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BIATHLON

                                             September 13, 2008


There's a trend of thought in
programming these days that
precise technical specs may
often be a waste of time.
                                         AGILE
There are "agile programming"
schools that place the
emphasis on collecting and
implementing "user stories",         This might be compared to
rather than the more low-level       the philosophy of carbon
specs.                               trading  vs. "picking
                                     winners":  Avoid stating
    An early form of "agile          what you want in more detail
    programming" was called          than necessary.
    "extreme programming": I
    think it's going out of
    fashion now that the 90s
    are long gone.


                        There's a definite tendency of
                        programmers to adopt macho
                        athletic jargon to describe our
                        essentially sedentary activites.

                        In the 80s, the cliche was "power users",
                        always accompanied by close-ups of body
                        builder muscle.

                        I should found a "biathalon"
                        programming school:

                        We biathletes are proud of our ability to
                        alternate between object-oriented and
                        relational thinking without sacrificing
                        performance in either.

                          ORMs are for sissies.



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