GeePaw Hill talks with Dave Rael about shipping more valuable software faster, hippy communities, enabling the best in people, and being a "whole geek"
About 20 years ago, Geepaw Hill became an avid early-adopter of a programming method called Extreme Programming (XP). He fell deeply under the influence of ne’er-do-wells like Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries, Bob Martin, and joined that early movement with great energy and fervor.
He also became a software development coach.
He works with software organizations all over the world, down on the floor and up in the penthouse, helping them find and implement solutions to the vexing difficulties of shipping software value for a living.
Chapters:
1:17 - Dave introduces the show and GeePaw Hill5:26 - GeePaw's thinking on the made, the making, and the makers10:33 - "The Whole Geek"15:19 - How GeePaw got started in software17:11 - GeePaw on mentors, being mentored, and mentoring19:19 - The incubation of the ideas that have become the most productive ways to do software development21:53 - The nature of coaching24:03 - Employing ideas with vs without explicitly naming them26:35 - The exponential growth curve in the number of working software geeks29:32 - Shipping more valuable software faster34:10 - GeePaw's story of failure - wiping the hard drives of users39:33 - The importance of making mistakes in learning41:10 - GeePaw's book recommendations46:37 - GeePaw's top 3 tips for delivering more value50:18 - Keeping up with GeePaw
Resources:
GeePaw's Site with His Blog and Videos
Portland Pattern Repository
Ward Cunningham on Developer On Fire
Kent Beck on Developer On Fire
Uncle Bob Martin on Developer On Fire
Michael Feathers on Developer On Fire
Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software - Eric Evans
How Henry Ford Revolutionized the Car Industry
Edgar Dijkstra: Go To Statement Considered Harmful
Kevlin Henney on Developer On Fire
Hofstadter's Law
Amitai Schleier on Developer On Fire
GeePaw's book recommendation:
Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns - Kent Beck
Implementation Patterns - Kent Beck
A Room with a View (Dover Thrift Editions) - E. M. Forster
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter
GeePaw's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
Create a safe place to listen and a safe place for the minorities in our trade to speak - and just listen
Notice what you're doing every day
Stop buying brands, methods, and labels (regarding how to practice agile software development) - be skeptical of anyone trying to sell you something with a name that is supposed to be agile