Deep Agile 2008 - A Conversation with Jim Coplien and Bob Martin
from New England Agile Bazaar
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Saturday, November 8, 2008 9:00am - Sunday, November 9, 2008 5:00pm
Test Driven Design vs. Architecture or Test Driven Design and Architecture?
Jim Coplein and "Uncle Bob" Martin are leaders how to produce quality software. In the corner of architecture, patterns and agile is Jim Coplien. Driving the necessity of test based design is Bob Martin. Each is a recognized leader and passionate advocate for their approaches. Yet they have built a deep respect for the other's view and come to recognize the value of combining their seemingly disparate worlds.
As Jim notes in his introduction to Bob's book Clean Code:
"In our ongoing “debate” on TDD, Bob and I have discovered that we agree that software architecture has an important place in development, though we likely have different visions of exactly what that means. Such quibbles are relatively unimportant, however, because we can accept for granted that responsible professionals give some time to thinking and planning at the outset of a project. The late-1990s notions of design driven only by the tests and the code are long gone. Yet attentiveness to detail is an even more critical foundation of professionalism than is any grand vision. First, it is through practice in the small that professionals gain proficiency and trust for practice in the large. Second, the smallest bit of sloppy construction, of the door that does not close tight or the slightly crooked tile on the floor, or even the messy desk, completely dispels the charm of the larger whole. That is what clean code is about.
Still, architecture is just one metaphor for software development, and in particular for that part of software that delivers the initial product in the same sense that an architect delivers a pristine building. In these days of Scrum and Agile, the focus is on quickly bringing product to market. We want the factory running at top speed to produce software. These are human factories: thinking, feeling coders who are working from a product backlog or user story to create product. The manufacturing metaphor looms ever strong in such thinking. The production aspects of Japanese auto manufacturing, of an assembly-line world, inspire much of Scrum.
Yet even in the auto industry, the bulk of the work lies not in manufacturing but in maintenance—or its avoidance. In software, 80% or more of what we do is quaintly called “maintenance:” the act of repair. Rather than embracing the typical Western focus on producing good software, we should be thinking more like home repairmen in the building industry, or auto mechanics in the automotive field. What does Japanese management have to say about that?"
Come prepared to be surprised and have your assumptions questioned! Our goal is to get well beyond the buzzwords and introductory agile ideas, roll in architecture and TDD, and to get you thinking.
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