20apr2014

Thinking for Programmers

Talk at Microsoft’s Build 2014 conference by Turing Award-winner Leslie Lamport. His thesis is that writing specifications, in varying degrees of formality, is critical to getting software design right. Introduces a little TLA+ as a way of verifying distributed systems.

Expectations, Outcomes, and Challenges of Modern Code Review

The authors find that developers peer review code mostly to find better solutions to problems and to learn from one another. Removing bugs isn’t the primary reason. Suggests where to take code review and analysis tools. Also indirectly supports Lamport’s thesis in the above-linked talk.

Agile is Dead (Long Live Agility)

Agile is an arena for consultants and vendors to hawk services and products, but the four core values still hold.