The Magnet Blog

nirav June 13th, 2007

If you are familiar with Extreme Programming, these rules are not new to you. If you are not, they will certainly give you a lot of insight in good software development. We have been using many XP principles in our projects, and have had very good success.

Here are the XP rules, straight from the XP website.

Planning

• User stories are written.
• Release planning creates the schedule.
• Make frequent small releases.
• The Project Velocity is measured.
• The project is divided into iterations.
• Iteration planning starts each iteration.
• Move people around.
• A stand-up meeting starts each day.
• Fix XP when it breaks.

Designing

• Simplicity.
• Choose a system metaphor.
• Use CRC cards for design sessions.
• Create spike solutions to reduce risk.
• No functionality is added early.
• Refactor whenever and wherever possible.

Coding

• The customer is always available.
• Code must be written to agreed standards.
• Code the unit test first.
• All production code is pair programmed.
• Only one pair integrates code at a time.
• Integrate often.
• Use collective code ownership.
• Leave optimization till last.
• No overtime.

Testing

• All code must have unit tests.
• All code must pass all unit tests before it can be released.
• When a bug is found tests are created.
• Acceptance tests are run often and the score is published.

Sometimes I think these are too idealistic. The real world demands are to deliver working software fast. A team that’s tuned to extreme programming can certainly deliver good code quickly, but most programmers are taught differently. They are not tuned to pair programming or test driven development. Many managers too doubt the value of these principles. That makes it more difficult to implement them.

I am dreaming of a project where we can implement all these rules!

• programming , familiar , principles , projects , insight , rules , Recommended Reading , Business , extreme , success , Technology
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nirav May 20th, 2007

We had another Hackfest in Magnet this weekend. The last Hackfest was a roaring success. We had only five participants this time, but it was fun as well. For me, it was a “Samosa to Samosa” hack fest. We started at Saturday 7pm, and I really got on after 3 samosas in my tummy around 8.30! And after a Sunday morning dose of samosas, I started pacing down!

Collectively we did a number of things. Let me put some bullet points:

• Openfire integration with MSN, Yahoo!, Google and AOL messengers. So now we can easily talk to our clients using the same internal Jabber based messenger system.
• Streamlined user level backup system - spanning multiple servers and multiple configurations
• Lot of research on Microsoft Share Point Portal Server
• 3D UI with standard Flex components on Outsmart Labs. Amazing work! I wonder how they are doing it!
• We read a lot of blogs and learnt many new things!
• A lot of QuickSilver hacking
• Batch audio conversion using Switch as I wrote earlier
• Lot of research on mobile and mobile web - the trends, technologies etc
• SQL Injection and general hacking around
• SVN
• MySQL Clustering
• And we watched “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro” - had a great time laughing! Spent more than an hour getting the VCD to show up on the projector though!
• The dinner and in-between discussions were insightful - we talked on topics ranging from security, grid computing, mobile as a computer, IPTV, Windows hacking, Benefits of eating healthy food, GTD philosophy, planning with a calendar, RSS subscriptions with Thunderbird and MP3 streaming

Good fun as usual! I am always looking forward to Hackfests in Magnet! Missed Kartik, Ameya and Naveen though!

• time , roaring , participants , success , magnet , Updates , hackfest , Technology
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nirav May 5th, 2007

Three thoughts & experiences I went through over the last 24 hours.

• Life is all about relationships. Any success is a result of relationships you create and maintain.  Money and fame to stem from your relationships.
• So many people love me so much! Yesterday I experienced how much my family and friends love me - it was awesome. I am gratified. Thank you! And look at yourself, you too are lucky to have so many people around who love you!
• Mentoring is not easy! It’s a privilege. You are impacting another’s life, and people can be difficult. What matters is to stay there and keep pushing the person on the right track!

• money , hours , create , experiences , thoughts , relationships , success , result , Personal
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