APL Wiki
BAA London Meeting 2009-08
- Date: 2009-08-27
- Time: 2pm
- Venue: Phil Last's home in Cheshunt
This meeting was held at Phil's house in Cheshunt where we were made very welcome in his "garden shed". It is more of a palace really, think Trianon.
Attendees
ChrisHogan, PhilLast, JohnJacob, MikeHughes, KaiJaeger, StephenTaylor, Ray Cannon ??? .
Topics Discussed
- Of the likely agenda we talked in passing about upcoming conferences (interesting speakers), APL on Wikipedia (Phil's efforts are now more lasting), APLWiki (going well) and then mostly discussed direct development. My notes below are very rough, just step in and improve them where you think they need it.
Notes Taken
- Dave Thomas (the person of that name mostly associated with Objective Programming, rather than others you might associate with Pragmatic Programming or Rugby) is giving a talk at the Dyalog Conference which will be on a similar subject.
- Software development needs to become simpler. How does Direct Development differ from RAD, DSDM, Agile, Lightweight, etc, ...?
- There's the language (all APL dialects); There is the way we use it; "Direct Development" is a label to start defining what is special in using APL to build systems: Analysis thought coding, rather than coding after analysis.
- How do we know when to throw it all away and start again? Remember evolution leads to extinction.
- About Direct Development (which describes the way we use APL to build systems):
- Grounded vs Prototype (=throw away) vs evolutionary;
- it is not a new methodology:
- it is also about human skills and communication (sit close to the users); management should trust the developer - do not try to deskill programming; how to build the (small) team - some members will be really experienced and skilled system builders - others will be apprentices (they are tomorrow's experts); compare Direct with (say) Agile, APL with python, ruby, perl, ...
- Agile Programming has a conference, why not Direct Development?
- But first we need a book to showcase the stories we want to tell;
- the book should not be only about APL (anywhere similar methodologies have been used are relevant); Stephen Taylor agreed to approach Dave Thomas at the Dyalog confereence to see if he would like to be an editor of the book; several of us could think of chapters they would like to see in the book (and help write them?).
The discussions were free wheeling, many of the ideas had been aired before, I hope I have included all the important ones. It looks as if Direct Development is becoming a "BAA London Project" if you draw parallels with the way the NYCJUG operates, see http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/NYCJUG.