Lean Startup, a new process ?

Hummm .... it seems that there's new way to build startups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Startup

It is based on a learning style called validated learning:
The process steps are (from Wikipedia) :

1. Specify my goal
2. Specify a metric that represents this goal
3. Act to achieve it
4. Analyze the metric - did you get closer to the goal?
5. Improve and try again

It seems to me that is the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust management method, isn't it ?
For a summary in french, pls check this post:
http://javamind-fr.blogspot.fr/2013/03/le-mouvement-lean-startup.html

Scala Coding Dojo at Toulouse

I have been at a Scala coding dojo, organised by Ekito at Toulouse. It was really a lot fun and, we also learnt a lot in only 2 hours of coding withonly one computer for 9 developpers and a Test First approach !
After a small presentation done by a guy from Ekito, we start coding a Kata in Scala. The kata was a string calculator. More on Code Katas can be found here: http://katas.softwarecraftsmanship.org/post/34191185266/katacast-stringcalculator-in-scala
The idea is to start by specifying a test with Specs 2 (http://etorreborre.github.com/specs2/) and then try to implement the corresponding code in Scala.
Here's a photo from the Ekito blog entry: http://dojo-toulouse.github.com/blog/2013/03/04/coding-dojo-scala-number-2/
Thank you Ekito !

Thoughts on Hiring

The most important to have in mind when hiring is to:

"Hire to become the organization you want to be." since "Every hire adjusts the future of your organization. So hire well."

From the excellent introduction to this social/tehnical process :
http://www.artima.com/samples/AgileHiringCh1.pdf



 

Learning Scala

If you want to learn Scala, and you're a Java developper my advice is to follow this path:
- Start by David Pollak's excellent book: Beginning Scala.
- Move to the 800p !! book by Martin Odersky (Scala is his baby :)) et al.: Programming in Scala
- Practicing with a Scala IDE during your book journey
- Comment the snippets you'll produce from reading those books. This is valuable for code reuse.

Introduction à Git

Une intro simple à Git :
http://www.siteduzero.com/informatique/tutoriels/gerez-vos-codes-source-avec-git

Comment gérer les branches sous Git :
http://www.siteduzero.com/informatique/tutoriels/gerez-vos-codes-source-avec-git/travailler-avec-des-branches
 

A Research Fields Taxonomy

From ACM with two different flavors: textual and visual
http://dl.acm.org/ccs_flat.cfm

Mount a shared directory in VirtualBox