Ah, I see how my wording was confusing. I mean planning in the sense of “How will we complete the work that we already committed to?” and “What will we do today to achieve our Sprint goal?”

I arrived at the word planning because Scrum is sometimes described as a planning-planning-feedback-feedback cycle. You plan the Sprint, you plan daily (Daily Scrums), you get feedback on your work (Sprint Review), and you get feedback on your process (Sprint Retrospective).

lol I hope your standups are not actually like this! The purpose is to, as a team, plan how to achieve a goal

On mobile atm but there’s the Princeton books on Computer Science

I do see how the narrative in the headline could be a call to action, but the article doesn’t propose a solution behind which the audience can rally. At most, the article describes how Americans can interpret the inevitable defeat. Of course, this text doesn’t exist in isolation; other texts would have to do the heavy lifting so that Americans rally behind a war effort.

Agile is indeed more of a mindset than a rigid system. In my recent experience helping a tabletop game team, we applied Agile principles to great effect. Rather than trying to perfect every aspect of the game at once, we focused on rapidly iterating the core mechanics based on player feedback. This allowed us to validate the fundamental concept quickly before investing time in peripheral elements like the looks of the game.

This approach embodies the Agile value of ‘working product over comprehensive documentation’ - or in our case, ‘playable game over polished components’. By prioritizing what matters most to players right now, we’re able to learn and adapt much more efficiently.

Agile thinking helps us stay flexible and responsive, whether we’re developing software or board games. It’s about delivering value incrementally and being ready to pivot based on real-world feedback.

I appreciate your candor about not wanting to speak on topics outside your expertise. That’s commendable. I wonder if we can still talk with the understanding that we may not know it all. I truly believe curiosity is able to sidestep many of the problems related with ignorance.

You’re right to be cautious about appeals to authority. My intention wasn’t to suggest NASA’s use of Agile validates it universally, but rather to counter the OP comic’s implication that Agile is inherently incapable of achieving significant goals like space exploration.

Regarding Agile-like practices in earlier NASA projects, you’re correct that concrete evidence is limited. However, we can analyze their approaches through the lens of Agile principles. Scrum, for instance, aims to foster characteristics found in high-performing teams: clear goals, information saturation, rapid feedback loops, adaptability to changing requirements, and effective collaboration. These elements aren’t exclusive to Scrum or even to modern Agile methodologies. The key is recognizing that effective project management often naturally gravitates towards these principles, whether formally adopting Agile or not.

It’s an interesting area for further research: have complex engineering projects historically incorporated elements we now associate with Agile? If so, how?

Your skepticism is valuable in pushing for a more nuanced understanding of project management across different domains.

I can see you’re frustrated by the downvotes and pushback you’ve received. It’s understandable to feel defensive when your viewpoint isn’t well-received. I appreciate you sharing your perspective, even if it goes against the majority opinion here.

Your points about the space shuttle program’s challenges are valid and worth discussing. It’s important to note the timeframes involved though. The shuttle was developed in the 1970s, well before agile methodologies emerged in the 1990s and 2000s.

Interestingly, one could argue that NASA may have used agile-like practices in the space shuttle program, even if they weren’t labeled as such at the time. However, I did a quick search and couldn’t find much concrete evidence to support this idea. It’s an intriguing area that might merit further research.

Regarding modern agile approaches, while no method is perfect, many organizations have found them helpful for improving flexibility and delivering value incrementally. NASA’s recent use of agile for certain projects shows they’re open to evolving their methods.

I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts on software development approaches for complex engineering projects. What do you see as the pros and cons of different methodologies? Your insights could add a lot to this discussion.

Edgy meme: agile bad

NASA: “Yep, we use agile” https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006387/downloads/20160006387.pdf?attachment=true

Your comparison is interesting, but let’s consider some historical facts. The Apollo program, which successfully put humans on the moon, actually employed many principles we now associate with Agile methodologies.

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a straightforward Waterfall process. NASA used frequent feedback (akin to daily Scrums), self-organizing teams, stable interfaces so that teams are an independent path to production, and iterative development cycles - core Agile practices. In fact, Mariana Mazzucato’s book Mission Economy provides fascinating insights into how the moon landing project incorporated elements remarkably similar to modern Agile approaches. Furthermore, here’s a NASA article detailing how Agile practices are used to send a rover to the moon: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006387/downloads/20160006387.pdf?attachment=true

While it’s true that building rockets isn’t identical to software development, the underlying principles of flexibility, collaboration, and rapid iteration proved crucial to the missions’ success. Programs like the Apollo program adapted constantly to new challenges, much like Agile teams do today.

Regarding Kanban and Scrum, you’re right that they fall under the Agile umbrella. However, each offers unique tools that can be valuable in different contexts, even outside of software.

Perhaps instead of dismissing Agile outright for hardware projects, we could explore how its principles might be adapted to improve complex engineering endeavors. After all, if it helped us reach the moon and, decades later, send rovers to it, it might have more applications than we initially assume.

With gratitude

It actually took me a while to realize he was not wearing the clothes of a McDonald’s worker.

I found this: “With its plug still intact but threatened by warm water upwelling, the Ice Tongue prevents the majority of West Antarctica land and undersea ice from collapse and seabed displacement, respectively. The changes are profound and terrifying. The land-fast ice is gone in front of PIG and Thwaites before the melt season begins. This is not going to end well.”

Here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/29/2195755/-Pinning-point-five-collapsed-the-sea-ice-barrier-buttressing-Thwaites-and-Pine-Island-Glacier

I think this ignores that some children are more pensieve and reflexive…

“Elections”, " representative", and “federal” could exclude many non-American and non-Canadian countries.

Edit: Oh, silly me. I misread. I thought you wanted to exclude American stuff, not “political” stuff. Well that’s another conversation. Is there something that is not political? Is there something that doesn’t comment on the distributions of political goods such as significance, relevance, resource allocations (including time and attention), or value judgments?

I know encapsulation is desirable in part because of security. I figured something similar could happen by removing the ability to import anything from another program. However, I struggled to think about other situations in which no imports were desirable, and so I wondered…

I’m glad to ser a fellow grammar connosieur. Stressed syllables can be hard to spot sometimes.

Not actually, but it could be someone’s predicament

Joke’s on me I was homeschooled

Ummm… This is a bit grotesque, so if you don’t like graphical bodily stuff, maybe skip what follows. Anyway, someone gifted me really expensive and rare cheese recently. By that point, I had been eating less animal products, so I had forgotten my body couldn’t really handle dairy…

My friend and I tried it and it was absurdly tasty. We kept on eating, grating, eating, grating… In a single sitting, my friend and I ate the whole thing.

Oh boy, what a mistake. My belly ached. I was bloated. ‘Not a problem’, I thought, ‘tomorrow morning everything will be okay’. My lactase-abundant friend left and I went to sleep.

Middle of the night. I woke up. Nausea. Dizziness. I just had to go go the toilet. I ran. Oh boy, my stomach wasn’t happy with me. At all.

I figured I’d wait and see if this ended up being serious. It could be temporary. Except, I had to go to the toilet again, and again, and again.

“OK, snek_boi, you need electrolytes. You won’t die from lactose intolerance-induced dehydration. I refuse”. So I went to the store, got the electrolytes, and chugged them as I came back. Alright. Time to sleep, again.

I managed to sleep, except when I woke up I still felt nauseous. I went to the bathroom. This time, (TRIGGER WARNING, GROTESQUE) I was pooping radioactive water. It was bright yellow, almost like Powerade or Gatorade or something like that. Wtf.

I took out my phone to see if I should go to the hospital. Turns out, if you eat too much cheese, it goes through a whole process as your body tries to decompose it. The very last step is pooping bile, which is secreted in an attempt to digest the fat in cheese.

Knowing about that whole ‘cheese digestion process’, I guessed I wouldn’t die anytime soon. I just sat on the toilet, drinking my electrolyte solution, contemplating, contemplating my poor decisions, contemplating the wondrous complexity of chemistry and biology, contemplating the fragility of human life and good gut health.

TL;DR: Too much cheese can mess you up.

I’m using NixOS. Ext4 filesystem. As to language, I’m not entirely sure what you mean. If you refer to the character set in the filenames, I think there are no characters that deviate from the English alphabet, numbers, dashes, and underscores.