Ernest Y. Koe

Really Simple Beef Fried Rice, originally uploaded by ernestkoe.

There is a certain magic about fried rice. It is the ultimate semi-home made dish; a perfect way to transform and recycle leftovers into a different culinary experience.

I arrived in Portland, Oregon yesterday afternoon. What an amazing little city. It is vibrant, efficient, sensible, green and soulful. The light-rail and streetcar system is simply a joy to use. I miss being on foot, being able to appreciate the world on a human scale. Jacksonville, Florida should take note. Come on, people. We can do better tha settle for a silly little monorail that goes nowhere.

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The Agile approach to software development feels more valid and important each day. But sometimes, Agile seems less about methodologies than about values. I am not sure where the distinction lies; I suppose it is a values-driven methodology (?). This is important to me because I have been thinking about why we write specifications. The tradition of professional services are steeped in practices focused on reducing ‘human-error’ and ambiguity. Lawyers have utterly comprehensive legalese and engineers have intricate and complex plans. It seems that the very legitimacy of a professional career depends on how much paperwork and Clear and Official Things you can produce. With this tradition as a backdrop, it would be quite reasonable for software developers get nasty complexes steeped in self-doubt and anxiety if we, too, didn’t produce beautifully complex artifacts of our stuff on the grounds that the lack thereof mitigates precision, introduces uncertainty and leads to conflict and project failure.

“So, you are a software developer, eh?”
“Yep, been struggling with it for five years now.”
“Where did you get your CS degree.”
“Eh? I didn’t. But what does that have to do with software development?”
“Well, you must have gone somewhere to learn to write specifications and software plans, otherwise, how would you tell others how to build stuff?”
“Um, well, I read books and listen to people who write specifications about writing specifications. But nobody seems to have The One Completely Correct Idea of how to do this.”
“You kidding me (incredulously). No wonder software sucks.”
“Perhaps, but I think software sucks today because software developers are too focused on writing specifications and not focused enough on writing good software.”
“I am confused…how can you write good software without writing good specifications?”
“I am not sure I have all the answers, but here’s what I think. You can draw good models and represent complexity in a way that captures tasks, purpose and requirements. These will invariably be incomplete. It isn’t very practical to attempt to know everything ahead of time. But these aren’t specifications so much as they are an Idea of How The Thing Works…”

…to be continued