[Year 12 SofDev] A neat site

[Mark Kelly]

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/

Joel Spolsky is a programmer with a down-to-earth, sensible philosophy 
about programming and business.  Well worth a read.

e.g.

"A good way to defend yourself against [clients demanding hundreds of 
changes to code you believed was finished] is to deliver lots and lots 
of interim versions to the client: real, working interim versions, and 
get them using it so you can build feedback into future iterations. 
Rather than going off in a cave and building something for a year, only 
to find out that 9 months of that work is wasted, you show the client 
something every month, say, and get instant feedback and then you adjust 
directions if needed. That's one thing that many people waving the 
"agile" flag are talking about. The first delivery should be the minimum 
thing that could possibly be useful.

This should not be seen as an excuse to write code without designing it, 
first. All code is going to be designed eventually. But if you try to 
design it first in a programming language, the designing process is 
vastly slower than if you were designing it with pencil and paper and 
descriptive paragraphs in the English language, so you're wasting time."

-- 
Mark Kelly
Manager - Information Systems
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
Direct line: 8520 9085
School Phone +613 8520 9000
School Fax   +613 9578 9253
kel AT mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au

Webmaster - http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
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