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Many of the author's heroes became prominent because it benefited them as consultants pushing their methodology. Those methodologies are designed (in part) to m

Many of the author's heroes became prominent because it benefited them as consultants pushing their methodology. Those methodologies are designed (in part) to make it easier for younger, less experienced programmers to contribute to large software projects. I would say that it's okay to disagree with them over time as you gain experience and understanding.

daxfohl 5y ago
Actually, I think this is the correct response. @everyone please ignore my response below/above/wherever.
zozbot234 5y ago
Agile methods are not designed for "younger, less experienced programmers". They work best for enabling successful, experienced hackers.
- barrkel 5y ago
  In practice, Agile is often Scrum, which in practice breaks down tasks into bite-sized blobs of functionality on a conveyor belt of work, to be implemented by a team of interchangeable human resources.
  - FearNotDaniel 5y ago
    That would be Kanban... And in practice, many orgs are performing a pseudo-Scrum which is really just a timeboxed Kanban with a lot of cargo-culting of the Scrum ceremonies.
- timClicks 5y ago
  If you watch Robert C. ("Uncle Bob") Martin's talks, he spends a lot of time talking about how the first generation of programmers didn't need agile because they were already professionals from other fields. The agile methodologies were created because the industry decided to hire younger, less experienced, and less diligent, staff.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    You contradict my uni SWE professor: my understanding was that waterfall was SWE’s almost-cargo-cult adaptation of engineering practices from other fields (civil eng, mech-eng, etc) which “worked” in many use-cases but was/is entirely inappropriate for continuous delivery, which is how I’d wager the majority of software gets delivered thesedays (as opposed to them all being “1.0” releases burned to a CD on the client’s desk, with no further changes made, ever). Agile, XP, Scrums, Sprints, etc, do not represent a dumbing-down of engineering practices to accommodate coding-camp-types: it requires just as much discipline and understanding as the techniques of yore, but it overall works-better which makes doing our job easier. Do not equate “easier” with dumbing-down. And I’d wager a faangma summer intern SE today would run laps around a decade-burned SE from the 1980s - not least because they had the benefit of learning from the mistakes of the past 40 years.
Zababa 5y ago
That's interesting because better types systems would be a good way to do that too but most of these people usually push back against them. One theory could be that they want to work with existing code but if you take Robert C. Martin as an example, he often pushes Smalltalk and more recently Clojure (which is more pragmatic since it works with existing Java code). That's something I don't understand. Were the other languages unusable when these people became well known? Is this just their personal biases?

daxfohl 5y ago

Actually, I think this is the correct response. @everyone please ignore my response below/above/wherever.

zozbot234 5y ago

Agile methods are not designed for "younger, less experienced programmers". They work best for enabling successful, experienced hackers.

barrkel 5y ago
In practice, Agile is often Scrum, which in practice breaks down tasks into bite-sized blobs of functionality on a conveyor belt of work, to be implemented by a team of interchangeable human resources.
- FearNotDaniel 5y ago
  That would be Kanban... And in practice, many orgs are performing a pseudo-Scrum which is really just a timeboxed Kanban with a lot of cargo-culting of the Scrum ceremonies.
timClicks 5y ago
If you watch Robert C. ("Uncle Bob") Martin's talks, he spends a lot of time talking about how the first generation of programmers didn't need agile because they were already professionals from other fields. The agile methodologies were created because the industry decided to hire younger, less experienced, and less diligent, staff.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  You contradict my uni SWE professor: my understanding was that waterfall was SWE’s almost-cargo-cult adaptation of engineering practices from other fields (civil eng, mech-eng, etc) which “worked” in many use-cases but was/is entirely inappropriate for continuous delivery, which is how I’d wager the majority of software gets delivered thesedays (as opposed to them all being “1.0” releases burned to a CD on the client’s desk, with no further changes made, ever). Agile, XP, Scrums, Sprints, etc, do not represent a dumbing-down of engineering practices to accommodate coding-camp-types: it requires just as much discipline and understanding as the techniques of yore, but it overall works-better which makes doing our job easier. Do not equate “easier” with dumbing-down. And I’d wager a faangma summer intern SE today would run laps around a decade-burned SE from the 1980s - not least because they had the benefit of learning from the mistakes of the past 40 years.

Zababa 5y ago

That's interesting because better types systems would be a good way to do that too but most of these people usually push back against them. One theory could be that they want to work with existing code but if you take Robert C. Martin as an example, he often pushes Smalltalk and more recently Clojure (which is more pragmatic since it works with existing Java code). That's something I don't understand. Were the other languages unusable when these people became well known? Is this just their personal biases?