The Dharma of Development
Whew, my head is spinning from the WeProgram.Net presentation by Wintellect co-founder John Robbins. He didn't dazzle us with secret code snippets or tools that reveal the keys to .Net. Instead, John Robbins spoke passionately about what it takes to produce quality software that's on time and on schedule. I've heard others speak on similar topics, beating various methodology drums, but none had the gusto that Robbins demonstrated. His anecdotes (based on broad ranging experience ) and no-holds-barred approach were exceptional and Darrell and I both wished wish we would have taped the talk because there was that much good stuff in it.
Just a few memorable quotes include:
- “Customers don't buy ISO-9000 docs, they buy quality software completed on time“
- “Everyone has to stand at my status meetings -- they're only going to last 15 minutes at the most!”
- ”I put the CS Majors at the bottom of the stack when I'm looking over resumes”
- "If you're not in the business of producing bug-tracking software, why are you rolling your own solution and wasting your time? Use a quality product (Bugzilla is even free) and stay customer focused."
It would take too long to explain all the above, so I'll let you wrestle with them. He went on to share some of the guiding principles of Wintellect development and impressed the heck out of me with his vehemence. I can see why he co-founded Wintellect! Very impressive.
After reflecting on it a bit further, he was getting into processes and steps to support developers in their pursuit of building better software. That's also what this whole .Net stuff is about -- increasing programmer productivity and producing higher quality software. Not to get too academic on you, but I did study a lot of Eastern religion in undergrad and faiths like Hinduism and Buddhism have this notion of profound and divine truth known as dharma. John Robbins was sharing the Dharma of Development -- whether it's winforms, web services, and no matter your language (even the non-.Net ones!), we all share in the development process at our organizations and owe it to ourselves and our customers to produce high quality product!
We'll be posting the powerpoint presentation from John's talk next week at www.WeProgram.Net -- but the powerpoint is only a fraction of the dharma. I know John Robbins will be talking at the series of Devscovery conferences coming up, so check out what he has to share. If he's always as thought provoking as he was at our user group, you'll not want to miss it!
Happy .Netting!