Author: Blake Smith

Agile Development and Play: Understanding the Value

Blake Smith, Tuesday, September 8, 2009 @ 3:03 pm

My Addiction

I'm addicted to TED talks. There have been many nights where I've stayed up way too late watching them. For those who are unaware, TED is a yearly conference where world leaders and thinkers gather to share their ideas and spread their passions and work. I'm someone who gets fired up listening to outher people's passions. I love hearing about what gets other people excited, what makes them tick, what makes them want to share with the world.

One of the more interesting talks I've listened to recently is by Tim Brown at the Serious Play conference of 2008. Tim talks about how the elements of play can improve creativity and productivity in our workplace and life. I found the lessons learned from this talk something that can be very directly applied to software development, and taking some of these nuggets of teaching can help me be a better thinker and worker.

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Software Development

Growing Into Pair Programming

Blake Smith, Tuesday, July 28, 2009 @ 4:26 pm

photo credit: Rennett Stowe

For a developer who's new to pair programming, it can be overwhelming and
difficult to adapt to pair programming practices. As developers, often the natural
tendency is to hole away and solve our problems on our own: we thrive on the
thrill of achieving the solution. The satisfaction of arriving at that solution
on your own can make you feel good, but it has other costs. If you're new to
pair programming and feeling initially discouraged about the dynamics of
pairing: Don't give up! Pairing is a skill that must be developed and honed just
like any other one.
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software development best practices

Review: Head First Rails

Blake Smith, Wednesday, July 8, 2009 @ 12:24 pm

Intro

Head First Rails by David Griffiths is one of the newer additions to the Head First series by O'Reilly. It provides an excellent introduction to Web Application development using Rails as the underlying framework. Head First books take a much different approach to learning development subjects than most texts. The pages are filled with humorous drawings, novel dialogs, and funny diagrams to keep your brain stimulated (and entertained). This being the first book I've read in the Head First series, I much enjoyed the conversational style and approach David Griffiths took to teaching.
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