Joel’s best

Joel Spolsky has posted his best article ever. Not only it says important things. It is also beautiful.

Going bosky

Isabel captured this beautiful moment when I went bosky with the remainders of a cured pork leg.

Going Bosky

Ain’t I cute?

Software factories

Some time ago I read the book by Jack Greenfield and Keith Short on software factories, and I liked the overall idea. I even got involved with a workshop at OOPSLA on this topic, kindly invited by Greenfield himself.

Since then, I have been reading papers, opinions and news related in various degrees to the concept of “software factories” as described by Greenfield and Short. A few days ago I attended an event where different Spanish government and corporate parties presented their ideas and objectives about software factories, and I was surprised to hear that everybody is into software factories now. Every single company talking at the event told tales about how they have created a software factory with 300 or 500 engineers in some low-tech, rural area of Spain. It was unclear why everybody used the term “software factory” to refer to a large building chock full with “engineers” developing software; we have always had that kind of place. It seems that development shops become now “software factories”, developers become “engineers”, and software development is not software development anymore but software manufacturing. So chic.

Our souls are back

Four and a half months later, our souls are back. I mean, all the stuff that we shipped from Sydney has finally arrived. It has taken long, longer than when we moved down under, surely because this time it was uphill all the way to Europe.

The delivery receipt contains a little jewel that I could not ignore. In dull 12-point Arial, it reads “261.3 cuft, 7.4 m3″. That means that the shipped stuff amounts to 7.4 cubic metres.

Are you listening? Yes, you, the guy who came to pack everything up at our place in Lavender Bay, the one who yelled at me on 22 November 2005 because I had estimated 8 cubic metres of stuff and you found much more when you arrived. The one who promised me that I would never get a job as a volume estimator. You, smartass, were wrong. And I was damned right. I estimated 8 and it is 7.4. I nailed it, for Pete’s sake! I hope Allied Pickfords sack that guy and hire me as Vice-President of Volume Estimation.

I feel much better now.