Meanwhile, in Boulogne...

[Note: this post is the English translation of an article I've initially written in French.]

Now that things settle down a bit, I'm proud and happy to announce the website I've been working on as an extreme programmer for Delasource is now online and available to anyone. It's actually been so for the last two weeks.

The website hosts a contest for (French or Spanish) teenagers. The winner will be granted one day in the company of Taylor Lautner (if you don't know Taylor Lautner, don't over-beat yourself - immense is the universe of teens' stars) (plus, Google can provide you with all the clues you need without anyone knowing). S/he will also represent him during an event to which he won't be able to attend. In short, the winner will be dubbed "star ambassador." Sideways, various companies will advertise their stuff and everyone will get to send SMS and MMS as if they have nothing better to do.

> http://ambassadeurdestar.com

> http://star-ambassador.es

The project is run in full eXtreme Programming, by the book (first edition, of course). The website is developed in Ruby on Rails with TextMate, thus on MacOS. We add features everyday, and there has been at least one release a day since we've gone live. The team is currently composed of 6 programmers, 2 graphic designers, 3 moderators and a handful of stakeholders. The whole gang happily works together in an old, rehabbed shop in Boulogne, in the same room. The code is written full TDD (except for the HTML views). It's currently covered by 951 assertions spread over 563 automated tests, running in about 35 seconds.

In 4 months of work, we've used 150 flipchart pages, 15 markers, 100 index cards, 2000 sticky notes of various sizes and colors, 10 felt pens, 5 ballpens, 2 notebooks, 50 regular sheets of paper, 1 playmobil and 300 French croissants.

During these 4 months of teamwork I'll have grown a deep sympathy and a profound respect for my fellow coders, an entrepreneur-born former DJ and aikido blackbelt, a game designer gifted with Olympian calm, a bretonnian philosopher and former math teacher, a tireless Pole and an aesthet freelancer who cares about software (a lot).

I'm immensely proud of the results we've come up with, as much for all the right choices we've made at the right time as for all the obstacles we've overcome and turned to our advantage.

... and I figured you might want to rejoice along with me :)