I haven’t had time to watch the Alan Kay video from Etech, and now there’s a video of a Fred Brooks keynote:
Programming effort in a start-up (company or project) usually begins with a solo programmer and grows to a small team. Then, with luck, it grows to a large team. And radically changes character! Here lurk all the difficulties of software engineering. Growth is gradual, and change often imperceptible, until suddenly the project is in trouble. Process discipline has become necessary, often well before it was developed. What discipline? When? How, without dampening creativity?
According to Stephen Norrie, who blogged about it, the video covers “solo programming, conceptual integrity, pair programming, team size, architect role, code control, change control, documentation, testing, discipline, preserving creativity.”