All I Need Is A Hammer!
I remember a bit some comedian did a number years ago about a woman using a screwdriver to put in a nail to hang a picture frame. He went on for 5 or 10 minutes about using the right tool for the job, and convincing her to use a hammer. For some reason I woke up this morning thinking about that bit. It didn't take me long, though, to figure out how closely this fits into some of my resent frustrations. Then I got to thinking...
No Fluff Just Stuff: Fascination and Frustration
I've always prided myself for always being on the leading, if not bleeding edge of technology. After a weekend at the No Fluff Just Stuff conference in St. Louis (NFJS), I'm starting to feel both fascinated and frustrated.
The sessions I attended were heavy into dynamic programming languages, and agile software development. The dynamic programming languages that we got deepest into were Groovy and Ruby. Both of these languages make the job of the developer exponentially easier, and are ideal for rapid application development. This in and of itself should be enough to convince developers to use it, but it gets better. Through the magic of dynamic programming, things become possible that were not possible before, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities that blow my mind.
The agile discussions focused on what's right, and wrong, with various agile processes. There were a lot of really great tips, and it was as good to hear about what we are doing wrong as it was to hear about what we are doing wrong.