October 2007
Beginner
438 pages
15h 52m
English
Content preview from The Art of Agile DevelopmentBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Software Doesn’t Exist
Let me digress for a moment: software doesn’t exist. OK, I exaggerate—but only slightly.
When you run a program, your computer loads a long series of magnetic fields from your hard drive and translates them into capacitances in RAM. Transistors in the CPU interpret those charges, sending the results out to peripherals such as your video card. More transistors in your monitor selectively allow light to shine through colored dots onto your screen.
Yet none of that is software. Software isn’t even ones and zeros; it’s magnets, electricity, and light. The only way to create software is to toggle electrical switches up and down—or to use existing software to create it for you.
You write software, though, don’t you?
Actually, you write a very detailed specification for a program that writes the software for you. This special program translates your specification into machine instructions, then directs the computer’s operating system to save those instructions as magnetic fields on the hard drive. Once they’re there, you can run your program, copy it, share it, or whatever.
You probably see the punchline coming. The specification is the source code. The program that translates the specification into software is the compiler. Jack Reeves explores the implications in his famous essay, “What is Software Design?”[61]
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.