Panel

Eric Davis (twitter github blog)
Evan Light (twitter github blog)
Jim Gay (twitter github blog)
Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript)

Discussion
01:58 - Brownfield Projects

Contrast to Greenfield
Legacy Code

06:50 - Labeling and defining a Brownfield Project

Age
Decrepitude

08:37 - How to handle Brownfield Projects

Upgrading

Modernizing

Tree (Unix)

The First Step of Refactoring a Rails Application

Socratic Method

15:48 - Rescue Project versus Brownfield Project

State of the Client versus State of the Project

Urgent Need

20:02 - Technical Problems     Business Leadership Problems

Conway’s Law

Working Effectively with Legacy Code: Michael Feathers

26:56 - Refactoring and Testing

Show, Don’t Tell (Leading by example)
Redesigning Agile: Part II - Introducing Intridea Forge

31:46 - Educating team members

Correcting mistakes
Learn how others work
Lead by example

36:57 - Pushback

Trying new angles
Leave the project
Lower standards

Picks

Rails Commit (Eric)
Practical KnockoutJS (Eric)
The Delighted Developer (Evan)
Dead Man’s Snitch (Jim)
TweetBot (Chuck)
Therapeutic Refactoring: Katrina Owen (Chuck)
069 Ruby Rogues: Therapeutic Refactoring with Katrina Owen (Chuck)

Transcript
JIM: Brownfield's project, I’m just thinking, reminds me of this joke I heard where there's like a cabin boy on a pirate ship and the captain is always telling, when they are going in to battle, captain turns and say, “Arrr! Get me my red shirt!” And so, you know, they’d go to a battle and every time they go, “Arrr! Get me my red shirt!”

And so, finally, the cabin boy goes to the captain and captain says, “Sir, why are you always telling to ‘get me a red shirt’?” “Well, I don’t want the men to see me bleed if I get stabbed.”

And so, the next time they were travelling through the entire like Spanish Armada comes out and just completely surrounds them. And the captain turns to the cabin boy and says, “Arrr! Get me my brown pants!”

[laughter]

[Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made it by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com]

[Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net]

CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 34 of the Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis.

ERIC: Hello.

CHUCK: We have Evan light.

EVAN: Today, I have whiskey.

CHUCK: And we also have Jim Gay.

JIM: I am ready to go.

CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and this week, we are going to be talking about Brownfield Projects. And who says it’s such--

EVAN: It doesn’t sound very pleasant, right?

CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. There was some discussion before the show about that.

JIM: That term is terrible. I mean--

EVAN: It’s poopy.

CHUCK: Oh geez. [laughs] Somebody has to say it, right?

JIM: Actually before we start talking, I started searching like is there a Wikipedia entry for brownfield? Like, who came up with the term “brownfield”?

EVAN: Well, we can get it in the Urban Dictionary pretty fast.

[laughs]

CHUCK: Oh geez. [laughs] I usually hear it as a contrast to “greenfield” is what I hear.

JIM: Yeah, I’d certainly understand that. I always like I mentioned before,