New version of the book
Daniel Brolund
Thank you all reviewers for the feedback we have gotten so far!
The new book is available, as before, from:
http://mikadomethod.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/the-mikado-method-book/
Changes this time is:
* We let "Jake" and "Melinda" guide you through the book in the intro
and summary of each chapter.
* We have moved the patterns chapter further back in the book.
* We introduce the Mikado game in the first chapter to get the readers
neurons firing.
* There is a short appendix on Software Katas.
* Many minor changes
We haven't been able to process all your reflections and made the
corresponding changes to the book, but we read and think about them
all, and we feel that the book is getting better by the day.
Thanks again!
Daniel
--
---------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Brolund
Agical AB - www.agical.com
work: daniel....@agical.com
phone: +46708754002
blog:http://danielbrolund.wordpress.com
twitter: @danielbrolund
private: daniel....@gmail.com
Steve Eckhardt
I agree, the book is getting better with each release. I really
like the description of the Mikado game on p. 46. It's so good I'd move it
to Chapter 1 to give a concrete example right up front.
It's also nice to see Software Katas in a book. (Yeah, Uncle Bob
has it in his 3P book, but I don't think it was called a kata.) It would be
useful to me to have a list of suggested katas, roughly in order from
easiest to hardest.
Steve Eckhardt
Hi all,
Thanks again!
Daniel
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Joakim Ohlrogge
Melinda guiding me through the intro and summary of each chapter but I
have to admit it works really well. I found myself skimming through
the book just reading Jake and Melinda's conversation to get an idea
what was in each chapter. I did not expect that. At times I think the
conversation is rubbing things in a little bit with things in the
lines of "you're learning a whole new way to look at software and that
is awesome" at other times a sentence or two of chit-chat could be
eliminated without loss. Most of the time though I'm surprised to like
that you managed to keep it at just the right amount and just the
proper level of snappiness. Where it annoys me it is mostly when Jake
is a little slow since I as a reader identify myself with Jake I
guess :) Make sure Jake asks intelligent questions :)
I like that Jake often shares subtle insights that I recognize myself
like: "I find that it is easy to pick up where I left the problem
after a longer break" and such small gems. I think that their
conversation is an excellent way to share such insights that readers
or yourselves have had when working with the method that would
otherwise get lost or be to banal to put somewhere in a pragraph.
A detail. At page 15:
"Jake: I would be done when I have a deliverable for the new
client."
Do you think that is a good mikado goal? To me it's really close to
"when stuff is done". I think this is an excellent place to come up
with something concrete that applies to the chapter. I can even give
away a bit what's to come in the chapter like: "I would be done when I
can deliver my system with two different encryption algorithms."
If you think the reader will be confused with this you can have
Melinda ask about it "That looks like a good goal to me, lets use
that, but what does that mean"
and the chapter can start with "Jake: I'll explain the problem to you
and you can show me how to use the mikado method to solve it."
Something along those lines. I'm sure you can come up with something
suitable :). Or the goal is totally fine and Jake can ask about that:
"Isn't that goal a bit abstract" and Melinda can explain why that is a
good thing or why it's not that abstract really or...
/J
On Oct 3, 11:55 pm, Daniel Brolund <daniel.brol...@agical.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Thank you all reviewers for the feedback we have gotten so far!
>
> The new book is available, as before, from:http://mikadomethod.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/the-mikado-method-book/
>
> Changes this time is:
> * We let "Jake" and "Melinda" guide you through the book in the intro
> and summary of each chapter.
> * We have moved the patterns chapter further back in the book.
> * We introduce the Mikado game in the first chapter to get the readers
> neurons firing.
> * There is a short appendix on Software Katas.
> * Many minor changes
>
> We haven't been able to process all your reflections and made the
> corresponding changes to the book, but we read and think about them
> all, and we feel that the book is getting better by the day.
>
> Thanks again!
>
> Daniel
>
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Daniel Brolund
> Agical AB -www.agical.com
>
> private: daniel.brol...@gmail.com
Daniel Brolund
Alan mentioned that he wanted the same thing, and we tried to please
him but still keep the Origins as the third chapter. Maybe we should
just merge origins with the first (aid) chapter, possibly that would
give the book a flying start.
One should always have three options, so here goes:
1) Keep it as it is.
2) Make the "Origins" chapter nr 2 and make the "Example" nr 3.
3) Merge the origins with the first chapter, maybe calling it "An
introduction to the Mikado Method". In that chapter the order would be
Software dependencies, Origin of Mikado Method, The recipe, The
Details of the Graph.
You have to imaging changes 1 and 2. For version 3 I uploaded a suggestion:
http://www.agical.com/mikmeth/mikadomethod_merge_origin_and_first.pdf
This is just to get an idea of what it could look like, the
conversations and the links and references are not updated.
Please, check it out and give us some feedback! :-)
Cheers
Daniel
Steve Eckhardt
I like option #3. I agree with your placement of the "The Mikado
Game" section, but figures 1.4 and 1.5 (with a description of the Mikado
Graph) are good support for this section.
I don't want to be too much of a whiner, but I will repeat myself
just this once. The section "The origin of the Mikado Method in literature"
is a good start, but it would be really nice if Fowlers, Feathers and Martin
got more than a sentence or two. This would also be a good place to mention
Fowler's Strangler method. You've already covered the "Big Bang" method
mentioned in the InfoQ article
(http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/large-scale-refactoring), but it might be
nice to give it a name here. Divide and conquer (or recursive division)
could also be mentioned with comments on how it relates to Feathers' seam
method and to the effect that applying it globally is a great way to
refactor your business to death. A reference to Joel Spolsky's post on why
you should almost never rewrite from scratch
(http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html) would be another
useful addition. Finally, mentioning the possibility of starting with a new
architecture and moving old code into it could be helpful to some readers.
Best regards,
Daniel Brolund
Thanks, we appreciate your very constructive feedback! :-)
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Steve Eckhardt <dr.e...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Daniel,
> I like option #3. I agree with your placement of the "The Mikado
> Game" section, but figures 1.4 and 1.5 (with a description of the Mikado
> Graph) are good support for this section.
Agreed, don't know why their reference is missing. Will fix.
> I don't want to be too much of a whiner, but I will repeat myself
> just this once. The section "The origin of the Mikado Method in literature"
> is a good start, but it would be really nice if Fowlers, Feathers and Martin
> got more than a sentence or two.
They definitely do, and it is good that you point that out.
> This would also be a good place to mention
> Fowler's Strangler method. You've already covered the "Big Bang" method
> mentioned in the InfoQ article
> (http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/large-scale-refactoring), but it might be
> nice to give it a name here. Divide and conquer (or recursive division)
> could also be mentioned with comments on how it relates to Feathers' seam
> method and to the effect that applying it globally is a great way to
> refactor your business to death.
We talk about that in subsection "Dependency Injection and Inversion
of Control" (p134 in the temporary pdf for option 3). Have you seen
that?
> A reference to Joel Spolsky's post on why
> you should almost never rewrite from scratch
> (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html) would be another
> useful addition.
A truly great post! Thanks!
> Finally, mentioning the possibility of starting with a new
> architecture and moving old code into it could be helpful to some readers.
>
Good point.
Cheers
Daniel
Daniel Brolund
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 6:44 AM, Joakim Ohlrogge
<joakim....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the book looks better than ever. I thought I'd hate Jake and
> Melinda guiding me through the intro and summary of each chapter but I
> have to admit it works really well.
Good to hear!
> I found myself skimming through
> the book just reading Jake and Melinda's conversation to get an idea
> what was in each chapter. I did not expect that.
That was not the idea, but maybe it's a good reading suggestion?
> At times I think the
> conversation is rubbing things in a little bit with things in the
> lines of "you're learning a whole new way to look at software and that
> is awesome" at other times a sentence or two of chit-chat could be
> eliminated without loss.
Yep, it's hard to be cheerful without being cheesy ;-) We will
probably rework those a little bit, this was the first version of it
to see how the concept worked.
> Most of the time though I'm surprised to like
> that you managed to keep it at just the right amount and just the
> proper level of snappiness. Where it annoys me it is mostly when Jake
> is a little slow since I as a reader identify myself with Jake I
> guess :) Make sure Jake asks intelligent questions :)
>
We try! :-) Any suggestions are welcome!
> I like that Jake often shares subtle insights that I recognize myself
> like: "I find that it is easy to pick up where I left the problem
> after a longer break" and such small gems. I think that their
> conversation is an excellent way to share such insights that readers
> or yourselves have had when working with the method that would
> otherwise get lost or be to banal to put somewhere in a pragraph.
>
> A detail. At page 15:
>
> "Jake: I would be done when I have a deliverable for the new
> client."
>
> Do you think that is a good mikado goal? To me it's really close to
> "when stuff is done". I think this is an excellent place to come up
> with something concrete that applies to the chapter. I can even give
> away a bit what's to come in the chapter like: "I would be done when I
> can deliver my system with two different encryption algorithms."
>
> If you think the reader will be confused with this you can have
> Melinda ask about it "That looks like a good goal to me, lets use
> that, but what does that mean"
>
> and the chapter can start with "Jake: I'll explain the problem to you
> and you can show me how to use the mikado method to solve it."
>
>
> Something along those lines. I'm sure you can come up with something
> suitable :). Or the goal is totally fine and Jake can ask about that:
> "Isn't that goal a bit abstract" and Melinda can explain why that is a
> good thing or why it's not that abstract really or...
>
We talk about selecting your goal in ch "Organizing your work", but
this is good input.
Cheers
Daniel
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> To post to this group, send email to mikado...@googlegroups.com.
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>
>
--
---------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Brolund
Agical AB - www.agical.com
work: daniel....@agical.com
phone: +46708754002
blog:http://danielbrolund.wordpress.com
twitter: @danielbrolund
private: daniel....@gmail.com