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Developer-driven development

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21–30 of 52 posts

Re: Developer-driven development

#21
post #7

Ah, it's a slideshow without mouse controls. Felt stupid for a good five minutes while testing in various browsers, just trying to get /something/ to work. Not a great experience.

Showoff is designed to give presentations. Though it can output slides in a single page or as PDF for sharing with people.

Re: Developer-driven development

#22
"keep your devs [...] always working on something they want"

this seems to be the uber-rule for everyone who employs a developer. If you can guarantee that one (granted, it's huge) requirement, you should not get into trouble with your engineering workforce. All other things might not automatically fall into place, but once you got your people motivated through their work, a big part is in good care.

Re: Developer-driven development

#23
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Re: Developer-driven development

#24
post #7

Ah, it's a slideshow without mouse controls. Felt stupid for a good five minutes while testing in various browsers, just trying to get /something/ to work. Not a great experience.

Oh, thank you! I felt stupid for about the same amount of time until I read your comment.

Yay mystery meat!

This perfectly illustrates something I said earlier about the difference between an OS with well defined UI standards, and one where the developers just do whatever the hell they want.

I boldly asserted that in such an environment, the developers will implement the one method of control that makes sense to them, and ignore all the other options, which means the user has to try everything they can think of until they hit on the right combo, which can take a while, leading to frustration.

===

Developer Driven Development. Interesting concept... "dumb ideas are not worked on" wonderful. Nirvana?

What I think is that development works best when the developers understand the problem. No methodology is a substitute for an actual understanding of what you're trying to achieve and why you're trying to achieve it.

Of course, developers understand the issues that effect developers. So of course they will be happiest (most effective?) fixing the problems they are themselves the client for. Also, this removes a layer or two of communication, since you don't need to have the customer talk to the developer, or have a Business Analyst interrogate the customer and then translate it into programmer-ese.

If you understand the problem, you can tell which are the dumb ideas (sometimes you figure this out retroactively). If you don't understand the problem, you're simply not qualified to judge which are the dumb ideas.

Re: Developer-driven development

#25
post #6

I can't help but think this requires that only 'rock star' programmers be on the team. 1 bad apple would start to throw everything off, and a few could derail it. It also requires that everyone have the same vision, or you end up with a very fragmented product, see as how you allow each developer to decide what to work on. Don't get me wrong, I would love to work at a company that is succeeding at this... I just can'…

I dunno about 'rock star' (although I'm a pretty amazing drummmer…) but yes, the talk centers around hiring the most driven people possible. I don't think any of us act like we have a stake in the company — we do. I'd highly suggest reading Drive by Daniel Pink. The entire book is about how people are motivated. It would definitely answer almost all the points listed.

looks interesting, thanks for the tip

Re: Developer-driven development

#26
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't get it to work on iOS.

Weird, I added swipe events to Showoff awhile ago. Maybe the running instance is just on an old version.

On my Android phone, swiping would advance lots of pages - first two, then ten, then forty.

Re: Developer-driven development

#27
post #5

I can't help but think this requires that only 'rock star' programmers be on the team. 1 bad apple would start to throw everything off, and a few could derail it. It also requires that everyone have the same vision, or you end up with a very fragmented product, see as how you allow each developer to decide what to work on. Don't get me wrong, I would love to work at a company that is succeeding at this... I just can'…

> I can't help but think this requires that only 'rock star' programmers be on the team. "Rock star" developer can mean a lot of things. What's required here (aside from everything listed in the prerequisite section of the slides) is that developers have a sense of ownership of the product. That's it. You can foster this by literally giving them percentage shares of ownership. Some developers naturally feel this way…

[deleted]

Re: Developer-driven development

#28
post #12

I was at this talk (given at CodeMash a few days ago). It spurred a lot of discussion/opposition over the fact that it revolves so heavily around only hiring passionate, rock star quality developers that care about the product you're developing. Small companies and startups often have a product that you can recruit people who are passionate enough about the idea that stuff like this can work out. The problem for disc…

I'd be curipous to see how the "No vacations" rule plays out..

In Australia most employees would deem 4 weeks vacation as appropriate. In France it's probably higher. In the US -- maybe it's 2 or 3 weeks.

Re: Developer-driven development

#29
Developing products for the mass market requires a lot of grunt work, and even with a totally dedicated technical team, still needs somebody or -bodies to compel them to do some of the boring things, fix the unfixable bugs that actually affect non-technical users, etc.

So, while I guess I can imagine this working (and me loving) for products geared toward a highly technical, somewhat forgiving customer base, I don't see this as a workable for anything truly consumer-focused.

Re: Developer-driven development

#30
post #12

I was at this talk (given at CodeMash a few days ago). It spurred a lot of discussion/opposition over the fact that it revolves so heavily around only hiring passionate, rock star quality developers that care about the product you're developing. Small companies and startups often have a product that you can recruit people who are passionate enough about the idea that stuff like this can work out. The problem for disc…

As a Dev who worked on finance industry apps, you can get Dev buyin. However, if your motivating them based on selling the company then you should do that otherwise your devs will leave in droves.

The main thing you need to show devs is that people are using their code. Nothing is more depressing for a Dev than code that doesn't ship, followed only by code that people don't use.

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