Guus Bosman

I came across an interesting publication this morning, the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar. ThoughtWorks, a software development company, is often ahead of the curve, technology-wise, and it's interesting to read their "Technology Radar".

The Tech Radar is a short PDF with recommendations on which technologies to Adopt, Try, Assess or Hold. It gives an opinionated overview of new and emerging technologies in software development. Last week they released the 5th edition.

Their July 2011 edition recommends to "Adopt" GIT, the version-control software, and to "Hold" older and less flexible tools such as ClearCase, something that I think makes a lot of sense. Quality software is not created by artificially constraining developers while doing basic things like check-ins. Folks in my team have been pushing to move to GIT as well, something that I'd like to experiment with.

Interesting is the Radar's emphasis on solutions for the "software last mile" problem: how do you get code in production in a reliable way. I'm very familiar with these "DevOps" practices, because if you don't have a solid process and tools to transfer code from development, to test, to staging, to production, you really don't have quality production system.

ThoughtWorks Technology Radar: http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar