The agile conference is insane!
There are over 30 concurrent presentations going on plus a couple talk/chill out areas and several booths for the companies involved in agile development. Tuesday was the real opening of the conference.
There was breakfast from 7am to 8:30am when the opening Keynote took place. The last post was written during that talk. After that, I ran out to a talk from Dirk Riehle about open source business opportunities. It was a bit empty and Dirk covered mainly only the advantages for companies to use or develop open source. I felt there was more to said about the relationship between agile and open source and how it can help improving your approaches to clients and give you more possible solutions to use.
Lunch followed at the conference where food was pretty like the one from the ice breaker. Nice but could have been better to have some variety. After lunch, I managed to swap work with another volunteer to spend the whole afternoon attending a session with Mary Poppendieck and Christian Reis (Kiko). The first part was a presentation about the way Kiko sees open source development to work and how he works at Cannonical to develop open source. I got a few insights and learned a couple things really interesting. Mostly the very rigid hierarchy that most open source project use to filter contributions in order to maintain a good code base. The second part was just amazing. Mary drove a discussion that should point us to things agilists should learn from open source developers and vice versa. I won't be able to give you a good summary but Mary promissed she would post the results in about 10 days. I've offered myself to help her but I don't really know how I will do it.
Finally, Microsoft hosted a reception from 7pm to 10pm with loads of drinks to everyone and some very funny rock band contest which volunteers proudly won. :) I had a great time chatting with Danilo, Mariana, Kiko, Hernan (an Argentinian volunteer I met here), Elizabeth Keogh, Dan North, Tom Poppendieck as well as many more people. We left around 10:30 pm after about 4 or 5 red wine glasses and having evaluated the Archimedes code with Danilo and Szczepan Faber (one of Mockito's maintainer) to find out why I was having problems mocking a couple stuff.
So far my evaluation for Agile is great. It is even more extreme than OOPSLA since you have more things going on at the same time and there are more events trying to put everyone in contact to each other. It is very intense (and expensive) but it is really worth it.
Today's summary should come up tomorrow so stay on.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Monday at Agile 2008 and past news
Hello everyone,
The end of the holidays was very good. I found my supervisor (absolutely NO problem to do it) and we managed to organize a Coding Dojo in Grenoble with some researchers and some industry workers. We worked with ruby (http://www.ruby-lang.org) and rspec (http://rspec.info/) on the block problem (http://acm.uva.es/p/v1/101.html). It was very interesting and I felt they liked the idea. Even promissed me that they would start their own dojo.
The last week was in Paris where I joined the Paris Coding Dojo (http://xp-france.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?DojoDeveloppement - in French) where I met Emmanuel Gaillot (http://emmanuelgaillot.blogspot.com/) and a few other regular Paris Dojo attendees. It was an amazing experience and will probably have future great consequences regarding collaboration between the group in Sao Paulo and the one in Paris.
Finally, I should leave France on Saturday morning. Obvisouly, as always near holidays, my flight was overbooked. So I was offered some money and a full paied day to stay one more day in Paris. I accepted it so it would pay off my accomodation expenses in Toronto. Therefore, I arrived in Toronto on Sunday afternoon. Found out that the student accomodations at the University of Toronto is pretty amazing! The room is quite big and nice in a very nice campus and pretty well geared and very well located.
I then went the Agile 2008 volunteers meeting in the Sheraton Hotel Center. It was a pretty good overview of the size of the conference: 1600 attendees. 400 speakers and around 100 staff (70 volunteers, 20 stage directors and about 10 major organizers). Sunday was really smooth since the conference only sort of started in Monday. Monday only had registration and bag deliveries as well as the research talks. The lines were little, everything was flowing pretty smoothly and people were talking quite a lot. Loads of famous agilists were walking around, meeting each other and talking to other people. It ended up with the Ice breaker evening which was a huge meeting with all attendees with 4 food spots that were representing Toronto's main social origins. There were also several weird pass times you could go into: massage, hand reading, handwrite analysis, henna tatoos, taro players and other stuff.
It was on from 7 pm to 10 pm when those services as well as food and drinking stopped sending people out ot bars or the Musik Maztik which is a special stage in the conference for attendees to play music instruments. Since the timezone difference is about 6 hours between Paris and Toronto, 10 pm was 4 am for me so I went to bed.
Today (Tuesday) is the official sessions start of the conference. Things are going very well so far, the breakfast was amazing and everyone is watching a very good talk from James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds (http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/). He is talking about how wisdom can come out of the crowds and why in some cases, it just gets people dumbers. After this, the first sessions will come up and people should spread over. I will try to keep this blog updated about the conference but I am not sure I will manage it.
That's all for now people. Bye bye!
The end of the holidays was very good. I found my supervisor (absolutely NO problem to do it) and we managed to organize a Coding Dojo in Grenoble with some researchers and some industry workers. We worked with ruby (http://www.ruby-lang.org) and rspec (http://rspec.info/) on the block problem (http://acm.uva.es/p/v1/101.html). It was very interesting and I felt they liked the idea. Even promissed me that they would start their own dojo.
The last week was in Paris where I joined the Paris Coding Dojo (http://xp-france.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?DojoDeveloppement - in French) where I met Emmanuel Gaillot (http://emmanuelgaillot.blogspot.com/) and a few other regular Paris Dojo attendees. It was an amazing experience and will probably have future great consequences regarding collaboration between the group in Sao Paulo and the one in Paris.
Finally, I should leave France on Saturday morning. Obvisouly, as always near holidays, my flight was overbooked. So I was offered some money and a full paied day to stay one more day in Paris. I accepted it so it would pay off my accomodation expenses in Toronto. Therefore, I arrived in Toronto on Sunday afternoon. Found out that the student accomodations at the University of Toronto is pretty amazing! The room is quite big and nice in a very nice campus and pretty well geared and very well located.
I then went the Agile 2008 volunteers meeting in the Sheraton Hotel Center. It was a pretty good overview of the size of the conference: 1600 attendees. 400 speakers and around 100 staff (70 volunteers, 20 stage directors and about 10 major organizers). Sunday was really smooth since the conference only sort of started in Monday. Monday only had registration and bag deliveries as well as the research talks. The lines were little, everything was flowing pretty smoothly and people were talking quite a lot. Loads of famous agilists were walking around, meeting each other and talking to other people. It ended up with the Ice breaker evening which was a huge meeting with all attendees with 4 food spots that were representing Toronto's main social origins. There were also several weird pass times you could go into: massage, hand reading, handwrite analysis, henna tatoos, taro players and other stuff.
It was on from 7 pm to 10 pm when those services as well as food and drinking stopped sending people out ot bars or the Musik Maztik which is a special stage in the conference for attendees to play music instruments. Since the timezone difference is about 6 hours between Paris and Toronto, 10 pm was 4 am for me so I went to bed.
Today (Tuesday) is the official sessions start of the conference. Things are going very well so far, the breakfast was amazing and everyone is watching a very good talk from James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds (http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/). He is talking about how wisdom can come out of the crowds and why in some cases, it just gets people dumbers. After this, the first sessions will come up and people should spread over. I will try to keep this blog updated about the conference but I am not sure I will manage it.
That's all for now people. Bye bye!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Holidays!
Well,
I have been pretty away lately but it is just that I am enjoying my holidays here in Europe.
From the 1st of July to the 4th, I spend a few days in Paris enjoying the food and the summer. Then I spend a nice weekend in London where I visited the Thoughtworks office and met a few very nice people thanks to Danilo.
I could finally offer Mariana her Asus eee Pc 900 which is a fine little piece of computer. The pre packaged Xandros distribution is quite weird and she is anxious to install Ubuntu on it but I still have not managed to create a bootable USB.
We visited a few places and museums as well as a pub (could not miss that, right?) and went to a magic show. Covent Garden and the London Transport Museum were some of the highlights. The London's eye tour was quite deceiving on the other hand.
The 7th we got back to Paris and, tired as we were, lost our first opportunity to join the Paris Coding Dojo which made me quite sad. On the rest I had a nice week walking around Paris without any specific destination. Highlights to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It is cheaper and MUCH more interesting than London's eye. No time restriction, more infos and space. A nicer view of the whole city as well as a first and second floor trip that can last long. I had the pleasure to have lunch at the second floor (home made sandwiches and water) and it was very pleasant.
The 14th we finally went to the parc in front of the Eiffel Tower to wait for the fireworks. It was a very nice evening. Laying down on the grass, having a nice picnic with wine and then listening to classic music while watching an amazing firework show. Only sad part was that people were not polite enough to stay sit so everyone could enjoy it. We had to stand up and the shorter people suffered a bit. Sad to see that civilization is not what it used to be.
I am currently to the south of France, near Bordeaux, at my grand parents' place. It is a very nice and calm spot although tourists are becoming more and more invasive. Tomorrow I leave to the mountains at a friend's place were I should have 3 days of calm and then we head for Nice to see Julian and then Grenoble to see Alfredo, my advisor (let's hope I don't run into the same troubles as the PHD comics).
I have been pretty away lately but it is just that I am enjoying my holidays here in Europe.
From the 1st of July to the 4th, I spend a few days in Paris enjoying the food and the summer. Then I spend a nice weekend in London where I visited the Thoughtworks office and met a few very nice people thanks to Danilo.
I could finally offer Mariana her Asus eee Pc 900 which is a fine little piece of computer. The pre packaged Xandros distribution is quite weird and she is anxious to install Ubuntu on it but I still have not managed to create a bootable USB.
We visited a few places and museums as well as a pub (could not miss that, right?) and went to a magic show. Covent Garden and the London Transport Museum were some of the highlights. The London's eye tour was quite deceiving on the other hand.
The 7th we got back to Paris and, tired as we were, lost our first opportunity to join the Paris Coding Dojo which made me quite sad. On the rest I had a nice week walking around Paris without any specific destination. Highlights to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It is cheaper and MUCH more interesting than London's eye. No time restriction, more infos and space. A nicer view of the whole city as well as a first and second floor trip that can last long. I had the pleasure to have lunch at the second floor (home made sandwiches and water) and it was very pleasant.
The 14th we finally went to the parc in front of the Eiffel Tower to wait for the fireworks. It was a very nice evening. Laying down on the grass, having a nice picnic with wine and then listening to classic music while watching an amazing firework show. Only sad part was that people were not polite enough to stay sit so everyone could enjoy it. We had to stand up and the shorter people suffered a bit. Sad to see that civilization is not what it used to be.
I am currently to the south of France, near Bordeaux, at my grand parents' place. It is a very nice and calm spot although tourists are becoming more and more invasive. Tomorrow I leave to the mountains at a friend's place were I should have 3 days of calm and then we head for Nice to see Julian and then Grenoble to see Alfredo, my advisor (let's hope I don't run into the same troubles as the PHD comics).
Friday, June 20, 2008
Archimedes saving and opening!
It took a very long time and several complains but it is finally back.
Archimedes' new version (0.56.0) reintroduces open and save feature. We maintained the xml file format with a few minor modifications from the last version. It is not backwards compatible but if you need such support, I can easily write a small translator. Just post a feature request at sourceforge or a comment here.
There are still a few things I would like to improve on that system (such as disabling import/export as well as open/save when there are no importer/exporter or nativeFormat extensions loaded). I've finally (just now) also improved my generate installer script to generate a source zip file. This way anyone can get the source code related to that version whenever they wish. I remind everyone also that our subversion repository is open (as always) at: https://incubadora.fapesp.br/svn/archimedes/. The rcp version (which is the one being released lately) can be found at https://incubadora.fapesp.br/svn/archimedes/mainarchimedes/rcparchimedes/.
I also decided that unstable releases will only be launched at sourceforge while stable ones will be announced at sourceforge, gnomefiles, wikipedia, codeplex and the brazilian portals (incubadora and codigolivre). I also decided most files will be hosted at sourceforge and the other portals will only refer to the online installer or the full installer since those are more generic.
Last, but not least, the next plan is to get the team working on trim and extend to add those backs by July 10th. I will work on improving the open/save system and try to readd export to svg, pdf, jpg, bmp and png. Since I believe most of the code can be reused from older versions, I might be quite quick to implement it.
That's it for now people. Please send us your feedback!
Archimedes' new version (0.56.0) reintroduces open and save feature. We maintained the xml file format with a few minor modifications from the last version. It is not backwards compatible but if you need such support, I can easily write a small translator. Just post a feature request at sourceforge or a comment here.
There are still a few things I would like to improve on that system (such as disabling import/export as well as open/save when there are no importer/exporter or nativeFormat extensions loaded). I've finally (just now) also improved my generate installer script to generate a source zip file. This way anyone can get the source code related to that version whenever they wish. I remind everyone also that our subversion repository is open (as always) at: https://incubadora.fapesp.br/svn/archimedes/. The rcp version (which is the one being released lately) can be found at https://incubadora.fapesp.br/svn/archimedes/mainarchimedes/rcparchimedes/.
I also decided that unstable releases will only be launched at sourceforge while stable ones will be announced at sourceforge, gnomefiles, wikipedia, codeplex and the brazilian portals (incubadora and codigolivre). I also decided most files will be hosted at sourceforge and the other portals will only refer to the online installer or the full installer since those are more generic.
Last, but not least, the next plan is to get the team working on trim and extend to add those backs by July 10th. I will work on improving the open/save system and try to readd export to svg, pdf, jpg, bmp and png. Since I believe most of the code can be reused from older versions, I might be quite quick to implement it.
That's it for now people. Please send us your feedback!
Monday, June 9, 2008
Releasing unstable versions again
I am forcing myself to release unstable versions again to try to automatize the process a bit more.
So far I have managed to improve the sourceforge publication decently. There are yet another 3 sites that are much more painful to update that contain archimedes versions.
I think I will adopt the following rule. Unstable versions go to Sourceforge Only. Stable versions go to the other sites also. This way, maybe I can keep up the habit to release unstable very often (once a week).
This unstable (0.55.0) contain the export feature working nicely, the trim command back but not working and the infinite line intersector. The team is now working on the Trim system and the import one. So next version may be able to load files and trim correctly.
Files can be downloaded at Archimedes' sourceforge site. Enjoy it!
So far I have managed to improve the sourceforge publication decently. There are yet another 3 sites that are much more painful to update that contain archimedes versions.
I think I will adopt the following rule. Unstable versions go to Sourceforge Only. Stable versions go to the other sites also. This way, maybe I can keep up the habit to release unstable very often (once a week).
This unstable (0.55.0) contain the export feature working nicely, the trim command back but not working and the infinite line intersector. The team is now working on the Trim system and the import one. So next version may be able to load files and trim correctly.
Files can be downloaded at Archimedes' sourceforge site. Enjoy it!
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Screencast number 7
Well,
I finally recorded the screencast number 7. It shows how to create Smalltalk classes and tests using SUnit. It also demonstrates the use of class packages and categories as well as the TestRunner tool. It follows a TDD rythm and presents 2 methods from SUnit. Couldn't make it smaller so it is a bit over the last screencasts' length but I think it is still reasonable (around 8 minutes).
As usual, I'll stop here but you can enjoy them:
Download the English version here or see it on Google Video.
Download the Portuguese version here or see it on Google Video.
I finally recorded the screencast number 7. It shows how to create Smalltalk classes and tests using SUnit. It also demonstrates the use of class packages and categories as well as the TestRunner tool. It follows a TDD rythm and presents 2 methods from SUnit. Couldn't make it smaller so it is a bit over the last screencasts' length but I think it is still reasonable (around 8 minutes).
As usual, I'll stop here but you can enjoy them:
Download the English version here or see it on Google Video.
Download the Portuguese version here or see it on Google Video.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Archimedes 0.54
After one year, I've finally released Archimedes 0.54.
It counts with the whole intersection features back and, most notably, the intersection grip and the selection by intersection. The next step is to have trim and extend back as well as the save and open features. The current team will be working on save and open and set a deadline to the 16th so, if I don't get too late, I should release it that week end.
By July, they will have another iteration ready that should bring trim, extend and fillet back. If I am not mistaken, this is pretty much all features that were available in the old version. So we are good. Just need to improve upon it later.
I am also late with the podcasts and I don't know when I will manage to recover on that.
See you all later. Enjoy the release!
It counts with the whole intersection features back and, most notably, the intersection grip and the selection by intersection. The next step is to have trim and extend back as well as the save and open features. The current team will be working on save and open and set a deadline to the 16th so, if I don't get too late, I should release it that week end.
By July, they will have another iteration ready that should bring trim, extend and fillet back. If I am not mistaken, this is pretty much all features that were available in the old version. So we are good. Just need to improve upon it later.
I am also late with the podcasts and I don't know when I will manage to recover on that.
See you all later. Enjoy the release!
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