46 ms·

Extreme Programming Explained

16 points by ivank 18y ago

wallflower 18y ago
> The permanent brain damage of that CMM training course makes me admire XP. OK. This article espouses XP as a religion. What irritates me is that implies an all-or-nothing approach of XP. You want floormats with that car? Pair programming with iterations etc. Which can be too much to handle - just adopting some of the XP principles and practices can make a big difference - stand-up meetings for example. I worked on a project that just started having stand-up meetings - to replace the once-weekly meeting where we would all either just fume at each other or silently say nothing. Communication improved to a point where we realized there was no real communication going on before (e.g. this is how I feel with X task) That being said. Is Agile better? I don't know. I'm working on an Agile project right now - I hate the burndowns, hate them with a passion - reducing your accountability to a number. But what it does - updating burndowns is it makes your progress transparent - to you as well as the other people on the team.
- timcederman 18y ago
  Haha, as a PM I've found engineers hate burndowns with an absolute passion. And so do I. But you're right - the transparency makes it worth it. I try to make sure I gather the data in an unobtrusive manner as possible, and keep irritating meetings to a minimum. No matter what I do it still gives people the irrits. Having worked as a software engineer, I wish some of them would work as a PM for a bit to know what we go through as well...
timcederman 18y ago
As much as XP has its flaws, I don't think it deserved the smackdown it got in this article, which was somewhat biased. Also what was with the bizarre, idiomatic, confrontational writing style?
- gaius 18y ago
  You've not read a personal blog before then?
gaius 18y ago
He hits the nail on the head with this article - XP is a methodology for large groups of average programmers to write large volumes of average code. This is not necessarily a bad thing; that is the requirement of most large organizations. Most corporate software is just forms and reports in front of a database; there's nothing algorithmic in there that necessitates deep concentration. It doesn't matter how big the codebase is. That's why XP doesn't care about ownership of code, or the "social" aspects breaking concentration. But XP is simply not suitable for real "extreme programming", i.e. small teams producing novel products. There is a BIG difference between "specs that change because a business user can't make up their mind" and "specs that change because we are writing a program that has never been written before" which completely escapes XP people.
- gruseom 18y ago
  I'm no XP fan, but this comment is ignorant. It's entirely possible for two people to concentrate together on a hard problem, and when it works well you get a "two heads are better than one" effect. It matters a lot how big the codebase is on any software project (and XP is well aware of this). Collective code ownership is advocated for a number of good reasons, such as that it mitigates risk and increases quality (think open source). The vast majority of "large groups of average programmers" are not doing XP and would hate the idea of it just as much as you do, and for some of the same reasons. Plenty of XP projects have above-average programmers. (Edit: Oh, and by the way, when I was paying attention to this stuff the corporate types were the source of greatest resistance to XP, while most of the people advocating it were technical. So it's a little rich to hear XP described as a corporate conspiracy to impose a drone state on creative programmers. Perhaps it's changed since then.) XP provokes a lot of one-sided emotional reactions from people, some in favor, most against. (I'd include the OP in this.) In fact, I've noticed that some of the most cultish XP people turn out to have been the ones who had knee-jerk negative reactions at first. Once they decide they don't want to sit in a room by themselves all day after all they flip one bit to the other and become evangelists of the opposite. The irony is that much of what they say both pre- and post-koolaid is actually true. But it gets spoiled by rigidity.
  - gaius 18y ago
gruseom 18y ago
XP does have a social bias. Eric Evans once suggested "social programming" as a more accurate name for it. When combined with the formulaic nature of software "process" (do these 12 things, code must be written in pairs, etc.) this aspect can turn weird or even cultlike. That's unfortunate because the best and most fun software projects are indeed (in my experience) highly collaborative. But compulsory socialization isn't fun at all.
noonespecial 18y ago
XP is a specialized tool for getting specialized results. As the article mentioned, it is good for getting large volumes of average code. (And likely doing so with fewer mistakes). We XP for the same reason we have 2 pilots on an airliner. Its long and boring but messing up can be very bad. So we send 2 people to manage the drudgery, keep each other motivated and catch mistakes that could lead to problems later. The virtue of the lone expert however, applies to a very different type of problem. He has to be free to try the most wild outlandish things that pop into his head. This is not possible in a "pair programming" environment. There is astonishingly little difference between design flaw and brilliant innovation in this space. When we test the X-1 we send Chuck Yeager not a pair of pilots from Delta.

16 points by ivank 18y ago

> The permanent brain damage of that CMM training course makes me admire XP. OK. This article espouses XP as a religion. What irritates me is that implies an all-or-nothing approach of XP. You want floormats with that car? Pair programming with iterations etc. Which can be too much to handle - just adopting some of the XP principles and practices can make a big difference - stand-up meetings for example. I worked on a project that just started having stand-up meetings - to replace the once-weekly meeting where we would all either just fume at each other or silently say nothing. Communication improved to a point where we realized there was no real communication going on before (e.g. this is how I feel with X task) That being said. Is Agile better? I don't know. I'm working on an Agile project right now - I hate the burndowns, hate them with a passion - reducing your accountability to a number. But what it does - updating burndowns is it makes your progress transparent - to you as well as the other people on the team.

timcederman 18y ago
Haha, as a PM I've found engineers hate burndowns with an absolute passion. And so do I. But you're right - the transparency makes it worth it. I try to make sure I gather the data in an unobtrusive manner as possible, and keep irritating meetings to a minimum. No matter what I do it still gives people the irrits. Having worked as a software engineer, I wish some of them would work as a PM for a bit to know what we go through as well...

timcederman 18y ago

As much as XP has its flaws, I don't think it deserved the smackdown it got in this article, which was somewhat biased. Also what was with the bizarre, idiomatic, confrontational writing style?

gaius 18y ago
You've not read a personal blog before then?

gaius 18y ago

He hits the nail on the head with this article - XP is a methodology for large groups of average programmers to write large volumes of average code. This is not necessarily a bad thing; that is the requirement of most large organizations. Most corporate software is just forms and reports in front of a database; there's nothing algorithmic in there that necessitates deep concentration. It doesn't matter how big the codebase is. That's why XP doesn't care about ownership of code, or the "social" aspects breaking concentration. But XP is simply not suitable for real "extreme programming", i.e. small teams producing novel products. There is a BIG difference between "specs that change because a business user can't make up their mind" and "specs that change because we are writing a program that has never been written before" which completely escapes XP people.

gruseom 18y ago
I'm no XP fan, but this comment is ignorant. It's entirely possible for two people to concentrate together on a hard problem, and when it works well you get a "two heads are better than one" effect. It matters a lot how big the codebase is on any software project (and XP is well aware of this). Collective code ownership is advocated for a number of good reasons, such as that it mitigates risk and increases quality (think open source). The vast majority of "large groups of average programmers" are not doing XP and would hate the idea of it just as much as you do, and for some of the same reasons. Plenty of XP projects have above-average programmers. (Edit: Oh, and by the way, when I was paying attention to this stuff the corporate types were the source of greatest resistance to XP, while most of the people advocating it were technical. So it's a little rich to hear XP described as a corporate conspiracy to impose a drone state on creative programmers. Perhaps it's changed since then.) XP provokes a lot of one-sided emotional reactions from people, some in favor, most against. (I'd include the OP in this.) In fact, I've noticed that some of the most cultish XP people turn out to have been the ones who had knee-jerk negative reactions at first. Once they decide they don't want to sit in a room by themselves all day after all they flip one bit to the other and become evangelists of the opposite. The irony is that much of what they say both pre- and post-koolaid is actually true. But it gets spoiled by rigidity.
- gaius 18y ago

gruseom 18y ago

XP does have a social bias. Eric Evans once suggested "social programming" as a more accurate name for it. When combined with the formulaic nature of software "process" (do these 12 things, code must be written in pairs, etc.) this aspect can turn weird or even cultlike. That's unfortunate because the best and most fun software projects are indeed (in my experience) highly collaborative. But compulsory socialization isn't fun at all.

noonespecial 18y ago

XP is a specialized tool for getting specialized results. As the article mentioned, it is good for getting large volumes of average code. (And likely doing so with fewer mistakes). We XP for the same reason we have 2 pilots on an airliner. Its long and boring but messing up can be very bad. So we send 2 people to manage the drudgery, keep each other motivated and catch mistakes that could lead to problems later. The virtue of the lone expert however, applies to a very different type of problem. He has to be free to try the most wild outlandish things that pop into his head. This is not possible in a "pair programming" environment. There is astonishingly little difference between design flaw and brilliant innovation in this space. When we test the X-1 we send Chuck Yeager not a pair of pilots from Delta.