Comments for Trochaisms

Comment on Leaving LA by eldang

eldang — Mon, 27 May 2013 17:17:05 +0000

@trochee Yes. Well put.

Comment on don’t say I didn’t warn you by trochee

trochee — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:28:54 +0000

don’t say I didn’t warn you http://t.co/szJIxT6P0e

Comment on CDH3 on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin by trochee

trochee — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 19:25:24 +0000

CDH3 on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin http://t.co/DBHhQ6fBEZ

Comment on “Grad school” is a collaboration anti-pattern by Bill McNeill

Bill McNeill — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:24:43 +0000

Seeing as how pursuing a PhD was the worst mistake I ever made in my life there's no end of contributions I could make on this subject, but here's a specific problem that comes to mind after reading your post. Graduate school works on an apprenticeship model. Some aspects of this–i.e. learn by doing–are good, others–i.e. don't get paid–are not. But this model is at odds with the romantic myth of individual novelty. No one expects a journeyman plumber to come up with a new kind of pipe. A better pattern would be to take the apprenticeship model seriously and decide that the goal of graduate school is to train craftsmen, not heroic artists.

Comment on Software collaboration patterns by “Grad school” is a collaboration anti-pattern | Trochaisms

“Grad school” is a collaboration anti-pattern | Trochaisms — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:35:39 +0000

[...] been exploring patterns for actually working on software — not for designing it — and I realized that [...]

Comment on “Grad school” is a collaboration anti-pattern by trochee

trochee — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:25:37 +0000

“Grad school” is a collaboration anti-pattern http://t.co/2fL0o0IMV7

Comment on “Bank heist” collaboration pattern by Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 02:35:02 +0000

I've actually never seen Wanda. Didn't even know it was a heist movie. Must add to my watch list. And yes, a collaborative hack is very similar to a heist.

Comment on “Bank heist” collaboration pattern by Q. Pheevr

Q. Pheevr — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:57:32 +0000

One big difference (I hope) between your typical software development team and your typical group of bank robbers is that the former have much less incentive to stab one another in the back—if only because their end products are less valuable, and their methods less dangerous. (For the sake of context, I might mention here that my favourite heist movie is not any of the ones that you mentioned in the post, but A Fish Called Wanda.)

If you take the basic pattern of a heist, but reduce the chance of long-term imprisonment and replace the briefcases full of banknotes with a more arbitrary objective, then I think what you end up with is something rather like a classic MIT hack. That’s probably a pretty congenial working environment for many software developers.

Comment on Software collaboration patterns by Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 22:06:06 +0000

I think this *is* a restatement of the challenge, but a useful one, because it’s making explicit one of the criteria I care about: in the desideratum pattern, we want *mutual respect* to be part of the expectation from colleagues.

Comment on Software collaboration patterns by Bill McNeill

Bill McNeill — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:04:13 +0000

A solider it is commonly said (in Men Against Fire inter alia) fights not for his country, but for the guy next to him. Similarly, though strategic goals (career advancement, stock price) may hold sway at review and quarterly meeting time, what motivates programmers on a day-to-day basis is the respect of the five or so other programmers they work with most closely. You want them to think that you are clever. You don't want to let them down. The most successful software situations I've been in have traditional top-down management but we suffused with lots of mutual respect and affection. The Collegial Waterfall. Of course, "make everyone like each other" is closer to a restatement of your original problem than a proposed solution, but in social engineering, mutual respect will always result in reduced organizational friction, but the converse is not guaranteed.