If Agile isn’t promising success without planning then what is it promising? If you can’t answer that then welcome to Earth.

Why is this a problem? Because Agile is selling a promise to developers that must be fulfilled by architects and designers.

Yes, the Agile practices of 2-week timeframe’s, daily stand-up meetings, pair programming, etc, depend on the simple fact that SOMEONE is keeping a clear vision of the end product in mind.

That sounds like BDUF (big design up front). Someone has to do it. It’s not the developer’s responsibility, it’s the architect’s.

So successful Agile development requires an architect to succeed.

A techtalk video of Hubert Smits, the Agile Guy, inspired this post.

VB6 was taken off of the market in an attempt to keep software development costs high. –see, told ya… but it’s still a nice hat.–

If you wrote Windows software during the massive Y2K software update you likely knew someone who became a Windows programmer after learning Visual Basic 6. I admit, I thought VB was a toy language until I did wrote some software for a company who sold the it and made millions. Later my company built a video streaming server product using a VB6 front end (the back-end was in C++). Customers loved it! Not because it was written in VB6, but the fact is VB6 didn’t hurt it at all. And, by the way, much of that software was written by a VB6 programmer with less than a year of experience.

Now VB6 is essentially gone. Dot net is here (if you write Windows software) and Microsoft is not looking back. Even a massive online petition did nothing to sway MS.

Why?

VB6 introduced tons of new programmers to software development. Many of these new guys were not formally trained. They wouldn’t know O(n) from O(scary). They knew nothing of data structures, formal sorting and searching algorithms, and didn’t give a rip about optimal code performance. But what they did know was how to make Windows do what they wanted. They knew how to listen to their bosses and make forms and add buttons and get code snippets from all over the Internet written by other untrained programmers and, best of all, they knew how to spend all that cash they were making as new programmers. I knew a few guys who went from $30Kish to $80Kish nearly overnight. And on top of all that, they were cheaper than “classically trained” developers.

It was enough to irritate a classic programmer with all his knowledge of Knuth and Bubble sorts and COM/ATL internals. Classically trained developers saw a stagnation of income. Before these new fly by the seat of the pants VB6 programmers came along Windows software development hourly costs were skyrocketing. Then the great income gains slowed to a crawl, and then it all stopped.

And here you have a couple of problems: 1. programming was no longer the bastion of the “classically trained” programmer, and 2. with all these new guys jumping into the foray there was price competition. And we couldn’t have that. So, how do we solve this problem? Take VB6, with its easy programming paradigm off the market and keep it off.

As crazy as this sounds it all begs the question, why hasn’t someone filled the void left by VB6?

The podcast is aimed at would be software entrepreneurs who are, or want to, build profitable software, on a limited budget, while holding down full time work. We would love to hear from you!

A prolific and highly creative buddy of mine, @UMLGuy, has created what I think is a terrific way to grok the basics (and not so basics) of UML (the Unified Modeling Language). He’s written a COMIC, and it’s pretty good.

Ulterior Motives Lounge is an adventure story with a large cast of characters and several set locations. Oh, and you get to learn some UML, if you’re paying attention. Prior knowledge of computer programming is not necessary since the creator of The Lounge abhors the idea that UML is for programmers and computer people only.

Martin, the creator of "The Lounge" is the author of two books on UML and has taught the subject all over the country for years; including at Microsoft.

Check out the Lounge to laugh and learn.

So if you don’t wanna buy a phone with keyboard now you have something that’s even more, um… instinctually adept? … to let you keep using that cheap phone!

The coolest part of the sphere is that it appears to use off the shelf technology (except for the sphere itself, which is probably a clear plastic), making it somewhat inexpensive, and therefore more readily available to me the public.

AWS lets companies that provide software online, like e-commerce web sites, without having to invest in anticipated growth. That means that, if the web site doesn’t grow, you’re not out thousands in hardware, software, and setup costs. Web software companies love the idea.

So, why is it dangerous? Single point of failure.

The Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack on the U.S. They primary way it does this is to have many points of failure. In other words, if one part of the U.S. is wiped out, the Internet still works.

This is not the case with The Cloud. Only the largest companies can afford to provide the necessary resources to make a scalable web service provider. Right now the big players are Amazon, Google, and, soon, Microsoft. Google’s version of AWS is called Google App Engine.

Google App Engine went down yesterday for nearly an entire day. The whole thing went down… along with every single application running on it. And Google didn’t know why.

This is bad.

Imagine building a business on a Cloud service and it, the entire ONE, goes down along with yours and thousands (or millions) of other websites. The Internet is working fine, but the single point of failure is down… along with a bunch of income generating businesses.

Until there are many (hundreds) of web service providers like AWS on the Internet, The Cloud will remain a dangerous place to bet your business.

Now some guys from Israel (go Israel!) are getting rid of the Wii entirely with their CamSpace pure software solution that can really be explained best with a video.

I think this is gonna change some things.

Using just a PC and a webcam, CamTrax Technologies, have figured out how to make a wii-like controller out of just about anything, so long as it’s at least 5mm in size.

Imagine standing in front of your wide screen tv and drawing on the screen using your XBox, PS3, Blu-Ray player, or whatever. Virtual exercise with a partner is entirely possible. TechCrunch has some other ideas.

I might have to get a Wii… just to, you know, be ready.

Well, that’s what happened yesterday when he managed to tick off the wrong right person, Michael Arrington.

Talk about publicity. In a cursory survey of TechCrunch comment numbers, I found that a blog post rarely got more than 20 comments. The TuneCore post, as of this writing, has over 230!

Rudeness marketing, indeed.