Dave Laribee - All Comments

re: John Lam on IronRuby

Josh — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:45:40 GMT

Only 2 members on his team? Microsoft seems to be really serious about Ruby....

The Best of RubyFlow - April 24 to May 5, 2008

The Best of RubyFlow - April 24 to May 5, 2008 — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:55:33 GMT

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Elegant Code » Thanks to BDD

Elegant Code » Thanks to BDD — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:49:59 GMT

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Links of the Week April 30th 2008

Chris Love's Official Blog - Professional ASP.NET — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:54:25 GMT

OK, so this is a little more than a week. Sorry I have been very busy since getting back from Seattle.

re: Hallway Conversations

Jeff Certain — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:47:28 GMT

jdn,

I'm the fourth person. Mind you, I only had one question in that conversation.

Jeff

re: Iterations vs. Flow

Scott — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:58:42 GMT

I'm not sure how to explain this in a way that won't sound stupid. We have a major system in operation that has 3 types of change needs: 1) new feature, 2) bug, 3) new line of business. The feature roadmap is strictly nonlinear. Either the customer decides that there is a need for something "asap" which typically means "next sprint" or they have items on the backlog that are all of equal priority more or less, and are handled as at-time-of-sprint-planning conditions dictate. So basically at sprint planning we either have a high priority "immediate fill" order from a customer, or we have n number of older orders around which to build a sprint.

It's too much to really comment here, and it's an evolving process (today we abolished arbitrary iteration timespans altogether to get even closer to iteration=feature release), but I can put together an email or a blog post or discuss it with you if you like.

re: Iterations vs. Flow

Dave Laribee — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:55:07 GMT

@Scott

> release per iteration

How far does your road map extend? Are you doing what if iterations way in advance? Are you running single-team-per-project?

re: Iterations vs. Flow

Scott — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:20:13 GMT

Dave,

I'm doing release per iteration, and iteration tends to be feature or family of related features. Iterations range typically from 1 week minimum (I find this to be pushing the envelope in getting something new spec'd, coded, tested, and deployed, but it works) to 3 weeks maximum. If something is going to take more than 3 weeks it gets spun off into something separate (a "new" project type scenario) or broken down into more granular bits.

Tomorrow I'm going to be holding a meeting (open space style even) to try to work on a more organic, more flow-ish process.

re: Hallway Conversations

Chad Myers — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:17:58 GMT

@wekempf

Oh, I agree, MS, at least in the .NET space, isn't "OSS Hostile" (though there have been a few questionable incidents that could've been handled better).

But there is, for the most part, a general unawareness or even maybe ignoring (no conspiracies, though) of some of the OSS projects that have built up around the .NET ecosystem (primarily bleed over from the Java space).

There are some individuals who are quite the opposite and very interested in OSS, etc but they are usually not in any sufficient power to make anything really interesting happen. But there is some hope ScottGu is interested (though overloaded with a million other things, I'm thinking), and many on his team and some in other teams are engaging and discussing but it's still not mainstream and we're still fighting an up-hill battle in many cases to get best of breed tools to be used instead of "Whatever Microsoft puts out" which is not always best-of-breed.

re: Hallway Conversations

jdn — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:20:18 GMT

Hey Dave, who is the fourth individual in the conversation? I recognize his face, but am blanking on the name. I think you should include.

YMMV. Thanks.

Dew Drop - April 26, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

Dew Drop - April 26, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:28:33 GMT

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re: Hallway Conversations

Bryan Reynolds — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:23:02 GMT

I don't think Microsoft is practicing isolationism.

Recently I worked with Frans Bouma and David Ebbo to connect LLBGen with Dynamic Data. Microsoft opened there API to allow an outside company work with their bits.

bryan.reynoldslive.com/.../LLBLGen-Pro-and-Microsoftrsquo3bs-Dynamic-Data-to-play-nice!.aspx

These are good signs.

re: Hallway Conversations

Robin Clowers — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:58:58 GMT

Thanks for posting these videos, I am getting to see sessions (and side conversations) that I missed at the event. It was hard to decide where to be with so many good conversations going on at the same time :)

re: Hallway Conversations

wekempf — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:08:14 GMT

I have to say, this is one of those topics that I know is hot with the Alt.Net folks, but I've never understood it. Microsoft really is NOT hostile towards open source on their platform. Yes, I understand the animosity when the bigwigs make hay about Linux, or when they attack the GPL (that one I agree with them on, though). However, that truly isn't the entire story.

Just as an example, the question was raised in that video why MSDN doesn't have articles about open source libraries. While the answer given was informative and useful, I think it also must be noted that THERE ARE such articles. msdn2.microsoft.com/.../aa973811.aspx

The open source community seems to be making a couple of mistakes here. Microsoft is a business, and must follow a business model. They have little ROI from supporting open source, beyond developer good will. Further, that developer good will doesn't even account for all that much when Microsoft's core customer base shuns open source for various reasons (pointed out in the video), and they aren't in a services/support model. Given that, you can't expect them to go to much of an effort to "support" you. That does NOT mean they are against you. Learn to work within that model. Do the work of promoting open source yourself. Evidence tells me that if you do that, Microsoft isn't going to stand in your way. Write those articles and submit them to MSDN (magazine or web), and at that point the effort is likely to be small enough that Microsoft will provide "support" by publishing the article. Again, look at the examples where this has already been done.

I see Microsoft drop names for all sorts of projects, open source and not, all over the place.

re: Hallway Conversations

Shaneo — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:25:31 GMT

Wow. Thanks for posting these for those of us who could not attend.

One of the things I kept thinking after DevTeach Vancouver is how nice it would be to have videos of some of the sessions I attended, or even better, the hallway conversations just like this one.

Anyway, thanks again for the videos. Great stuff, keep it up!