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He's deriding the agile movement. He's saying if you don't know how to properly design software (up front), then he supposes that doing it in an iterative fashi
by tinco 3y ago
He's deriding the agile movement. He's saying if you don't know how to properly design software (up front), then he supposes that doing it in an iterative fashion is an acceptable alternative. The way he says it implies that he disapproves of it.
In opinions such as this it pays to remind yourself that not everyone is faced with the same challenges. For all the esteem Wirth garners, I feel (at least at that time) his work on compilers and programming language design involves challenges that are very different from the challenges that inspired Extreme Programming.
- somewhereoutth 3y agoAnd not everyone has the same abilities. Tayloresquece methodologies like Agile are great for getting mediocre results for mediocre projects using mediocre developers (if they are not mediocre to begin with, certainly they will become so) in a repeatable and reportable fashion.
- zvmaz 3y ago> Tayloresquece methodologies like Agile are great for getting mediocre results for mediocre projects using mediocre developers (if they are not mediocre to begin with, certainly they will become so) in a repeatable and reportable fashion Nuanced, humble, and thoughtful opinion. Thank you.
- rramadass 3y agoHa, Ha! I absolutely love your phrasing! For those who may not know, "Tayloresque" refers to techniques pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor) who introduced "Scientific Management Techniques" to increase worker productivity and efficiency in Factories. To the detriment of Humankind, his methods have been taken as gospel by the larger "Management Industry" from where they have bled into the "Knowledge Management Industry" causing all knowledgeable Software Engineers to rue their jobs/careers/lives.
- pts_ 3y agoThere's nothing mediocre about delivering features and bugfixes at the speed of light on whose correctness your reputation is based.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mjb 3y agoAnd that Worth worked primarily on systems that are many times smaller (maybe many orders of magnitude smaller) than today's biggest systems. It's no surprise, then, that the successful techniques are different. The right techniques to build a house, a skyscraper, a city, and a garden are different.
- morelisp 3y ago> systems that are many times smaller (maybe many orders of magnitude smaller) than today's biggest systems. This is a dangerous and misleading metric. You're right that different scale needs different techniques, but comparing sizes of actually existing systems in this way it's very easy to conclude your strongest designers who successfully wrangled a large problem into a simple system are your weakest designers because what they designed is so small.
- kragen 3y agothe empire state building is a bit more than an order of magnitude smaller than the great pyramid of khufu, if you go by weight that's why it can be taller, was built much faster, and has much more room inside. also, it has served its intended purpose, while as far as we can tell, khufu's pyramid failed to make him immortal; this is because it was based on flawed theories wirth's work should be an inspiration to see if we can make systems that are many times smaller, maybe many orders of magnitude smaller, than the systems we are unfortunately currently forced to maintain; and yet are more powerful than those systems