I have been working as a software consultant for more than 11 years. Because of that I am an eager supporter of lean principles and agile methods.
After the keynote by Ivar I stayed on the “Sixth Generation Languages” track, which was a good decision with many interesting sessions:
- “Beyond Agile: Smart“, Ivar Jacobson. On the stage was a man all dressed in black and the hair dyed red, wanting to make an impression. I’m not sure he succeded though, I expected more. Ivar taking credit for being the inventor of agile methods through RUP, which he claims always have been agile. I know of a few organisations that don’t agree. RUP tries to fit so many different setups that it disqualifies as agile. Interpreted correctly it’s great, but too many interpret it wrong. He continued to talk about tacit and explicit knowledge to highlight some of the difficulties of scaling both RUP and agile methods into the future. His solution is to stop reading books(!) and introduce “smart” agents instead, and developers in India. Missing a proof of concept, I don’t see it as a believable future scenario.
- “6th Generation Languages - Back to the Future“, Dave Thomas, Bedarra. This was a great session that first gave a brief history of different xGL languages having the audience remembering the good old days, and then continuing to presenting the challenges of next generation languages. He finished by presenting different paths towards future languages, containing scripting, DSL, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Domain Oriented Programming (DOP) as the main concepts.
- “The Model-Driven (R)evolution“, Richard Soley, OMG.
- “Future Trends in Open Source“, Brian Barry, Bedarra.