ESUG 2014, Cambridge. Thu, August 21, 2:00pm – 2:30pm Video Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcoy5gwUvOA Video Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LrH9r4FNzY Abstract: This will a rather unusual talk for ESUG. The theme is not Smalltalk directly, but instead I discuss how progress and inventing new things fits with incremental, reflective nature of Smalltalk. People often argue that progress is only possible when you throw everything away and start from scratch. In this talk I will argue that this thinking is a trap and the only way for progress in practice is to take an incremental approach of constantly improving and therefore evolving the imperfect system you already have. I will show how the idea of creating feedback loops of improvement actually lead to non-linear growth and how this process of reflective constant improvement fits with the Smalltalk philosophy of incrementally and dynamically changing a running system.

1. Nomads do not
build Cathedrals
Marcus Denker
http://www.marcusdenker.de

4. Software

5. Strange Talk…

6. No idea if it will work

7. The Platform
Jump to large
Project1
Project2
Project3

8. Nomadic Solution
- Do not build infrastructure
!
- Use resources until depleted
!
- Move on

9. The Platform
Jump Possible
Project1
Project2
Project3
Project4

10. Better?
- Invest in infrastructure
!
- Build new abstractions
!

11. Feedback Loop
Projects Infrastructure

12. Feedback loop is not enough!
!
Add until it is unmaintainable.
Throw everything away.

13. Feedback loop is not enough!
!
!
After the first line of code you are in maintenance

14. Sustainable Feedback !
!
- Constant Cleanup
- Constant Improvement

17. To build a cathedral you
need to build a toilet first

18. The toilet is not the
cathedral

19. Yet there can not be a
cathedral without building
a toilet first

20. Effects?

21. Perfection

23. Constant “in Progress”

24. Scaffolding

25. System is not an Artefact

26. Always a Result

27. …instead of dreaming of
perfection

28. Trivial Changes

29. Every improvement has an
effect

31. Starting point for
contributors

32. Only trivialities?

34. No!

35. Exponential effect

36. Compound Interest

37. Scaffolding

38. Todays system is scaffolding
for tomorrow

39. The whole system could be
replaced within just some iterations