One of the steady themes I've seen throughout my career is that of the nature and importance of software development. Recently a prospect told one of our salespeople that "software is like sewage pipes, I want it to work reliably and I don't want to know about the details". This is the kind of approach that Nicholas Carr talked about in IT Doesn't Matter. On a contrasting note we've done work for many businesses where IT has been a clearer strategic enabler to their business, allowing them to enter new markets or significantly increase their market share. So is IT a utility, like sewage pipes, or a strategic asset?

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A couple of weeks ago I was in Paris with Neal Ford to speak at USI 2010. Our talk looked at some aspects of why agile works. Rather than look at the techniques which is how agile does its thing, we looked more at some of the underlying forces - focusing on communication and feedback. The video is now available. (The introduction is in French but the talk is in English. Sadly my French is barely sufficient to order at a restaurant.)

A common thing you find in agile projects is that the development team sits in a single open team room. It was advocated early on in Extreme Programming and called out as one of primary practices in the second edition. Agilists favor a open team room as it promotes lots of informal and deep communication between people on the team.

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Over the weekend I’ve had a few emails from people in response to scams on craigslist. The scammer has been posting fake job adverts, using my name, for a driver or personal assistant. In case someone checks here I thought I should make it clear that I have never made any postings on craigslist and any postings you see there with my name are false.

I've not seen myself as an iFanboy. I didn't get an iPhone for ages after it came out, and only got one because it was the only way to upgrade my data plan to 3G. I use a mac, but I also have an Ubuntu desktop. But I have got an iPad, and I think it's a significant product.

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In a couple of weeks, I’ll be making my first trip to Brazil (and South America). I’ll arrive in Rio on Jun 13 and give a talk there on the 14th. After that I’ll head over to Porto Alegre and hang out at our office until Agile Brazil, where I’ll be doing a Keynote. My Rio and Agile Brazil talks will be similar - in that I’ll be doing a suite of talks, although I’ll probably not use the same suite in each place.

After sorting out the Final Draft for production, I rebuilt the rough-cut, which is now live on the site.

The biggest change with the content of the Final Draft is that I have three new pattern chapters for external DSLs from my colleague Rebecca Parsons: Regex Table Lexer, Recursive Descent Parser, and Parser Combinator. I’ve also reworked the “Hello Antlr” topic into the Parser Generator pattern.

I’ve now reached another significant step in my DSL book: Final Draft. This is the moment when I declare that I’m done with my content and release it to production. Copy-editing will begin soon, as well indexing, and various other sundry task to turn final text into a book ready to go to the printers.

It doesn’t mean that I’m completely done with the book. I will have to review the copy edits to ensure they are OK. I will also be working intimately with the production process, helping to improve the output for Safari Books Online and assisting the print production. I’ll also fix any errors spotted in the content, such as from people commenting on the rough-cut.

But the important step is that I’m done with the major thinking. I can’t do any big work on the content now unless it’s an emergency, so I’ll only be tidying up little things. I feel a sense of relief, a knowledge that it’s time to let the book go.

Like many obsessive snappers, I've recently got hold of the Canon S90 camera. It's small enough to fit in your pocket, but has the kind of things that people with pretensions to seriousness like: full manual controls, RAW file support, a good sensor, and an f2 lens.

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My DSL book is now available as a rough-cut on safari books online. If you’re a member of safari you can see the book and make comments on it. If you’re not a member you can only see the TOC, preface, and first chapter.

I’m very keen to hear comments, so if you take a look do let me know what you think. I’m particularly interested in any errors I’ve made so I can fix them before we chop down the trees. Please, however, remember this is a rough-cut; in particular it hasn’t been through copy-editing. So expect speeling errors and mistakes grammatical - you don’t need to flag those as they should get picked up once the copy-editors are set on it.

I’m told I’m the very first author to produce the safari files myself using an automated book production process. Apart from the glow of vanity, a practical consequence of this is that I can (and will) generate updates as I put together useful updates. I’ll announce any updates here and on my twitter stream.

I’ve got a couple of US speaking trips coming up, organized by ThoughtWorks. Next week (28-29 April) I’m off to Atlanta to give a couple of talks. Then in May (11-12) I’m in the San Francisco area to speak both down in the valley and in the city. As is my style these days, I’ll be doing a suite of talks on various topics that I’m currently interested in, so while I can’t say exactly what I’ll talk about, the talks will be the kinds of stuff I write about here. They’re all free events, so at least you have a good chance of getting value for money.