Suggestions for beginners

[Kivech]

It is not about skipping steps. Waterfall is about one iteration - one chance to hit or miss. Agile process is about taking repeated measurements, repeated tries, learning in the process what solutions should be. Learning for programmers, and also for customers.

As they say: it is easy to walk on water and code according to specifications - if both are frozen solid. But if they are fluid, it is much harder.

Hehe, nice quote.

I don't think the waterfall model is about one hit or miss at all. One goes through several cycles in one development cycle. Maybe that is not strictly the doctrine of the model, but in my professional experience it works like that. One never just does one hit or miss run.
Honestly, I've been in the business for quite some time now, but never have I seen it applied like that though. Wouldn't make sense to me either.

Anyway, not saying I don't agree with you. I just see the waterfall model as a dynamic one. One run per iteration, and yet, one should have several itterations per project.

Btw, nice to run into someone who's a bit more into the theory behind the developing as well.

Kivech

[CptPicard]

My main client and me have this sort of vodka-fall-and-err-and-redevelop-and-redo kind of mutual assured destruction development model. Every few months we get together, get drunk, talk about the next few months' worth of work. Something gets done, eventually we find out that we disagree about what is to be done and how, then we shout at each other, find out that we have way too much to lose if the project fails, we make up, we find a way to make it work... both take a bit of losses to what we expected and then everything is great again and we start over.

Our discussions can be interesting as he is a Mensa member who quit engineering studies early because of "late puberty" (around 25 or so), but he's really great at his own domain... and I'm the more formally educated type who is trying to follow his "practical" reasoning and turn it into actual efficient working code. It works great, it's not agile, but it's fun and profitable.

[PanP5]

Can someone please recommend a good book on Unix/Linux OS programming? Something that discusses processes, creating threads, zombie processes, etc?

***EDIT***

Ack! Sorry. I found this in the FAQ, but somehow missed the "Programming Books" recommendations thread