2 brains are better than just one

I haven’t been here for a while. Just was too deep in my work and only today allowed myself to take a look what’s going on in the blogs of my friends and make some comments.

Because today was a really good day. In my current project I have a release on Monday and still in my favorite (but most complicated) module there are few really dirty bugs that makes this module to look not that nice as it might be. I came today to the office somewhere at 3 PM with a strong intention to fix one of the problems and a belief that I can really to this. My current understating of Flex allows me to analyze almost any piece of code written by any developer and make there needed changes in case of trouble. I’m lucky that all guys in my team are quite autonomous and can take almost any task by a simple input (sometimes I use a sticky yellow note, write there a short description and stich to the guy’s table) and start working on it without disturbing my concentration on some more difficult thing. So thank you guys for this, I love you all.

There’s a one good mate in my team, Max, who is my primary force for that module development. I worked out few necessary management thigs and then we sat together with Max at my laptop and 4 hours were analyzing, debugging and fixing a trouble. We won. I realized this day few very important things:

• there are tasks in software development that are unarguably better to do with a friend, not alone. I would not be able to fix this bug without Max, definitely. And he was not able to fix it without me in few previous tries.
• sometimes quite simple (at the end when you find it) problem can cost you really a few days of work to fix.
• even BEST, ingenious developers mistake
• fixing bugs can be just a good quest, a good game and a lot of fun if you perceive this activity positively
• diagrams and visualization of complex activity chains helps invaluably when you try to understand a complex mechanism created by other person. We created a set of sequence diagrams for different functional flows of that module and then benefited a really from having this before our eyes. Max really cool in doing this, he showed me that Enterprise Architect can import Flex packages and convert it into workable items in diagrams. Once again I appreciated how good tool EA is.
• sometimes you need to sacrifice personal life and some fun to get the things done at your work. Today I planned to meet one girl, an old friend of mine, who I have not seen for a while. But at 6 PM I was still in the middle of the task so I just called her and told “Sorry baby, we can’t meet today, I have a work I must to do.” I felt that this was not a thing she wanted to hear but she’s a good friend and tomorrow will be ok.

So: if you see that some person in your team can’t do some thing despite of working hard on this – go and help. If you trying to do something and it doesn’t gets working – go and ask for a help.

I was about to write some piece of bullshit into my blog. Was watching a movie and there one funny guy told a thing “blogging is all about to keep a continuous narration”. Hell knows if that was right though or completely crappy but I am definitely almost absolutely sure that it’s not a good idea to write something down when it is a midnight and your brain is kinda tired and wants to say you “bye bye”
So… I decided to check if there are some smart things in blogs of the people I know (not that much, really, I mean not that much people I know having blogs and posting something there) and found out that Pavel has written a thing. Whoever can agree or disagree with the theory a dude referenced there by Pavel evolves but it shouldn’t take such a deep philosophical-kind digging to see that software-craftsperson is better then just a good developer or good DBA, or good PM.

Pavel’s post made me think about why do some people need to back there thought upon the identical thoughts of other people who are for some reasons are known by the greater auditory. Proper thought comes from experience and don’t need any “approval” of others.

Also there was a picture describing a “standard team”. I’ve never seen a standard team.. really never, such as it is described on that picture. I think such standard teams are all dead long time ago and if someone tries to revive one it will fade to gray Real teams now are agile and consists to some extent of software craftsmens. At least it proves itself that if you have only pure “jave developers” or pure “htmlers” in your team then your chances to get into troubles are higher then if you have people with multidisciplinar knowledge. Also having such people doesn’t guarantee you will succeed instead of failing and delivering sucks.

One more thing that one can see on that painting is that in team of software craftsmen you can’t be just a specialist, you need to add a VALUE to the team, otherwise it will be boring for you with them and they will be bored with you.

So, let’s learn and specialize, then learn and generalize, and then once again learn and become jacks-of-all-trades. And the fact that Pavel named his post “Softare Craftsmen” tells me that he is not a man of theory, he is man of practice, and working with him I really think he is. Thanks for the reference

I see that a lot of people are viewing sometimes my blog (can’t see exactly who you are ) and only some leave me a comment (girls, don’t be shy, I’m still single and can have a dates ). That’s normal, most of people are shy or unable of producing a simple few sentences that are linked together and meaningful )) Just whoever watching this and trying to get some piece of a thought – read that article of Pavel and then read the article of the guy referenced there. It’s how it works, the blogging I mean, the network.

Almost forgot… I should name somehow the post… it can’t be without name I suppose. Or can? I will try to submit it without a name. Let’s try