InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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Kent Beck: Be Yourself - Create More Value
Recent discussions on the extremeprogramming list keep returning to "telling the truth". Why do we bite off more than we can chew? Why the overtime heroics? Kent Beck's one-hour talk "Ease at Work" explored how to get off what he called the "genius-shithead rollercoaster" and just be yourself at work. Question: Would you rather spend energy on maintaining an image, or doing more cool stuff?
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Using Dtrace to Improve Rails Performance
InfoQ investigates how three companies recently collaborated to use DTrace, a powerful open source process introspection tool, to find and fix a substantial Rails latency issue.
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Archeology: Testing Sacred Text Found
Alberto Savoia has uncovered an ancient treasure: "The Way of Testivus - Unit Testing Wisdom From An Ancient Software Start-up," which turned out to be some good advice on developer and unit testing, packaged as twelve fake, pretentious, and somewhat cryptic bits of ancient Eastern wisdom - but good for a laugh.
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Unit Testing Tips from Google
The QA engineers at Google share their unit testing advice in an ongoing series titled "Testing on the Toilet." The latest installment tackles a common problem: how can the unit tests themselves be refactored without accidentally invalidating the tests?
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Google SoC Series: ANTLR v3 Ruby Parser
Writing a Ruby parser is a challenging task, yet the XRuby team wrote one from scratch. A Google Summer of Code project will update the current parser to use ANTLR v3, and plans to produce a Ruby parser in Ruby in the process. InfoQ caught up with Wang Haofei to ask about the problems in parsing Ruby and the plans for the project.
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Agile Tools Usefulness Debated
The Agile Journal's April issue examined how tools are being used in Agile projects. There are articles that are pro-tools, anti-tools, and a debate between Ron Jeffries and Ryan Martens.
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Agile Tooling Survey Results
Trailridge Consulting's independent survey looked at the adoption of agile practices globally, and the characteristics of the agile companies included in the survey, including demographics and Agile methodologies in use. It went on further to examine the tools which support Agile Project Management and delivery, from spreadhsheets to full blown integrated Agile PM tools.
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VersionOne adds Taskboard, Subversion/Fitnesse Integration and Free Community Edition
VersionOne, the maker of Agile Enterprise, one of the leading agile project management tools, has released two significant versions of their platform within the past few months: a free five-user community edition and a new release of their Agile Enterprise/Team platform with Subversion and Fitnesse integration as well as a new dynamic Taskboard view.
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A Twitter in a Teapot?
Just over a week's gone by and the community is still buzzing with the Rails scalability debate. Developers are asking the defining question: does Web 2.0 darling Twitter.com prove Rails can't scale? James Cox gives InfoQ readers a comprehensive summary.
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APLN Takes on Certification
The Agile Project Leadership Network, unlike the Agile Alliance, has decided to wade into the certification waters. The APLN has decided to take input from the community as it embarks on defining two different levels of Agile Leadership certification.
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An SOA and Agile Discussion
SOA aims at making the entire enterprise agile by using services as the building blocks for applications. Agile software development aims at making organizations agile by introducing practices that increase communication and feedback. This article brought up a few points of agreement and disagreement between the two techniques and readers have started discussion their points of view.
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Catching Up with Maven 2
Maven is a pattern-based build framework for Java and J2EE projects; more than just scripting builds for arbitrary projects, Maven knows about J2EE, Struts, Hibernate, etc. and has a prescribed way of structuring and organizing a project from its moment of creation through testing, packaging, and deployment.
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Testing: Manual or Automated?
Automated testing is all the rage, but is it everything? Micahel, a Test Technical Lead at Microsoft, asks "How do you know whether you have automated enough - or too much?"
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InfoQ Interview: David Hussman on Coaching Agile Adoption
Agile coach and practitioner David Hussman talked to InfoQ about his approach to helping teams and organizations adopting Agile, including his ideas about customizing it without compromising the common denominators required to make Agile really work. He talked about "story tests", addressing manager fears as their team self-organizes, and building a vibrant development community.
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Agile Strategies for Enterprise Architects
Scott Ambler has written some advice for Enterprise Architects looking to tailor their enterprise architecture processes to support agile software development teams, arguing that dev teams need hands-on involvement & mentoring, reference architectures, and overview diagrams; they don't need lots of documentation, authoritative governance or reviews.