I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to new technology. Perhaps I'm atypical in the software development community, but I like to know what a new technology will do for me before I make the effort to learn it. Ever since I entered the IT industry I have carefully evaluated the technology I'm going to use.

A number of years ago I attended a presentation about Spring. The users of Spring were obviously enthusiastic to the point of religious fervour over Spring, and while they went some way to explaining what Spring was they failed to really explain the one thing I wanted to know. What problem did Spring solve?

Although I have been critical of waterfall in the past I recently came to a realisation; that evolution is something that occurs in software development regardless of whether you intend it or not. Unless your software is dead.

In the past I have seen waterfall as a method diameterically opposed to evolutionary methods such as Extreme Programming. However, I now see that all software development is always subject to evolution. Even projects run strictly on a waterfall basis cannot escape from the process of selection which occurs in a free market.

Coming to a YouTube near you is Avalanche Software Development, a short film detailing how you can move to this new and popular software development methodology.

Some time ago now there was an article on Slashdot about how to find good developers. Here are the primary points of the article;