Posted 2009-03-20

The Importance of Acting on Your Ideals

Full true Agile development. Are you doing it? If not why? If not now when?

I’ve had a great few last weeks! I’ve been being working on open source projects and getting paid to do so. Not only that but the work flow has been completely remote and completely agile. I’m building AMI’s on EC2 for these projects that help others have a dev and production environment ready to go. No more hassle trying to get that project running. It’s just waiting for your touch!

Having clients like these make me wonder why I even put up with the hold outs. I think in the end it comes down to trying to reconcile with my upbringing (hard work ethic) with what I know is the right approach.

Tonight I’m listening to a completely organic album just put out by NiN, Jane’s Addiction, and Saul Williams. It’s bloody brilliant! Six tracks of creativity completely outside of the confines of a studio and a record company. The stuff they are churning out is just not possible without the inspiration coming on you naturally. The music industry just kills too much. These guys are making music as it comes to them and making changes as they need to with no time constraints. Not for an album or time frame. Just because. How awesome is that!

The biggest thing that struck me was the fact that musicians have always claimed that real music was inspired. That music could not be formed in to a time frame or mold. They said that the goal was music for musics sake – not for moneys sake. Yet they were being pragmatic. They wanted to do it in degrees. Yet the state of music is more tight and controlled today than it ever was. Pragmatism made compromises until nothing was left to do but admit defeat.

Unless you happened to make it big and then retire.

So now I want to look at you, cube sitters, time watchers, planners of every conceivable possibility (except the one that happens to blow up your plans). Is the stress worth it? Is your life fulfilled? Is being tied down worth it? How are those creative life plans working for you – the ones you had as a kid?

Do you really want this to happen to Agile development? Do we want to wait for the practical to choke out the best? Let’s not repeat the same mistakes of our predecessors. Software was started as a free spirit in the minds of our youth; the possibilities roamed endlessly and time was not a concern; only efforts and dreams were reality. I charge you all with holding to that from here on.

Live. Code. Be Happy.

Posted by: Michael Christenson II (aka m3talsmith)

 site | http://blog.theurbanrebellion.com
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email | michael@theurbanrebellion.com