Presented at GeneralAssemb.ly on 2012/6/15

1. Friday, June 15th
MAKING AGILE CHOICES IN
SOFTWARE TECH
@dblockdotorg @ga
Daniel Doubrovkine - http://code.dblock.org - dblock@dblock.org

2. BUILDING SOFTWARE

3. WHAT IS _____ ?
• What is the problem domain?
• What is the software going to do?
• What stories will it tell?

4. CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY
TRADITIONAL APPROACHES

5. STACK
this stack works this stack worked

6. TYPICAL STACK: LAMP
Zend Django
PHP Python
Apache
MySQL
Linux
Rackspace

7. TYPICAL STACK: ROR
Backbone.js
+60 gems
Rails
Ruby
MongoDB
+ addons
Heroku
AWS (S3, Cloudfront)

8. WHAT DO STACKS DO?
• Help You Focus on The Domain
• Classify Problems
• Offer Generic Solutions
• Provide Consistent Experience
• Map Software Evolution
• Reuse Skills

9. CHOOSE: BAKEOFF
BIG COMPANY, LOTS OF PEOPLE
• Identify Candidates
ASP.NET / RoR / J2EE / LAMP
• Develop Metrics
scalability, complexity, cost
• Gather Data
feature matrix, metrics data
• Compare
=SUM(A:Z)
• Pick a Winner
=MAX(SUM(A:Z))

10. CORROSION
BIG COMPANY, LOTS OF POLITICS
• Group Think
• Skilled Sales
• Artful Communication
• Corruption
• Intimidation or Escalation

11. CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T HAVE TO BE BORING
LESS TRADITIONAL
APPROACHES

12. TRUSTWORTHY PEOPLE
• It worked before
• It didn’t work before
• It is interesting
• ______ uses it

13. DEVELOPER HAPPINESS
• Developers Are Happy with ______
– Their Own Choices
– Cutting Edge Technology

14. CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A SCIENCE
AGILE OPTIONS

15. PRAGMATIC & ITERATIVE
• Try It … Iterate … Keep It … Toss It
– Easy to Learn
– Frustration-less
– Quick to Leverage
– Vibrant Community
– Elegant Solutions

16. TIME TO CHOOSE AGAIN?
“Good Technology Choices Help Developers Focus on the Problem Domain”, -me.

17. THE ONLY CONSTANT IS
CHANGE
• Reset Early, Several Times
• Rational Thinking Kills Companies
• Incremental Rewrites Take Forever
• Think “Startup”

18. QUESTIONS?
me: Daniel Doubrovkine (aka. dB.)
company: http://art.sy
twitter: @dblockdotorg
blog: http://code.dblock.org
slides: http://slideshare.net/dblockdotorg
email: dblock@dblock.org