Yak shaving

An example of Yak shaving I found myself in not too long ago.

I found myself doing a Ruby on Rails development on a Mac box. As I used older version of MacOS I had an older version of Ruby compiler. To use latest version of Rails I had to get newer version of Ruby. To get that I needed to install that via Mac Ports or something similar. While trying to install Mac Ports I found myself missing some of the development files that stopped Mac Ports from installation. It turned out that those files where in XCode. I had to find XCode that is going to work on my machine. Turned out that older version is available on Apple Dev website, all I need is to sign-in. I had an account, but forgot the password. Then I tried to retrieve a password and that didn’t work. After some battles I finally got a XCode on my box.  It was still Mac Ports impossible to install Mac Ports thought. That took me along time. Eventually I ended up installing VM image of Ubuntu and developing on Linux VM.

I think that being developer, the Yak Shaving problem is very irritating and could lead into a lot of wasted hours. When working in a pair,  the Yak issue will not appear that often. There is always a second pair of eyes to validate the sanity of the task in progress. It doesn’t eliminate the Yak entirely as I found out with some peers

When working alone that is entirely different story. Because there is no one to run you ideas by, sometime I make a decisions that lead me into “the shaving“. I found myself wasting hours before realizing that it doesn’t make sense and taking step back.

Pomodoro, mmm, delicious

Not to long ago on a project I was working on, we used Pomodoro to keep us focus for a period of time. This simple technique combines 25 minutes of un-distractable time of work and a 5 minutes break. After 4 successful Pomodoros (25 minutes + 5 minutes break) we had a little longer break. While working in a pairs, Pomodoro was keeping us focus and safe from emails, phone calls and coffee breaks. The 5 minutes break gave us a lot of time to discuss the issues around the task/problem.

When working alone the 5 minutes break could be the excellent opportunity to talk with someone else about the problem or just take a step back and reflect on a solution. This eventually could lead into new ideas and most importantly into STOP shaving a Yak.

There is more to Pomodoro technique than just a sanity check from a yak shaving. There is a free PDF book that can be downloaded for free http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/resources/cirillo/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf and some other resources on the Pomodoro Technique web site.

Cheers, Gregster

Today I had a conversation with my Wife about the stuff I do at work. I was trying to explain what is my role. After few minutes I got into a pickle. Am I a coder, programmer, developer. Does all those terms mean different things or they all the same?

Taking a step back in my life I tried to analyze all those words according to what I was doing.

Coder

When I left university I was full of theory. Empty words and concepts that I never tried in life. I knew few programming languages and some technics. I had no experience how to deal with people though. Whenever I was in a conversation about next project, feature I was thinking only in technical terms. When I found something impossible to do (as I just never done it before), I said that it is impossible to do. These were old days, and I think I was a coder at that point in my life.

Programmer

When I started my first job, every simple task was a problem. I was asking a million questions all guys that were working there for long time. Needed guidance on everything. After a while I was capable to make some simple technical decisions and not ask anybody. This is when I still was in my little world of code and I didn’t care about reasons behind it.

Developer

This is few years after university. This is the moment when I stopped thinking about programming languages (they are just another tool) and focused on software as a whole. A big role in this was played by people from the company I work for at the moment (ThoughtWorks). As a developer I need to know what is the driver behind the need for feature/software. Why? I need to understand system as a whole, to make proper decisions. It is also possible that the feature or functionality is not really needed or hard (impossible) to implement.

So, coder, programmer, developer. This is how I believe I evolved through my technical life. The labels are still a labels but I find them very useful explaining or just understanding what I was doing.

I believe it is natural for next question to appear, what’s next?

We’ll see

Greg