I have recently returned to my old passion, programming. Although the review and publishing process of articles spanned across my daily routine and kept me within the boundaries of programming, I cannot really say that I was writing code. When I decided to return to programming, I felt as if I had found my way back, a long road ahead, filled with challenges and satisfaction at the end of each day. I was glad to find that, at the end of the day, I can solve many more problems than what the initial estimation revealed and that I literally want to be a part of that universe where the application I develop is defined. In the end, maybe it does not even matter that you literally develop your own product or you outsource. Do you, passionate developers, also identify yourselves with these lines?
I have recently participated in ..Even Mammoths Can Be Agile", an event which is considered a tradition in Cluj, where, as speaker, I tackled the problem of using Agile Scrum. The goal of my speech was to demonstrate that using this methodology is not always beneficial, even beyond the advantages that everyone recognizes. The problem is that the excessive adherence to the principles of this method generates the risk of not keeping in touch with the core aspect: developing the product. It is the reason why I consider that we should not be doing Agile Scrum on a continuing basis. We should also take into consideration a working style based on mini estimates. The Skunk Works concept, developed by Lockheed Martin, used to produce famous war planes like U-2 or F-22, lowers the pedestal on which the Agile Scrum methodology sits comfortably. The idea is very simple and efficient: a small group of employees is totally separated from the rest of the team. The group receives great autonomy and is left to work on an innovative product. Their results often exceed expectations. All these aspects make me wonder if we should not ask ourselves at least one question before adopting a methodology instead of adhering to the current trend blindly.
We come back to the papers in this issue of the magazine. The main topics refers to Big Data and Machine Learning, as represented by these four papers: The Energy that Makes the World Move, The Architecture of a Scalable Data Lake in AWS, Kafka in the Big Data Ecosystem și Big Data Solutions for Industry 4.0. From an adjacent field, DevOps, we suggest DevOps Mythbusting and a paper on using Docker: Docker, Build and Ship. PHP is also represented in this issue by PSR Standards in the PHP Ecosystem and The Symfony Framework from 1.0 to 3.0. At the end, we challenge you to Virtual Reality - a potent field for Cluj's Industry.
by Ovidiu Mățan
by Mihai Câsu
