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Extreme Programming vs. Interactive Design
Hoff writes: "Here is an interesting interview with Beck and Cooper pitting extreme programming vs. interactive design. Personally, I'm all about extreme programming. It's a novel approach to help get the management work with, and for, the software engineers."
I'm not sure how much mainstream acceptance is possible for any paradigm that incorporates a faddish name like 'extreme'
I'd much rather see our profession associated with more difficult disciplines, like maybe engineering, than with mountain dew commercials. Ever hear of The Extreme Scientific Method? How about Extreme Structural Engineering?
Interviewer: so, what are your goals?
Me: Dude, I want to be like, the most X-Treme programmer!
Of course I've said nothing about the actual process. The article contains a link to a list of practices which include:
Continuous integration of changes
Customer on site
These two things give me nightmares remembering customers who have had cute ideas at the last minute. Other than that is looks like the waterfall model. My humble recommendation is that it needs a good name change.
What is it about the these XP advocates, are they really that poorly read that they genuinuely think they invented these ideas ?
XP is NOT the awesome paradigm shift that it is made out to be by its advocates; it is NOT even that new. It's just a repackaging of the failed RAD fad. Now XPer's can make the same mistakes all over again, produce poorly specified, unmaintainable mess. XP is an exercise in self promotion and marketing hype.
Those that have not come across it (or the ideas) before should read more REAL Software Engineering texts.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9