Comments for Razorfish Technology

Comment on Cloud interoperabiltiy by Raymond Velez

Raymond Velez — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:12:46 +0000

Cloudclick looks very interesting. I was just talking about Terramark Hosting with a colleague. Has anyone bumped into them?

Comment on Cloud interoperabiltiy by Martin Jacobs

Martin Jacobs — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:43:04 +0000

Interesting trend. It probably will be a challenge, as many cloud vendors have different levels of abstraction.

It is nice to see companies like https://www.cloudkick.com/ surface that allow you to migrate apps from one cloud vendor to another.

Comment on So many authentication options by Martin Jacobs

Martin Jacobs — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:23:33 +0000

With more and more connectivity to all different social networks for our sites, accommodating failures and api changes like http://blog.twitter.com/2009/04/whats-deal-with-oauth.html becomes another design and implementation consideration and challenge.

Comment on agile and pair programming by Jack Ukleja

Jack Ukleja — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:49:01 +0000

Having done a few months of pair programming when I worked with ThoughtWorks I can certainly say its an interesting practice.

First off, just like TDD, pairing is skill that can take a long time to master and make productive (i.e. increase output *and* quality).

The psychology of the practice is also interesting. Here are some of the things I found problematic: Difficulty concentrating when you are not \’driving\’; Lack of code ownership which is important for many developers; Lack of ability to say \”I built that\” - Agile is all about the team result not the individual result which is great, but unfortunately many human psyches find it hard to cope without individual responsibilities/pride; Trouble concentrating when someone is looking over your shoulder (If you have performance anxiety you may struggle! :)); Lack of ‘quiet time’ - how to fit in the need for solitude in problem solving. Sometimes you just need some time to get your head around a problem before tackling it with someone else.

Personally I think 100% pair programming is counter productive (and a very hard sell to bean counters).

The way I see it being deployed most effectively in a regular code shop is for occasional use (~20-30%?) e.g. on particularly tricky problems, for knowledge transfer, debugging code etc. For the right scenarios it definately makes sense and should be encouraged.

To use pair programming indiscrimately is a bit like doing unit testing indiscrimately. Ultimately its a cost benefit trade off - most of the benefit is gained by targetting a small critical core. Writing unit tests for your DTOs getters & setters is probably a waste of time, but writing them for a complex business object that is going to form the core of a system that will live for 10 years makes sense

Comment on agile and pair programming by runescape accounts

runescape accounts — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:26:07 +0000

Great site and I am really pleased to see you have what I am actually looking for here and this post is exactly what I am interested in. I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor

Comment on So many authentication options by Martin Jacobs

Martin Jacobs — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:58:18 +0000

We just used it on http://www.jcpamericanlivingtour.com/tweets

Comment on agile and pair programming by Raymond Velez

Raymond Velez — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:56:53 +0000

Well, the budget would theoretically improve. The premise is that two developers working in a pair programming approach are more productive than two developers working alone. At least that’s what the studies say:).

Comment on agile and pair programming by Ajay Lodha

Ajay Lodha — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:53:23 +0000

Another question is, does our budget and resource availability, on projects allow for pair programming. I definitely think it helps in the product development space in improving the quality of the final deliverable

Comment on agile and pair programming by Andrea Denaro

Andrea Denaro — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:04:15 +0000

@Dnsee we have been using pair programming for a long time and I’m not yet convinced of the value of this approach. the problem is always the same: is it faster to have two people on one monitor or is better to have to people and two monitors? And if you are in “emergency mode” (no time, few money, a lot of requirements) this is more and more difficult.

In my opinion the more you are developing your own software, instead of customizing ready and proprietary platforms, the more advantages pair programming will give you.

Comment on agile and pair programming by Vishal

Vishal — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:27:37 +0000

VVery interesting. In fact, in 2006 I set up a distributed agile model for Atlas (Microsoft Ad & Publishing) that was built on paired-programming principles. A 20 person team split in half in 2 separate locations.

It did take a while for the “buddies” to start collaborating or even understanding what that was meant to do. In the last 2 years this model has seen significant improvements and is an excellent choice for product development.

Add Test-Driven development to the mix and you have a winner.