Message from the CEO (Christmas Event Organizer)

Prologue

I received the following letter from a co-worker yesterday and thought to share it with you, since most of you might be affected by the following decisions …

Building your own literals in Java – Tuples and Maps

As hinted in my last post about literals in Java, we’ve only scratched the surface on that issue.
In this entry it get’s even weirder, since i will show you a very unconventional way of how to declare Maps in a more literal form. Maps are surely and undisputed one of the most used examples when it comes to show how verbose Java is, comparing to such hip languages like Ruby or Scala.

Seven Signs why Santa Claus isn’t agile

As a kid, christmas was extreme magic.
Every year again, while there was a big scrum under the christmas tree, i’ve wondered how Santa’s capable to serve all kids in a single night.
Looking back, there seems to be only one conclusion: it’s crystal clear – Santa’s a real agile dude. In fact, it seems that he’s a Master in clearing impressive, huge backlogs and indeed knows what a real sprint is …

But take a detailed look behind the facade – there are some signs that Santa might not be that agile guy he seems to be at first sight …

Are you pattern happy ?

i kept this secret deep inside of me for a long time. but now i can’t stand any longer and so it must come out: yes … i admit … i was pattern happy ;o)

it startet soon after post-graduation at my first job as a consultant for a big it company. at that time i was half-baked with little experiance with respect to the design of software systems. but that should change! i wanted to be a good designer – a master designer! and deep inside of me i was afraid. afraid of producing bad design proposals. afraid that one could blame me for poorly designed software systems. and so i grabbed for every support that could help. at that time design patterns were a very hot topic. it looked like they should be the ultimate solution to all of my problems since it seems that those patterns conserved the wisdom and experiance of all those great developers – experiance that i could’nt exhibit at that time