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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."
Perhaps they woudln't have modded you down if you didn't make the same idiotic joke that someone else always makes when someone says "Extreme Programming"
I really have to wonder how much connection to the realities of programming in a commercial environment the average Slashdot editor/admin has, and if they're really qualified to comment on the relative merit of competing development methodologies...
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
There's no intended implication that Cooper can't deal with programming in the real world, just that his view of organizational change isn't consistent with the Extreme Programming approach. If we could all pick and choose from a variety of organizations that are not dysfunctional in one way or another, or if as software engineers we were able to involve ourselves and influence organizational change in the way Interaction Design espouses, we would be fine.
Cooper's core proposal, when you get right down to it, is reasonable except for the part about requiring the organization to be able to plan up front for things that will change.
To view XP as an abdication that "papers over the cracks" is to discredit the motivations of programmers -- both staff and contract. Extreme Programmers desire to find a way to achieve business goals within real-world constraints, yet also include quality, or "excellence" in development. But the philosophical angle is perhaps best expressed by The Manifesto for Agile Software Development