Coding Intent

RailsConf 09 - Robert Martin - What killed smalltalk could kill ruby, too

If you take anything at all away from this talk its Robert Martin’s answer to the last question, which boiled down to this: “Professionalism is honour, honesty with yourself and disciplined in your approach and not succumbing to fear and throwing away all your techniques in the face of a deadline.”

The last attribute reminds me of another quote “Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.” - Yoda

This struck a chord with me, Am I being professional?

I should probably post some code based stories in this blog at some stage. I have one more post in the works about teams and communication and then I’ll start to post some code oriented entries, maybe some rails stuff.

Decisions made in isolation are often wrong. I’ve been told on occasion that I don’t give enough information and that I’m too optimistic. Both are a fair call and I’ve tried to address those in what I do. It’s good to have feed back because changes cannot be made in an insular environment.

The same rules apply when trying to effect change in a team environment. A team needs to be able to look at the practices and process that are being used and be able to critique them, it’s a vital skill to learn. When decisions are made without input from the team and then forced on them its bound to fail. I realize that not all decisions can be voted on and that someone has to make the decision but that decision needs to be made with all the information.

When making decision make sure that you have ALL the information that you can get.