Agility...

Scott Stanfield from Vertigo Software gave a talk last night at the Portland Area Dot Net User Group (PADNUG).

He made an interesting comment, with the net of:  If you’re going to fail, you want to fail fast.  That way you can figure out what went wrong, make changes, and try out something else. 

If you are going to fail, fail fast. Then get on to something new.  

Cool thought.

He said this during a discussion about the number of lines of code it takes to write a program.  He said that lines of code are like inventory.  And just as less inventory on hand can make a business more agile, fewer lines of code can make a software project more agile.

I tend to agree, unless reducing the lines of code turns it into obfuscated code. 

He also showed one of the patterns from the patterns and practices group at MS – the Data Access Architecture Guide (DAAG).  By using the DAAG he was able to reduce the # of lines of code in his data access layer significantly.

Things like the DAAG and the .NET Framework itself can help reduce the number of lines of code you have to write.  There’s so much built in.  After the user group meeting ended, at the bar across the street, Rory said he didn’t know how many times he’s written a particular routine, then he discovered that that very thing was built into the System.IO namespace.

It all makes programming fun.  Write fewer lines of code.  Get paid more.  Have a blast.  Have fun with the .NET Framework.

[Bliz thought patrol: OK. THIS IS STARTING TO SOUND LIKE A COMMERCIAL. TIME TO STOP BLATHERING.]

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 14, 2003
  My husband has been saying this to clients for years as a business and technology consultant. His version: It is okay to make mistakes, but make them quickly.
• Anonymous
  November 27, 2007
  PingBack from http://feeds.maxblog.eu/item_167175.html