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Didn't you just describe why agile came about? Because we, as software professionals, realize that specifications are not set in stone and the system should be easy to adapt and modify for future requirements.

There is a big difference between "set in stone" and "unconstrained". Put another way, "XP is aimed at customers who don't know what they want."

If you want to understand why this (and all) Agile methodologies are epic fail: Extreme Programming Refactored

I especially liked the part:

Q. How can you know that you don't like agile if you've never tried it?

A. Because I have cognitive dissonance.
I've never tried agile, and I've never stuck my head in a big bucket of shit.
Having seriously considered all the ramifications of doing both,
I am quite certain that I would enjoy neither agile, nor sticking my head in a big bucket of shit.

of agile software development.

http://www.softwarereality.com/lifecycle/xp/case_against_xp.jsp

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html

You know a thing is superhyped when v1.1 is mentioned on slashdot.
Mind you RoR is cool compared to j2EE. Then again, it's allmost as if C is cool when compared to J2EE. J2EE sucks big time for server side web - even the Java Gurus agree on that. End of discussion, no news here.
But RoR isn't the end all of ssi frameworks. Django is at least as good (I'd say better and cleaner than RoR) and Zope has been around since the ninties and still is years ahead of the rest. People with an overview over the technologies generally agree on that. I had a story submission (rejected) on that the other week. Check out the linked webcast, it's a very interessting analysis of a set of technologies and solutions:

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Nasa/JPL Web Framework Shootout

In an educative and entertaining webcast, Sean Kelly, a Nasa/JPL software engineer, goes into the details of a project based comparsion between a set of web application frameworks and servers. Including the much hyped Ruby on Rails and Django. Various Java technologies, Ruby on Rails, Django, TurboGears and Zope are covered. Details and traits of each are mentioned. For people involved with web developement there are not to many suprises though, yet the presentation and Kellys commenting are fun to watch.
In a nutshell: EJB, Hibernate and various other Java flavours fail spectacularly, Zope scores a clear victory with Django, RoR and TurboGears relatively close behind. Development speed, error-gotchas, the need for hand-tweaking and the requirement of handwritten SQL and available documentation go into the measuring. As does an overall tongue-in-check "fun-factor". The details are interessting though. TurboGears 'error-driven' developement gets a positive review, RoRs automated controller generation aswell and Zope gets a complete rundown on it's astounding set of features. In the end long-time Java developer Kelly convinces us that - no matter what we do - we really, positively, don't want to use EJB or Hibernate for this kind of stuff. Very entertaining and informative indeed.
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Ugh, god no. There are plenty of reasons to hate RUP, but there are equally as many reasons to hate XP. Considering that XP is tiny in comparison to RUP, I'd say that weighs more heavily against XP.

(if I might recommend: it's not precisely unbiased, but there's more than a little truth in it, and it'll make you laugh. Extreme Programming Refactored.)

In Korea, only old people use EJB's.

Seriously, EJB's are the worst thing to ever come out of the Java camp that has managed to (sort of) survive.
See EJB's 101 Damnations

Sun is in trouble because GCJ is getting so much better. It has a strong chance of becoming the "defacto" version on Linux very soon. RedHat engineers already have Eclipse built and running on it, and tightly integrated with Gnome and Glade development. It's starting to look really nice, and SWT compiles natively into Linux binaries. Sun will likely maintain the lead on Windows pretty easily, but they stand a big chance to lose out to GCJ on Linux. No biggie, because Linux isn't a real server platform after all, right Sun? ;)

If Sun wanted to make themselves insanely relevant very quickly, they would fully embrace Debian and support it extremely well. Then, they should work to standardize on http://www.autopackage.org/, or something very similar to it. Then, they should work to get Java much better integrated into Firefox and vice versa. Here is a good article on it the level of integration between the JVM and the browser, which is just pathetic at the moment:

http://www.softwarereality.com/soapbox/swing.jsp

I wish there were a sane event model to share between Java and the Browser so that I could use the browser as a display technology and have access to all of the Java class libraries for networking and such.

The guys at Software Reality already went over this

http://www.softwarereality.com/lifecycle/xp/case_a gainst_xp.jsp

They even have a book on it now

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590 590961/ref=ase_softwarereali-20/104-8363309-843276 6?v=glance&s=books

Actually, even when I was not in a sysadmin role I consistently solved problems that UNIX sysadmins couldn't. In one case, the sysadmin manager didn't want to implement a proper resolution to RFC 1918 dns lookup problems because I was the one that brought the solution to their attention, instead of them being able to figure it out themselves.

And my and others consistent experience with network and firewall people is that when there are problems with an app or system involving two or more computers and the machines and processes have 620+ days of uptime, consistent daily use by the same users for 2+ years straight and suddenly they start behaving erratically or performing poorly and "nothing has changed" according to the firewall/network people -- then after a few hours or days some other "nothing changes" again and it starts working normally. Seen it dozens of times and again not just me. And in some cases I had rrd and mrtg graphs with evidence of the changes but IT management decided to circle up into CYA mode rather than deal with the responsible parties.
Amazing that a great majority of those who deals with these groups have the same experiences except for members of the groups themselves...

typical experiences

Agreed

they're basically janitorial staff

That's just trolling and entirely unfair.

I gave the engineering department local admin rights on their PCs before they even asked for it, all I insited on was a 10 minute workstation lockout policy since they love to wander away from their desks.

However here is a story detailing the problem you mentioned:

Role Fragmentation

Good thread about this EJB stuff, apparently in reply to a very interesting critique about EJB, seems like the technology might not match the hype. Since the open source versions may still need to follow the (apparently ever moving) spec from Sun, are there even compelling reasons to study this technology?

If there was a book called "Why Linux Sucks", and I contributed to it, and I agreed with it, would that make me a fair reviewer for it? You can find links to some possibly less biased reviews at softwarereality.com. It's also worth reading the comments on the Case Against XP article on the same site, by one of the authors of the book.

If there was a book called "Why Linux Sucks", and I contributed to it, and I agreed with it, would that make me a fair reviewer for it? You can find links to some possibly less biased reviews at softwarereality.com. It's also worth reading the comments on the Case Against XP article on the same site, by one of the authors of the book.

If there was a book called "Why Linux Sucks", and I contributed to it, and I agreed with it, would that make me a fair reviewer for it? You can find links to some possibly less biased reviews at softwarereality.com. It's also worth reading the comments on the Case Against XP article on the same site, by one of the authors of the book.

That XP is just fashionable
Take that you XP sealot!

If you're interested in EJB, we did a paper a while ago about EJB. EJB 101

Listen. I moved to this system from TestDirector, and I must say it kicks the SHIT out of the latter. I've also used a couple other solutions I won't mention because even though they suck, I'm friends with their developers.

1) Outlook's native, not activex/java-inna-window, so it never crashes. TD (and one of the other apps) has the tendency to do that unless you use their client, and they make you pay per license. Outlook's client is basically "free," since it comes with MS Word, Excel, and all the other crap you "have to have" at a business.

2) Most of them FORCE you to enter information. This can take a long time. Sometimes, I just want to add a task to remind me to find a faster way to execute an algorithm. It is much quicker and much easier to use Outlook.

3) Generally (at least 90% of the time), even WITH all the extended information, I needed to meet with the tester who found a problem to watch them replicate it. It's nearly impossible to codify some of the more complicated activities we perform, and many testers, sadly, aren't technical writers. They're clever sadistic people who get their jollys off in proving you wrong (j/k guys, I love you all! Beta Forever!)

4) There's nothing by way of completeness or exactness that you get in a bug tracking system that you CAN'T get with Tasks. Need to know what version they're running? Say, "hey guys, when you enter a task, include the version." Done. Need to include a screen shot, patch file, etc? Done. Need to SEARCH on these things? Done. Maybe not as nicely as you'd like, but you can do it...and it's already here.

But then again, I *like* post-it notes on a whiteboard. And I used to work with this guy.

http://www.softwarereality.com/lifecycle/xp/case_a gainst_xp.jsp

How XP of me.

Read the EJB specs

Or this:
http://www.softwarereality.com/programming/ejb/i nd ex.jsp

No one uses PHP at an enterprise level, nor is it ready to be used in such a manner.

(Warning, karma-killing but truthful rant ahead)

What the fsck is "enterprise level" anyhow? If that ain't a beaten buzzword, then I don't know what is (besides "XML web services").

PHP apps tend to use the database for noun modeling and state, not objects (although it can do OOP). Thus, it's "size" depends on the database, not really on PHP itself. Now if you want to define "enterprise level" to mean "big fat bloated objects/classes", then you are right. PHP is not "there". If you want big fat tangled bloated objects/classes, then go with EJB. Perfect mess for job security. See:

http://www.softwarereality.com/programming/ejb/i nd ex.jsp

Relational theory and OO are pretty much at odds I have come to conclude, at least WRT to "business modeling". OO fans only want to use the "persistence" feature of relational databases. Beyond that they tend to re-invent the database from scratch in code, hand-coding their own indexes, joins, etc.

I'd recommend this article as a well-argued critique of XP: Case Against XP