So in the physical world, there’s tremendous constraints placed on a system by existing infrastructure.It defines and limits what can be done without significant extra resources expended - which means cost, complexity, risk, etc. In a recent issue of Wired, there’s an article about how a new city in China is being designed with what amounts to a well thought out infrastructure optimized towards energy use It’s an interesting contrast between that approach and the agile software approach of evolving the infrastructure (and the approach to infrastructure that’s true for most cities as well).

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Ok - so maybe it’s a sign of just how much a shiny-gadget-geek I am, but I love what’s possible with MacFuse (and MacFusion).For example, I have an existing website (at omnis.com) that doesn’t have a ssh account, so the only way to deploy / work on what’s there is via FTP. So when I need to work on it, I have to use FTP to push & pull code & data, but I don’t do it that often - so I’d have toright FTP client to do bulk transfer was a pain, etc.

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There seems to be more and more instances of platforms appearing which raise the level at which people can create, manipulate and share rich content in a rich context. Sophie appears to be another interesting entry, in addition to Croquet and the etoys work in Squeak.

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Nice tool, nice example of using Firefox as a platform, and nice example of how small ideas are proliferating:Firedoodle … is a Firefox Add-On that allows you to mark up any page as if it was projected onto a white board. You can download the plugin at Firedoodle.com and if you register an account, any highlights you created can be saved (and later shared). (kudos to Julie for this)

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I love the start-up environment - in part because of what happens when we ‘drink the kool-aid’, but at the same time I also value ‘fail-it-fast’ pragmatism. I haven’t found an eloquent way to think about or express this conflict - until I randomly came across an interview with Scott Brave from Baynote Inc. on folksonomy.org (quoted below without permission): On the topic of discussion we had last week Scott regarding how do entrepreneurs draw the line between the “never give up” philosophy and “cut your losses short” philosophy, can you share your insights?

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A great audio program on experiential computing (IT Conversations: Ramesh Jain - Experimental Computing) and Ramesh’s related blog (Ramesh Jain’s Blog » Blog Archive » Events and paradigms) gives me some inspiration to on two important points: Patterns in Oggidigaw - using the notion of events with their attributes of who, what, where (spatial), when (temporal) and how (causal) - as a type of data model for representing patterns. What’s beyond objects: the notion of object-orientation has some strong limitations, one of which is the representation of time.

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Some ramblings on software development A useful perspective on software devleopment is as an ‘integrated discipline’, i.e. a perspective that recognizes that software development is actually composed of three domains: Business - this is the domain of the problem Technology People - all the people involved, e.g. development team, customers, users, support staff, marketing, product management, etc. Nothing here is new, e.g. Weinberg, Catalysis, Scrum, etc. all include some notion of these domains in their models.

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As I interpret it, the agile versus formal debate is generally treated as an either or question. For instance, in any given software development situation there may be an assessment that it would have worked better if only an agile approach was used or for a project like this, you must use a formal approach. Only rarely does there seem to be an advocate that suggests integrating aspects of both approaches.

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As with many computerized things, I’ve been frustrated with the commercial state of the art for software to manage information, especially personal information for quite some time. Let me provide some context to better explain. While I’m often challenged to explain what I do, I can say it involves doing all sorts of actions on information (e.g. creating, manipluating, reasoning with, etc.). Much of my effort is in support of goals in the domains of software engineering or psychology.

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How to reconcile formal, agile & no processes in a software development environment? Previously in conflict, considered by some as irreconcilible Integrated using a model that accounts for development stages/levels. Fundamental pattern: learn the form to become formless

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