Some of the video URLs of #kotlinconf23 most via [Wayback/Archive] KotlinConf’23 – YouTube:
Archive for the ‘Agile’ Category
KotlinConf’23 video streams (including the keynote by Kevlin Henney which is generic to any programming language or concept)
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/26
Posted in ChatGPT, Code Quality, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Java Platform, Kotlin, Pingback, Software Development, Stackoverflow, Technical Debt, Testing | Leave a Comment »
Is Agile dead? Only for places where it is suffocated by rules
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/23
Over the last few years I have seen more and more posts where people are fed up by Agile.
The whole fundament if Agile, or better any lightweight methodology, is to be able to flow as a team. That is only possible when the flow is not disturbed by a truckload of rules or schedules overloaded with ceremonies.
The best way to implement over the last 40+ years I have been in IT is to use common sense.
This basically has not changed since before “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito, ergo sum), so please read this other quote from René Descartes‘s same book “Discourse on Method” where* he begins by allowing himself some wit:
Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.
Or in other words*:
Everyone has a similar and sufficient amount of common sense, but it is rarely used well.
For me, lightweight methodologies vary by team and project and always involve both critical thinking and together with other team members regularly thinking about:
- why to do things
- how to do these things
- the steps to perform the how
- when to change parts or all of the above three points
Agile Software Development is that simple.
Oh: always think about why Software Development or any other work you are involved in differs much or little from Lean Management in car manufacturing (the place where many people advocate the Agile methodologies in Software Development are supposed to stem from: strongly disagree with that as they have their own origin. Try to think about why I disagree, even if your opinion differs from mine).
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Kevlin Henney – Refactoring Is Not Just Clickbait #buildstuffconf – YouTube
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/31
As always, Kevlin Henney has interesting talks. This one too: [Wayback/Archive] Kevlin Henney – Refactoring Is Not Just Clickbait #buildstuffconf – YouTube
Via [Wayback/Archive] Gil Zilberfeld (TestinGil) on Twitter: “.@KevlinHenney – Refactoring Is Not Just Clickbait #buildstuffconf”
–jeroen
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Posted in Agile, Development, Refactoring, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Agile Manifsto turned 25 years this: happy birthmonth!
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/19
Missed Schedule 2020/02/19 at 6:00 pm
Yesterday evening, WordPress.com did it again: “missed schedule” – that bug still is not fixed, so I posted it manually today.
In the time when people create a lot of technical debt, the [Wayback/Archive] Manifesto for Agile Software Development turned 25 years. Happy birthmonth!
Birthmonty you say, not birthday? Yes, it took a few days for the Agile Manifesto to get written – you can read about it at [Wayback/Archive] History: The Agile Manifesto which starts with
On February 11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah, seventeen people met to talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground—and of course, to eat. What emerged was the Agile ‘Software Development’ Manifesto. Representatives from Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others sympathetic to the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes convened
I got reminded to it [Wayback/Archive] Agile Manifesto co-author ‘smitten’ with vibe coding • The Register which shows that vibe coding only can work when all people involved know exactly what they are doing. More often than not they don’t, and just increase their technical debt which was something that working in an agile way tries to solve. So better re-read this 25 year piece of work before you start using LLM to generate code.
Related blog posts:
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Posted in Agile, Development, Extreme Programming (X), Missed Schedule, Power User, Software Development, WordPress | Leave a Comment »
Having some Technical Debt is OK as long as you keep paying the debt: Refactoring Is Not Just Clickbait – Kevlin Henney – NDC Oslo 2022 – YouTube
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/10/28
[Wayback/Archive] Refactoring Is Not Just Clickbait – Kevlin Henney – NDC Oslo 2022 – YouTube
Via:
- [Wayback/Archive] Arda Cetinkaya on Twitter: “If you are doing some new business as MVP, focusing on business quality rather than technology quality is more important. It’s ok to have some tech. debts that can be paid later. It’s OK if no good answer for “How?” but it’s not OK to not have a solid answer for “What?” 🧑🏽💻”
- [Wayback/Archive] Alican Korkmaz on Twitter: “@ArdaCetinkaya Agreed. In this video, @KevlinHenney explains that having tech debt should not be perceived as dreaded as it is. The important thing is regularly visiting and paying them.”
–jeroen
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Posted in Agile, Code Quality, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Refactoring, Software Development, Technical Debt | Leave a Comment »
Critical Program Reading (1975) – 16mm Film – YouTube
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/28
Code quality courses have been an ancient art: this video turned 50 this year (:
[Wayback/Archive] Critical Program Reading (1975) – 16mm Film – YouTube
Via: [Wayback/Archive] Mac 💉💉🦠 on Twitter: “Critical Program Reading, a 16mm film from 1975 dug up by @TechConnectify about Structured Programming techniques … “Code unto others as you would have others code unto you.” (cc @KevlinHenney)” / Twitter
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Comment Only What the Code Cannot Say | by Kevlin Henney | Medium
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/13
Often after having taught a topic for decades, somebody rephrases it in a beautiful concise way:
[Wayback Comment Only What the Code Cannot Say | by Kevlin Henney | Medium
Kevlin has the same two quotes I have included teaching software quality for a long time:
In The Elements of Programming Style, Kernighan and Plauger note thatA comment is of zero (or negative) value if it is wrong.Instead of writing apologies and apologia, follow Kernighan and Plauger’s advice from the 1970s:Don’t comment bad code — rewrite it.
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On my wish list for reading: Effective Software Testing
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/02
Always learning, I put this book on my wish list for reading: [Wayback/Archive] Effective Software Testing as from what I read it is a pragmatic book aimed at developers and suitable for teaching. That sounds right the niche I am in.
From [Wayback/Archive] Using the book in classroom:
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Naming things isn’t hard: if it contains a number, include the unit in the name (your timeout might not be in nanoseconds)
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/27
This case, it was C# accessing a SQL back-end, but the responses to the Tweet how so many more examples not even related to software development.
Remember that plane crashing because they overloaded while they thought the fuel load numbers were in Imperial pounds where in fact they were in metric kilograms?
That’s why naming things that contain numbers should contain the unit in their name!
Related blog post: Watch “Felienne Hermans: How patterns in variable names can make code easier to read” on YouTube
Tweet: [Wayback/Archive] Nick Craver on Twitter: “Troubleshooting a hanging test suite and godDAMMIT. “In seconds”. Integer timeouts should be a felony offense punishable by an indeterminate amount of seconds/milliseconds/hours/fortnights/whatever the judge chooses.”
var csb = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(TestConfig.Current. SQLServerConnectionString) { ConnectTimeout = 2000 }; int SqlConnectionStringBuilder.ConnectTimeout { get; set; } Gets or sets the length of time (in seconds) to wait for a connection to the server before terminating the attempt and generating an error. Returns: The value of the SqlConnectionStringBuilder, ConnectTimeout property, or 15 seconds if no value has been supplied.
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Posted in .NET, Agile, C#, Code Quality, Conference Topics, Conferences, Database Development, Development, Event, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server, Systems Architecture | Leave a Comment »
Delphi and SonarQube: great open source additions in the last few years.
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/12
In the past, I mentioned that the open source SonarQube by SonarSource was on my “research list” in a few blog posts* as I am a fan of static code analysis **, and now it is time to amend them with the current state for using it in Delphi.
SonarSource products
- SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is an open core product for static code analysis, with additional features offered in commercial editions.
- SonarQube Cloud (formerly SonarCloud) offers free analysis of open source projects.
- SonarQube for IDE (formerly SonarLint) is a free IDE extension for static analysis.
For more history on them, see [Wayback/Archive] About – Sonar and SonarSource | Sonar.
Delphi integration
There are two open source integrations: for ConarQube Server, and Linting, both maintained by the same company ([Wayback/Archive] IntegraDev · GitHub):
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Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development, SonarQube, Static Code Analysis, Unit Testing, vscode Visual Studio Code | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 