Robby on Rails

“It is not the strongest of the species that will survive, or most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.”

- Charles Darwin

Last week I posted, Agile development begins within…, which referenced some bullets from the book, Practices of an Agile Developer. Since then, I have taken a little more time to read a bit further in the book. With books like this, I tend to jump forward and backward, so ten leaps further might put me on page two. In any event, I found a few more things that I wanted to point out… and by all means, you should go buy the book.

In Chapter 3, the authors, Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt, discuss some ways to feed your Agile developer brain.

side note: while typing this… a huge bee just snuck in through my office window… where was I…

• Learn iteratively and incrementally. Set aside some time every day for catching up. It doesn’t have to be long, but it should be regular. Keep track of concepts you want to learn more about—just jot down a note when you hear some unfamiliar term or phrase. Then use your regularly scheduled time to investigate it further.

This is a very important aspect of being a developer in any environment. Otherwise, you’ll end up like that disgruntled guy who has been programming in the same language for 25 years and refuse to use tabs in a web browser. Trust me on this one. There are people like that… and it could be you!

The point that I liked within this is that you shouldn’t just wander off and figure out what it is that you’re not sure about. I believe many people have a tendency to immediately look up at their google search box in their browser and…well… google it.

Don’t! Schedule time to do it… otherwise you’ll end up learning about the Canadian farming industry. GTD it! ;-)

• _Attend local user groups. _

This is a no-brainer. Find a local Ruby user group… and start going each month. Perhaps your local Ruby user group meets more than once a month. :-)

Disclaimer: I’ve missed the last few meetings at PDX.rb. Bad Robby. :-/

I wanted to post more… but have since decided that it’s probably time for you to just go and purchase the book for yourself. :-)