I am a product manager. My life is understanding software development cycles.
So we can expect a topic of that sort?
My current company (as well as the previous one I worked at) are going crazy about Agile. Scrum in particular. I would really like to hear what you have to say as someone who definitely has more experience in those waters than me and guys around me. Not only with Scrum, but other methodologies you might have encountered, that were good or bad, and most importantly - why
Agile is just the way people go these days. Things like waterfall only work for large systems that Microsoft and Apple make. The way methodologies should always work is just do what is effective and works for your team. You can start to run into conflicts when you adhere to closely to a philosophy of software development. My buddies company is pretty invested in doing scrums and one of their scrum masters basically wrote the book on scrum while the other one went through some cert or something and is "the scrum nazi" which he says gets in the way sometimes.
All these methodologies, and buzzwords like agile and waterfall, are bullshit. It's an entire industry about creating do-nothing jobs. You get someone who spends all their time in Jira or Basecamp managing tickets, pulling people into scrums, and finding pretty much any way to waste time planning and organizing work instead of doing the actual work.
Show up to work. Know what you are supposed to be working on. Do it. No methodology necessary.
Humans were able to accomplish all sorts of great things over the years without any sort of buzzword-laden development methodology. They went to the moon without agile. You don't need it to build an iOS app.
Humans were able to accomplish all sorts of great things over the years without any sort of buzzword-laden development methodology. They went to the moon without agile. You don't need it to build an iOS app.
NASA actually used very heavy engineering methodologies to make that happen. Strictly regimented processes, reporting structures, etc...
Humans were able to accomplish all sorts of great things over the years without any sort of buzzword-laden development methodology. They went to the moon without agile. You don't need it to build an iOS app.
NASA actually used very heavy engineering methodologies to make that happen. Strictly regimented processes, reporting structures, etc...
I once listened to a podcast where one programmer talked two others through the agile process and to me it sounded like a very buzzword-heavy description of time management, and very little specifically to do with programming. I was pretty impressed how complicated they made it all sound for what, in the end, seemed like "focus on stuff you can deliver".
I once listened to a podcast where one programmer talked two others through the agile process and to me it sounded like a very buzzword-heavy description of time management, and very little specifically to do with programming. I was pretty impressed how complicated they made it all sound for what, in the end, seemed like "focus on stuff you can deliver".
A lot of those are really buzzword-y, especially "agile development", which basically means nothing by itself. Agile development basically is just a catchall for incremental development, possibly volatile feature requirements, and constant delivery and updates. It makes more sense for software nowadays what with the Internet. It just wasn't really possible before then.
Scott, your stance relies on everybody being responsible human beings and knowing what is the shit that needs to be done. Then doing it. And I will argue that is almost never the case. Hence, you need some kind of methodology, framework, agreement... call it what you want - that will help you organize the work, keeping everything visible, clear and having some kind of feedback loop. And that gets harder to accomplish the bigger the system is. I am certain that you don't need all the buzzwords that slow development, but you have to see the path in order to follow it.
Scott, your stance relies on everybody being responsible human beings and knowing what is the shit that needs to be done. Then doing it. And I will argue that is almost never the case. Hence, you need some kind of methodology, framework, agreement... call it what you want - that will help you organize the work, keeping everything visible, clear and having some kind of feedback loop. And that gets harder to accomplish the bigger the system is. I am certain that you don't need all the buzzwords that slow development, but you have to see the path in order to follow it.
If someone isn't a responsible human being who knows what needs to be done, how were they hired in the first place? Maybe they fooled 'em in the interview. How come they weren't fired once they showed their true colors?
The better people you hire, the less bullshit non-work you need to do to keep people in line. If you hire two cheapo developers who need babysitting for a low price, you then need to hire a not-cheap manager to wrangle them. You could have just hired one expensive developer who needs no babysitting whatsoever and given them less money than those three other people combined (but still a lot of money). They'll also get more work done than those three people combined since there is less time spent doing meta non-work.
You are absolutely right in your isolated case. But can that scale? Imagine your product has grown, and you now have 40 excellent developers that need no babysitting. Is their responsibility enough to make them communicate and coordinate well enough and know what needs to be done on a project? Or they need to have at least basic methodologies, procedures, framework or something similar to help them do that?
Don't get me wrong, I have no answer for this problem. That's why I think it's a great discussion topic
You are absolutely right in your isolated case. But can that scale? Imagine your product has grown, and you now have 40 excellent developers that need no babysitting. Is their responsibility enough to make them communicate and coordinate well enough and know what needs to be done on a project? Or they need to have at least basic methodologies, procedures, framework or something similar to help them do that?
Don't get me wrong, I have no answer for this problem. That's why I think it's a great discussion topic
You obviously communicate with each other. IF you are an intelligent and responsible human being you don't need a book of procedures to follow to let you know you should talk to the people you work with. You are capable of coordinating your efforts with those of other human beings towards a goal.
Yes, you may end up doing things that look like procedures or whatever. For example, you might agree that those two people will work on X, these other two people will work on Y. Then this person will be responsible for code review and committing. etc.
The point is that you don't need a rigid predefined structure, and you absolutely do not need an employee with the sole purpose is do to meta non-work of managing that structure.
Open source projects get a lot of work done, and they have no managers. Everyone who works on an open source project is usually a developer. There may be some basic process like, certain people have commit access, and others do not. Or there may be a document that lists the requirements for a patch to be accepted (must include tests, documentation, etc.) But the successful open source projects still get shit done.
My team's time management process at work is basically "have a ticket tracker, take tickets, and work on those tickets." Our programming and code review process is more involved in order to catch bugs early, but time management is handled fairly loosely.
My team's time management process at work is basically "have a ticket tracker, take tickets, and work on those tickets." Our programming and code review process is more involved in order to catch bugs early, but time management is handled fairly loosely.
I'm about a quarter of the way through it, but Playing at the World could make a good Book Club book. (Does the club do nonfiction?) It's the detailed history of gaming and media that led to creation of Dungeons & Dragons.
I wouldn't mind hearing an episode about Dating Sims games. I know many exist and Rym is involved in one, but what is the draw? I guess it's a genre that was never on my radar, but I'm fascinated with its popularity. I also find visual novels to be in the same vein.
I wouldn't mind hearing an episode about Dating Sims games. I know many exist and Rym is involved in one, but what is the draw? I guess it's a genre that was never on my radar, but I'm fascinated with its popularity. I also find visual novels to be in the same vein.
You gotta play the rare ones that are sim games without pervertedness.
I wouldn't mind hearing an episode about Dating Sims games. I know many exist and Rym is involved in one, but what is the draw? I guess it's a genre that was never on my radar, but I'm fascinated with its popularity. I also find visual novels to be in the same vein.
You gotta play the rare ones that are sim games without pervertedness.
I wouldn't mind hearing an episode about Dating Sims games. I know many exist and Rym is involved in one, but what is the draw? I guess it's a genre that was never on my radar, but I'm fascinated with its popularity. I also find visual novels to be in the same vein.
You gotta play the rare ones that are sim games without pervertedness.
Since you guys blew through the suggestion list in Lightning Round, I'll try to think up some new topics for you: - Maker spaces/the maker movement - Playtesting
Messaging programs and applications, including interfaces. More importantly how they seem to have a social impact. BB message boards - allowed anyone to post. IRC - first real time, platform independent ICQ - dominant messaging application on desktop AIM and MS messenger pretty well across all platforms and globally. Pidgin and other consolidating applications
Contemporary: It's a shit storm in some countries and single platform dominant in others. e.g. Line is really popular in Japan WEchat in China and a few South east asian countries Whatsapp and Messenger popular in India Many places its a mix of Messenger, Whatsapp, Viber (literally the only people who want me to use this platform are from the US), Hangouts, iMessage (really don't see anyone use this in Australia).
SMS seems to still be the only universal and well accepted means of messaging even though it is archaic in a technological sense. People are separated out socially based on what messaging application they use.
It's been mentioned before in the movie thread, but I'd love Geeknights should do a show on the film Her.
Other than Ex Machina, it is perhaps one of the most realistic depictions of how technology is going to evolve and how it affects devices, social interaction, and loneliness. Her is perhaps one of the greatest films on emotional connection and trust as it is layered in well-defined, understated genre.
If you can buy the premise of "Man falls in love with A.I. and it loves him back..." then you can really get into this movie.
Her is a unique example of a recent science fiction movie that isn't a dystopia. It's a pure utopia. There is no drama left in the world, or any problems that haven't been solved. All that is left is human happiness.
This is technically a book club recommendation but you guys should read The Martian by Andy Weir. I read it when he was putting it out a chapter at a time on his website and it's still in my top 5 for books.
This is technically a book club recommendation but you guys should read The Martian by Andy Weir. I read it when he was putting it out a chapter at a time on his website and it's still in my top 5 for books.
But those opening chapters killed my motivation for reading the rest of it, it is SUPER strict on how the science works that it skipped the story part.
This is technically a book club recommendation but you guys should read The Martian by Andy Weir. I read it when he was putting it out a chapter at a time on his website and it's still in my top 5 for books.
But those opening chapters killed my motivation for reading the rest of it, it is SUPER strict on how the science works that it skipped the story part.
This is one of the few times I'll make the argument "to fight through because it gets better " just because it's such a short book.
The Martian is a puzzle book. Things go wrong, and you have to work out how to fix them before Mark Watney fixes them, and either feel clever if you got it right or feel stupid if you couldn't think of anything or got it wrong. Story isn't needed.
Comments
My current company (as well as the previous one I worked at) are going crazy about Agile. Scrum in particular. I would really like to hear what you have to say as someone who definitely has more experience in those waters than me and guys around me. Not only with Scrum, but other methodologies you might have encountered, that were good or bad, and most importantly - why
Show up to work. Know what you are supposed to be working on. Do it. No methodology necessary.
Humans were able to accomplish all sorts of great things over the years without any sort of buzzword-laden development methodology. They went to the moon without agile. You don't need it to build an iOS app.
And that's all I have to say about that.
The better people you hire, the less bullshit non-work you need to do to keep people in line. If you hire two cheapo developers who need babysitting for a low price, you then need to hire a not-cheap manager to wrangle them. You could have just hired one expensive developer who needs no babysitting whatsoever and given them less money than those three other people combined (but still a lot of money). They'll also get more work done than those three people combined since there is less time spent doing meta non-work.
Don't get me wrong, I have no answer for this problem. That's why I think it's a great discussion topic
Yes, you may end up doing things that look like procedures or whatever. For example, you might agree that those two people will work on X, these other two people will work on Y. Then this person will be responsible for code review and committing. etc.
The point is that you don't need a rigid predefined structure, and you absolutely do not need an employee with the sole purpose is do to meta non-work of managing that structure.
Open source projects get a lot of work done, and they have no managers. Everyone who works on an open source project is usually a developer. There may be some basic process like, certain people have commit access, and others do not. Or there may be a document that lists the requirements for a patch to be accepted (must include tests, documentation, etc.) But the successful open source projects still get shit done.
Our programming and code review process is more involved in order to catch bugs early, but time management is handled fairly loosely.
- Maker spaces/the maker movement
- Playtesting
OK I'm out of ideas.
More importantly how they seem to have a social impact.
BB message boards - allowed anyone to post.
IRC - first real time, platform independent
ICQ - dominant messaging application on desktop
AIM and MS messenger pretty well across all platforms and globally.
Pidgin and other consolidating applications
Contemporary:
It's a shit storm in some countries and single platform dominant in others.
e.g. Line is really popular in Japan
WEchat in China and a few South east asian countries
Whatsapp and Messenger popular in India
Many places its a mix of Messenger, Whatsapp, Viber (literally the only people who want me to use this platform are from the US), Hangouts, iMessage (really don't see anyone use this in Australia).
SMS seems to still be the only universal and well accepted means of messaging even though it is archaic in a technological sense. People are separated out socially based on what messaging application they use.
Other than Ex Machina, it is perhaps one of the most realistic depictions of how technology is going to evolve and how it affects devices, social interaction, and loneliness. Her is perhaps one of the greatest films on emotional connection and trust as it is layered in well-defined, understated genre.
If you can buy the premise of "Man falls in love with A.I. and it loves him back..." then you can really get into this movie.
http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/people/
Most importantly, ask them how they navigated a career in academics and game studies.