The guest of this week's .NET Rocks! show is Scott W. Ambler. I was really looking forward to this show, as Scott is the author of one of the best books I've read: Refactoring Databases.

Richard and Carl talked with him about agile development practices. Some topics in particular where database refactoring, agile modeling and project management. It was a great talk, and I strongly recommend to listen to the show if you are interested in modern software development.

A very interesting story Scott was talking about, is about a question he uses to ask at conferences:

"When you go back to work rename a column in a production database. Can you safely do that and roll into production in less than a day?” Interestingly, very few people can. Some people can do it in a month, some people in three months. Some people think it's so risky, they wouldn't even attempt to do it.

The topic about database refactoring and evolutionary database design was of special interest for me. That's because as I'm currently in the process of developing a tool that helps developers to integrate database refactoring methods.

I hope Scott will be on the show again some time. I'm sure he has a lot of valuable knowledge and experience to talk about in many DNR shows.

Steve Eichert bringt es auf den Punkt:

Am Ende eines Tages sollte man stets sagen können: "Mein Programm ist nun ein klein wenig besser als es gestern war."

Also

• verbessere deinen Quellcode ein wenig
• verändere deinen Entwicklungsprozess
• verbessere dein Team

Eigentlich gibt es immer etwas, was bei der Softwareentwicklung verbessert werden kann. Man muss nur aufmerksam sein und auch den Entwicklungsprozess bewusst beobachten.
Verbesserungen können Änderungen am Quellcode sein, um zum Beispiel Duplicate Code zu entfernen. Aber auch neue Tools können Verbesserungen bewirken. Warum also nicht einfach mal den Texteditor ausprobieren, von dem XY in seinem Blog geschrieben hat. Ruhig auch mal ein bisschen experimentieren.
Was diese beschriebenen Veränderungen gemeinsam haben, ist, dass sie allermeistens kleine und einfache Schritte sind. Sie sind vielleicht sogar so klein, dass man sie kaum bemerkt, wenn man sie alleine betrachtet. Aber die Summe dieser Mini-Optimierungen von Code, Entwicklungsprozess und Environment hat ein immenses Gewicht.

Today I updated my bookshelf. I'm currently reading two books:

• Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans
• Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky

I can say that both books are true gems. I can hardly put them down.

In order to read and understand "Refactoring to Patterns" you should have read "Design Patterns" by Gamma et. al. and "Refactoring - Improving the Design of Existing Code" by Martin Fowler. One can say that Refactoring to Patterns is a bridge that connects these two books.