"Extreme" Programming

iomud writes "Cnet has an article about "Extreme Programming" the idea being that to code quickly with less errors and minimal integration issues it should be done in pairs. From the opinions in the article it sounds like it works providing a constant state of QA and keeping coders on their toes. Are two heads really better than one?" Its a sorta cheesy article, but some of the concepts are true. Of course, distributed hackers have been doing this for years on open source projects. Its not quite as real-time as they're talking about here, but its fundamentally similiar.

Comments

Re:What the hell??

[Ravenscall]

I think it has something to do with it being a new Corporate catchphrase.

Plus, what better way to get in more young Gen Y recruits to your IT dept. than putting Extreme in front of anything as mundane and corporate as coding?

I am waiting for extreme end user support myself.

Why Extreme Programming is Extreme

[ptevis]

As those who have read Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained should know, Extreme was not added for buzzwordness. Kent explains that he takes a number of programming practices known to be beneficial, such as code reviews, testing, incremental development. He views each of these as a dial, since you can do differing amounts of each . Extreme Programming is what results when you turn each of these dials all the way (i.e. "to the extreme"). That's the origin of the name.

BTW, though Kent refers to this as turning the dials to 10, I prefer to think of it as turning them to 11.

Re:Why Extreme Programming is Extreme

[fhwang]

As a further note, XP suffers a bit from the moniker, I think, from managers who hear the name and think it's an extremely risky methodology. It's actually extremely safe, in many ways. Unit Tests help you make sure you can add features and refactor without introducing new bugs. Continuous Integration helps the team minimize code collision and branching. Pair Programming and Collective Ownership help make sure that vital knowledge about the code is spread around among all the programmers, so no one person can quit and fuck up the project.

Of course, alternate terms that would reflect this fact (SafeProgramming? ComfortingProgramming? 40HourWorkWeekSoYouCanHaveALifeProgramming?) just don't seem as catchy.

Shouldn't this be on the FOX channel?

[MongooseCN]

X-Coding, a new tv series to be shown on the FOX tv network. Watch has hackers code under Xtreme conditions like sleep deprivation and consitent badgering from parents to go outside!! Sweat in your seat as you watch these Xtreme coders write scripts that ping flood and create various other dos attacks against their enemies!!!

X-Coding will be shown at 9:00pm, right after X-DataEntry and X-MSCE-Testing.

Damn it.

[xmutex]

I read Extreme Coding and I was prepared to read about guys coding while falling from orbit or snowboarding down the sides of skyscrapers.

Oh well.

Re:the zone

[LionKimbro]

I've had one opportunity to pair code in my life, and I wish I had more, becase from what I've seen, pair coding is the quickest ticket to the Zone.

You may be thinking, "What if I get stuck with Mihoshi. I'm a great coder, what if I get stuck with that jerk down the hall. I'm going to be doing all the work, and that guy down the hall's just going to be bothering me."

[shrug] It's a possibility. What I found, though, was that having another person with me was terribly concentrating, and it was like having laser attention. We'd come up with things that the other hadn't come up with, and it was easy to stay on target. Now I'm single programming, and I get distracted a lot. Sure, there's the occasional Zone time, but I don't know many people who can [alone] maintain Zone for prolonged periods of time.

I'm looking forward to pair programming again.

Re:Common sense mixed with silly ideas

[Arthur Dent 75]

One, you put two poor programmers together in which case, they both write bad code, only twice as slowly.

No. In this case the two bad programmers will see most of the mistakes the other one makes (it's very improbable that their weaknesses are identical), so the code will be improved and they will learn.

Two, you put a good programmer and a poor programmer together in which case one programmer carries the load.

Even a good programmer makes the occasional mistakes just because he does so many routine jobs. A not so experienced programmer will slow him down and discuss the complicated issues with him. The poor programmer will not make the code worse!

Or three, you put two good programmers together and they try to kill each other and things get done twice as slowly.

Two good programmers could inspire themselves and develop genius and elegant ideas that one of them would never come up with.

OK, if you think of programming performance in some sort of a lines-per-minute output pair programming will spoil your results. But if you consider the quality and number of errors in the code (and believe me, coding errors can be very hard to find) pair programming will drastically reduce the number of errors.

Why does everyone only think: "Hey, there's someone worse than me. I don't want to teach him, if he's bad, he should be fired." Pair programming is one of the few examples for true teamwork.

--

I find that pair programming works best...

[MeowMeow Jones]

When I get the 'asdf' side of the keyboard and my partner gets the 'jkl;' side. He thinks he's soo coool because he ownz the numeric keypad. Little does he know that I get to dictate coding style, since I own the TAB key.

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