do they get out of XP, and why do they care?

The Customer side of XP

What is our (developer's) ability to predict what the customer wants? not so good What is the customer's ability to specify what they really want? not so good So OMA started teaching XP classes a few years ago, and gradually came to the conclusion that teaching developers about XP wasn't enough. They had to talk to the customers as well.

---

Metaphor - Lowell related a story about his sister learning to drive. Lowell was ten, riding in the car with his family, typical vacation. He and his brother fought, suddenly Dad tells sister (close to home) that she can drive Instant quiet - the brothers weren't sure they were safe (audience laughs). Only problem happened on last turn home. Sister doesn't make the turn correctly - doesn't cut wheel enough, heads for a fire hydrant. So Dad grabs wheel, pulls it, and yells a lot. So what does this mean to us? Steering is difficult when starting out. It's nice to have someone to help you out. In XP, the customer is steering.

---

So what about Lowell? He started as a developer working with Bob Martin (Uncle Bob), who was then heavily involved in the C++ Report and OO community. Started Gravitating towards the customer point of view early - programming was fun, but not his passion. Moved into customer relations, product marketing, and Q/A.

1. Heard Ron and Kent talking about XP
2. Heard XP as a developer side thing, without enough customer side
3. Thought, how does XP impact sales, marketing, management (etc)?

So when OMA started teaching XP classes, they ran into a common issue - trust between customers and programmers was typically not high (on either side). Programmers generally didn't respect the customer, the customer did not trust the programmers enough to tell them what they really wanted. Solution - Lowell started teaching XP for Customers First class, adapted slides from the standard XP class. This was fine until they came to this:

Why are we here? Because we like to program

hmm. This required some dancing and adpatation. So why are customers here? Lowell has answers, but is still looking for a better quick summary. Customer's dilemma

1. Market is changing fast
2. The business is becoming more and more reliant on software (which is hard to get)
3. There is still a shortage of skilled programmers
4. There are lots (too many, almost) internal and external customers
5. There is a constant need to make very difficult choices about focusing limited resources

So again - Customer's dilemma Audience feedback to this - what does the customer want?

Make work easier Have more people use the product(s) Bring in profit Improve efficiency Improve reliability and repeatability of delivery to customers Have time for personal stuff Actually get the products that the customer wanted Better Time Management

Again - Customer's dilemma They want the same thing as developers - they want to execute the business as well, as much, with as little stress, and as much success, as is possible.

---

XP Values

1. Simplicity
2. Communication
3. Feedback
4. Courage

KISS

So they derived a Customer's Bill of Rights Customers have a right to:

1. An overall plan - what can be done at what cost
2. Get the most possible value out of every programming week
3. See progress in a running system proven to work by repeatable tests you specify
4. Change your mind, substitute in functionality, change priorities without paying exhorbitant costs
5. Be informed of schedule changes in time to choose how to reduce scope to restore the original date.
6. Cancel at any time and be left with a useful, working system reflecting investment to date

There is, of course, a matching Developer's Bill of Rights

1. Know what is needed with clear priorities
2. Produce quality work at all times
3. As for and receive help from peers, superiors, customer
4. Accept responsibility instead of having it handed to you

Lowell drew a picture here, showing the overlap between the developers, customers, and stakeholders. The stakeholders - end customers, marketing, sales, management, media, testers, etc. - are often pretty remote, but still must be taken into account Key concept - it's a Whole Team Customer Team practices

On site customer	Business strategy alignment
XP Planning	Managing High level requirements
Acceptance tests	Stakeholder feedback
Small releases	Conflict resolution
Metaphor	Contract structure

Not necessarily comprehensive - but key if you want a well fuctioning customer team

---

Managing scope Lowell drew a diagram with a set of boxes in it. The boxes are customer requirements to be delivered. Question - how many projects have completed exactly as they were specified? No hands go up. Ok, some do more, most do less, some deliver a less pluss some things not planned for. What's important? That the dividing line is far enough down that the customer perceives value - and has the acceptance tests that prove it. If we can deliver that, then the customer will probably be mostly happy

I gave my talk on XP in Smalltalk, and why I think it's better that way. You can get the presentation here. I had a good audience, and interestingly, a good number of non-Smalltalkers. All of the attendees received an NC CD, and after my talk, I had a number of people come up to ask questions. The thing I showed them - maybe I should have done this in the presentation - was to bring up the Web Toolkit ToyzInc demo, and walk through it. Then put a halt in a page, and watch the jaws drop! Yes, tools like Eclipse are getting better, but JSP coding isn't nearly this productive or fun. Anyway, the show itself was a lot of fun. I actually got to attend this show, instead of pulling booth duty (my typical fate at these things). It was a lot more fun to listen to the presentations. Once nice thing was that translation was provided - not just English to Portuguese, but also the reverse - so I could participate in events held in Portuguese - very nice. The XP hour on Thursday was especially nice that way. Funny thing, or at least ironic - here I studied Spanish for ten years, and the first country I visit in South America speaks Potuguese. I ran into three simply wonderful people from Paraguay who also did not speak Potuguese, and for whom English was their second tongue. I spent a couple of pleasant lunches conversing with them.. oh well. The folks from Object Magazine (Brazil were also very nice - Thanks Daniela for being so patient with my Spanish and (very halting) French. Daniela was kind enough to ask me to write an article for their magazine, and her editor asked to interview all of the invited speakers via email. I am pleased and humbled to be included with such a group of XP luminaries. Daniela (and a few other people) encouraged me to write a book - gosh, that sounds like real work. I'm tickled, and we'll see if I have that much ambition. The conference ended in a panel discussion on the future of XP - Kent Beck, Flavio, Scott Ambler, Lowell Lindstrom, Rob Mee - and Klaus Wuestefeld (an organizer and emcee, as well as XP expert) surprised me by asking me to participate in the panel. I took this as quite an honor! It was interesting - lots of good audience questions, including one on the future of Smalltalk. I related Cincom Smalltalk's annual 10% year on year customer increases, and that there are more Smalltalk vendors now than there were back in 1993 (Object-Arts, Object-Connect). This led to an interesting question - and later conversation - with Rob Mee. He has been working on a project with an old (conservative) bank in Germany, where they brought in all Open Source products to solve a problem - see my post on his talk for some notes. Well, that's a hard one. On the other hand, some of those OS things - a mock object framework (not needed in Smalltalk), JUnit (ships with VW), Eclipse (cool, but not as powerful as VW) simply aren't, IMHO, that relevant. Others, like Tomcat, are. On the other hand, the VW server frameworks scale quite nicely. The larger point is that there are scads of Open Source components for Java, and doesn't that swamp Smalltalk's ability to compete? Well, there are two answers to that

1. First, ask any of the XP luminaries what they would rather code in. After you here Smalltalk from almost all of them, draw your own conclusions
2. Second, The productivity gains in Smalltalk - 3x according to the SPR numbers - will still yield an earlier delivery

i.e., if project delivery dates actually matter, I think Smalltalk is still a better answer. Of course, I didn't have all this at hand when I spoke to Rob, and he still has a point. It's key to get more Open Source stuff going in Smalltalk. Bottom line, I had a marvelous conference. I am very, very glad that the Cincom Brazil folks - Thanks Ivan de Souaza and Nelson Martins! invited me. I am grateful to Klaus Wuestefeld for going out of his way to make me feel welcome. And I want to talk Objective Solutions - a Cincom Smalltalk customer - for being the driving force behind the show. Oh, and thanks to Scott Ambler for the kind present of a signed AM book! One other thought - if you go to Brazil, make sure to be ready for a lot of very good food!

First, bear in mind that my notes are not comprehensive - I didn't see all the talks, or even most of them. However, here are the permanent links for my blog entries on the show: Kent's opening talk Brief show notes, first day Scott Ambler - Agile Data, Agile Databases Kent's Keynote, XP Brazil Rob Mee on XP coaching Lowell Lindstrom - XP for the customer My thoughts on the show

UPDATE - I made the links friendlier for ancient browsers.

The Times story (free registration required) - has some interesting comments about Alan Kay and Smalltalk:

Dr. Kay and a few PARC colleagues, notably Dan Ingalls and Adele Goldberg, also developed Smalltalk, an influential programming language that uses blocks of code, known as objects, that are put together, like the cells that make up the human body, to build applications.

That's a nice quote from the mainstream media on Smalltalk!

See the whole story here. My first take on this - it moves IBM away from the whole Agile Development Camp - Rational in general, and the RUP are not agile proponents by any stretch of the imagination. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. This is also interesting for other reasons - I'm of the opinion that Sun is doomed, as they are being squeezed on the commodity end by Microsoft and Dell - meanwhile, IBM is hitting them hard on the enterprise side. My guess is that IBM will eventually by the rights to Java and Open Source it. Right or wrong, I think it's going to be an interesting next couple of years in the IT business.

We have posted a new survey here: Cincom Smalltalk Survey and of course, all previous survey results may be found here: Survey Results This week's topic, inspired by my trip to the Brazil XP conference, is XP and Agile development. Thanks!

In October, Alan Knight traveled to Erfurt, Germany for Net Object Days. You can see his trip report here

Lamba the Ultimate reports that there's a JSR for adding some stuff to Java. See the post here. Here's an extract:

Sun has recently posted a list of new proposed features for Java 1.5. These include:

1. A syntax for defining enumerated types. This syntax provides linguistic support for the Typesafe Enumeration pattern.
2. An automatic conversion from primitive types to their corresponding reference type wrappers. This conversion facilitates the integration of generics into the language, and reduces inessential clutter.
3. Enhanced for loops allow convenient iteration over collections, without the need for an explicitly defined iterator. This reduces the need for boilerplate iteration code and the corresponding opportunities for errors.
4. Static import. A mechanism to allow the use of unqualified constants.

Useful links: The JSR document describing these proposals in more detail and the discussion on The Server Side. It's interesting to note how these changes are mostly cosmetic alterations to syntax rather than deeper semantic changes such as adding blocks. There's an interesting wiki page I started a while back that offers some interesting proposals that would really shake up Java.

It's as if the Sun guys almost get it, but not quite... Closures? Nahh, that would be useful, can't have that for the unwashed masses, can we? The Wiki Ref above actually makes some interesting proposals; on the other hand, people wanting such things could just use Smalltalk and be productive now. Can't have that either, I suppose; gotta follow the herd wherever it goes. At this pace, Java might conceivably be as usable as Smalltalk in about, oh, maybe 20-30 years. In th emeantime, the suckage continues....

Boy, I remember this kind of contradiction at PPD back in 1995-1996. Lots of fun for everyone. All the people managing this merger must really like the article's title:

IBM Australia denies Rational analyst comment snicker

Here's an acronym I ran across awhile ago and ignored, but looked into a bit today: REST: REpresentational State Transfer The idea seems to be, if you can do an HTTP GET and get back an XML document for parsing, that's REST. How you know what you are going to get back? Anybody's guess, I suppose. Anyway, here's the story