OOPSLA - Scrapheap Challenge - Recap

Here's a summary of what helps/doesn't in building apps, in post-modern programming based on the experience we had in this workshop:

What helps:

• Examples are better than documentation.
• Familiarity with technologies, and even development environment/tools.
• Build composed, rather than monolithic solutions.
• Run experiments, often. Using interactive stuff helps.
• Interaction with the customer, and being able to work with him to tweak requirements.
• Source code, when easy to read.
• Google.
• Simplicity. Don't over-engineer.
• Unix-like approach.
• Rich toolset.

What gets in the way:

• Components sometimes are buggy or of low quality.
• Tools that can't run in isolation (e.g. building greasemonkey scripts without internet access).
• Not knowing when to quit and trying something else.
• Version dependencies.
• Trying to build too much vs. borrowing; knowing what bits should be written rather than reused.