Claude Montpetit -- Montpetit.net -- en

This post is just search engine meat for those who read the article on Javaworld about Garbage Collection in J2SE 1.4.1, and cannot start the JVM with the Concurrent mark and sweep switch that the article proposes to use in certain situations. The option, or switch, is written in the article as -XX:+UseConMarkSweepGC while it should be -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC.

No big deal but if you are getting this message when invoking the Java VM with this switch

  C:\>java -XX:+UseConMarkSweepGC ...
  Unrecognized VM option '+UseConMarkSweepGC'
  Could not create the Java virtual machine.

, you may just have to add a "c" after "con". C'est con, but its the kind of error that can sometimes be hard to identify.

Excerpt from Martin Fowler' bliki:

An essential point about agile methods, and a clear distinction between them and the plan-driven methods, is that agilist firmly believe that "individuals and interactions" matter more "processes and tools." This PeopleOriented assumption means that agilists will always expect a high-ability cohesive team to do better than a team of lower ability, whichever one follows more agile approaches. The assumption does mean that organizations should put their primary emphasis on getting and growing high-ability people for their teams. This does not mean that a low-ability team will do worse with agile than plan-driven methods.

Much of agile methods requires judicious skill. Self adaptation is required to change the process, many agile techniques focus on honing skill levels. I think this must mean that an effective agile team need to have some people who are of higher-ability. But this is true of plan-driven methods too. After all plan-driven methods assume that higher-ability people will draw up the plans. Both approaches require some high-ability people, although the way those leaders work with the team is different. The open question is whether you get more leverage of the high-ability people from plans or from collaboration.

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