What is the correct balance between "planning" and "doing" ?

"Doing" works for people with plenty of experience, but they are rare.
"Planning" works when the project is very complex, but it is rare
The correct cursor is something between "a little planning, a little doing, and we see what we reached", which is basically agile's definition.

I'd like to share my experience: I wanted to become an agile coach (yes, shame on me !).
This was because I saw the opportunity to help people become better, but that's not really what agile became nowadays.

And I realized that Agile is not for developers, but for managers.
In other words, it's not designed to help developers, but to make money out of managers.
You have to agree that the vast majority of managers are completely clueless, so they doubt about their own skills.
Agile, or most exactly Scrum and Devops, are designed to tell them: you don't understand software development ? No problem, you'll only have to follow a basic algorithm and we promise you that all your problems will disappear.
I agree that this is quite dishonest, but hey, the goal is to squeeze money out of companies, and managers can use their budget for this !

What is funny is that most agile gurus are not decent developers.
They'll explain that such agile game will help people realize something, but they are quite clueless regarding programming.

archive.org also provides downloads with BitTorrent

The success story is their ability to present something that has no value as something revolutionary and valuable.

Everything is in the pitch.

Indeed, it's the best solution, but France is special in the sense that some people resist despite common sense, like in the comic Asterix.
For example:
http://soocurious.com/fr/parte...
A few inhabitants refused to quit the village !

I'd like to share my own experience, since I'm self-taught programmer.

I started programming 35 years ago, on a pocket calculator (TI58-C), then moved onto some micro-computers.
At this time, I realized that that's what I wanted to do as my job.
So I spent a lot of time disassembling code, in order to understand how it was done.
Then I started to write my own games.
I finally got hired into a video game company, but I realized that working in a company could not provide me enough software education.
I bought the Art of Computer Programming, and I passionately read it.
Later, I entered programming contests, where I could explore combinatorial algorithms by practicing them.
Now, I'm equivalent to a software engineer, though I'm underemployed given my experience.

So yes, you can practice programming and acquire theoretical bases afterwards.
But most coders I met were satisfied with their level, never trying to challenge their knowledge.
I don't speak about learning new languages, but new ways to solve problems.
They are more dedicated to build their career.

Since I'm from France, I found some other articles explaining the real reasons, and they are pretty different from TFA.

Here are my sources:
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites...
http://www.lemondeinformatique...

First, Montreuil is 11 kilometers away from Paris, it's reasonably near and a lot cheaper.
You can check the photographs, the residents live only a few meters from the datacenter.

The problems appeared because Interxion would like to add an extension to the datacenter, doubling its capacity, and thus the noise it produces.

Here is a translation about the various causes:

It's nice to have datacenters, but it's hellish to live nearby.
And if you are the owner of a house nearby, your house cannot be sold at a correct price.

In fact, it's quite easy to patent new ideas.
There are even methodologies for that: TRIZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., SIT, ASIT or USIT.

The only problem is that these methods don't focus on "inventing" but on "improving" existing ideas.
So basically, it's not a very "creative" process, so "genius" is not required.

A french magazine for consumers wrote an interesting article about long-term reliability of the various cars.

Volkswagen has a generally good quality, but still a lot of problems.
Here are a few ones:
- fouling and breakage of the turbo diesel 4 cylinder
- failure of injectors and water/oil leakage on the 1.6 TDI
etc.

The recommended models are : Up!, Polo (except diesel until 2014), current Golf Jetta and Passat, New Beetle, Sharan since 2013 and current Touareg.

If you are interested, I can translate some of their recommendations.

In fact, what you want is several different tools, at least a VCS and an integrated build:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

At my company, we are using CruiseControl.NET, which is free and open-source, but seems discontinued.
It's sufficient for our needs.
We use a SVN server to make our commits (with TortoiseSvn on the clients), it's dead simple to install and use.
Configuring CruiseControl is more tedious, but you'll get automated builds, along with code coverage and unit tests.

A better tool may exist, but we use this one.

Zip is offensive too:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...
http://www.urbandictionary.com...

I believe you are wrong.

Winterkorn became CEO in 2007, and the cheat started in 2008.
He was claiming "I know every screw in our cars" Source: http://fortune.com/2015/09/23/...

So I have no doubt that he was aware of the cheat.
An engine cannot become clean without any hardware modification.

Dear Anders,

I know you are trying to defend your point of view, that DevOps is THE solution to everybody's problems.

I agree that divide-and-conquer is an approach useful in algorithms (especially if you pass Google's recruitment tests), but it's much more difficult in real life.

Social loafing exists in groups, and has been known since a long time.
Ringelmann measured the productivity at the beginning of the twentieth century, and discovered what is now named Ringelmann effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ringelmann's original article explains that a team of 8 persons produces the work of 4.
You may argue that you can optimize that by splitting in several groups, but the effect exists starting at 2 persons (85% of effort is produced).

To a certain degree, you can optimize a process by splitting tasks in independent subtasks, preferably assigned to one person each.
However, there are several major problems:
1) some tasks are not as independent as you may imagine
2) some tasks require that people with multiple domains work on them
3) some tasks are so long that it slows down the entire process. It is well known in Supply Chain that a single bottlenecks reduce your output.
4) splitted tasks become boring as hell
5) working alone doesn't improve your knowledge

So no, you didn't show that the Mythical Man-Month has been disproved.
You just showed that dividing tasks to a certain level may improve productivity, which is nothing new.

Also, applying efficiently DevOpt requires experienced managers.
Experience comes from mistakes and mixing various techniques, like ITIL, Scrum, DevOps, etc.
If you only use DevOps, I can assure you that you are bound to fail !

I'm sorry, but what Linus says is pure bullshit.

It's not about manipulating others or faking politeness, it's about respecting others.
You don't have to be condescending to be respectful.
And you can avoid bullying people when unnecessary.
It's all about non-violence: you treat others as you expect that they treat you.

At my first job, 30 years ago, experienced people were bullying inexperienced people, just because they had a little bit more knowledge.
Even though I was on the experienced part, it was a terrible experience for me, since toxic people endelessly badmouthed others and it was very demotivating.
A few years after I quit, I learned that the toxic guys were badmouthing each others, to the point that there have been some revenge, and the police was called !!!

What I learned from that is that if you want to be alone, you can treat others like shit, it doesn't matter.
But if you need to build a community, you have to learn how to behave, and encourage people to share knowledge and help them feel secure.
From a non-violent point of view, you have to realize that your actions will cause unpredictable reactions, and by treating others like shit, you are perceived as what you really are: an asshole.

Linus probably believes that he's irreplaceable, but he's not, and I'm sure he won't be missed.

I think you are too pessimistic.

I don't really disagree with you, since it's obvious that money goes to people who already have money, and I see Apple making piles of cash, and keeping it to itself.
At a given moment, the whole system will collapse, but is it really a bad thing ?

I see the advertising model as a way to create a fake good reputation.
It's easier to invent a good self-image and ignore what's wrong, and that's where Apple, Google and Facebook excel.

Hey, you are starting to rub off on me !

I detected a Bullshit Bingo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Seriously, their business is to rip off small businesses.
Their service can only be used once, because even dumb businesses realize instantly that it doesn't attract regular customers.

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."