Questioning Extreme Programming

David Kennedy writes with the following review of Pete McBreen's new Addison-Wesley title, Questioning Extreme Programming. It's one of the few books which casts a questioning look at the buzzwords and concepts of Extreme Programming; read on to see how well XP fares under McBreen's examination. Questioning Extreme Programming author Pete McBreen pages 186 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 9 reviewer David Kennedy ISBN 0201844575 summary A critical but fair re-examination of all of XP.

In short:

This is bound to a controversial and widely read title -- it is a critical but fair re-examination of all of XP's assumptions and core practices. It provides a much needed comparison of XP with other, less popular, methodologies. Overall, XP emerges favourably, with one serious caveat -- the author concludes that XP is only suitable for a very narrow range of projects, and those that can fulfill all requirements probably stand a significant chance of succeeding using any of the similar methodologies. As with programming languages, there is no silver bullet -- put XP in your methodology toolbox, know when it is appropriate and only use it then.

A couple of interesting specifics:

• The author specifically argues, and I agree, that what the XP literature badly needs is a DSDM 'suitability filter' to advise project leaders as to whether XP is for them.
• In the preface, Kent Beck describes the On-Site Customer role as a team, and not an individual role.

Overall, this is an intriguing and well-argued book. It's based on solid, reasoned arguments, with conservative conclusions drawn based on the evidence. It's a must-read for those interested in XP and other Agile methodologies. The Extreme Programming Series

This is the 8th title in The Extreme Programming (XP) Series from Addison-Wesley, surely the most widely read series on a software methodology ever! (If that isn't achievement enough, XP also made testing sexy again. I hear that accountancy firms are looking for Kent Beck to do Public Relations work ...) For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years the previous titles are:

• Extreme Programming Explained (Beck)
• Planning Extreme Programming (Beck & Fowler)
• Extreme Programming Installed (Jeffries et al)
• Extreme Programming Examined (Succi & Marchesi)
• Extreme Programming in Practice (Newkirk & Martin)
• Extreme Programming Explored (Wake)
• Extreme Programming Applied (Auer & Miller)

This new addition to the XP library feature a foreword by Kent Beck. This is important as many of the reactionary XP fan-club will not like this book -- it challenges XP, and I am delighted to see this title as part of the series. Beck admits he doesn't agree with McBreen's conclusions, but asks you to read the book and decide for yourself, conceding that the arguments are fair and reasoned. I come from a scientific background and distrust anything except wide open debate, a position many who welcome XP will surely agree with. A book challenging XP can only help persuade people to give it a go, by addressing their fears and explaining how to manage any real risk.

Check your sources

Pete McBreen is the author of the excellent Software Craftmanship: The new imperative, a 2002 title from Addison-Wesley. In it he outlines an alternative to the software factory model behind much of traditional software engineering thinking. He proposes a collaborative model with small teams, where the software coder is seen as a craftsman in constant dialogue with the customer. Sound familiar? It should, this is a cross between a methodology and book of advice for career programmers, and fits squarely within the values proposed by the Agile Alliance, and arguably popularised most by XP.

I highly recommend Software Craftmanship, and can think of few authors who are as well positioned to give an analysis of XP as it currently stands.

What is the book about?

Questioning Extreme Programming does just that -- it's the first title in the series to take a skeptical look at the rise of this popular methodology and question some of the key assumptions. Arguably there was material like this buried in Extreme Programming Examined, but it suffered from a fragmented, detailed view, due to it being a bound set of conference papers.

The author tackles XP in a fair way -- he's extremely excited by the methodology, and it's clearly in accord with his own preferred approach. What he does is tackle each of the XP tenets in turn, questioning their validity, and then moves on the compare XP to other Agile methodologies and asks how XP stacks up against the competition. He also has a look at the common mis-conceptions (from both sides) about XP, and tackles the key arguments against its adoption in the same way.

Let's have a look at the contents to give you an idea of the structure:

• Introduction.
  XP: Hype or HyperProductive?
• What is a methodology?
  
  • What do methodologies optimise?
  • What are XP projects scared of?
  • What do other methodologies consider important?
  • What is important for your projects?
• Questioning the Core XP Practices
  
  • Planning incremental development
  • Truly incremental development
  • Are we done yet?
  • Working at this intensity is hard
  • Is that all there is to XP?
• Questioning XP concepts
  
  • The source code is the design
  • Test first development
  • Large-scale XP
  • Is the cost of change really low?
  • Setting the dials on ten
  • Requirements: Documentation or a conversation?
  • Is oral documentation enough?
  • Playing to win?
• Understanding the XP community
  
  • ReallyStrangeSayings
  • Feel the hostility; experience the joy
  • Transitioning away from XP
• Your choice
  
  • Is XP for you?
  • Do you have a suitable first project?

What's good?

The whole thing. Let's start with the basics, the high standards of the XP series are maintained, with flawless editing and layout. Moving on, the author's position is admirably neutral -- he is knowledgeable about the field, and although he wants to be converted, he argues only from first principles, and only from the evidence. Similarly, at no point did I think he set up a straw man, or tackled the opposing issues in a different manner. I particularly admired the way he avoided polarising issues -- "All models are lies." -- dismissing them as unhelpful in his current investigation. (He points out that much of the fire in the XP debate has resulted from the use of deliberately polarised opinions as a unambiguous goad to further debate within the XP community. Fine within the gang, inflammatory outside.)

The structuring of the book is of particular interest -- the argument could easily sprawl, but is restrained into very short sub-sections, with each section sporting a clear list of summary bullets. As much as is practical, each challenge to a tenet or practice of XP is discussed independently. (This comes across as simple and straight-forward and you may wonder why I even mention it, but I think it's a fine piece of editing and worthy of praise.)

The sections of the book that I enjoyed most were those dealing with the SmallTalk culture that XP grew out of -- he presents an interesting analysis of why XP works within that environment but discusses how that environment is NOT typical of most development. I have some bias here due to my own experience, see below, but had to agree strongly with his contention that XP is weakest when it comes to team resourcing, and the on-site customer. In particular, he argues that while XP restores dignity and human rights to the programming team, it does so at the expense of the poor frazzled customer. Similarly, he argues that the pre-conditions for XP, in terms of the programming staff, are so high that almost any methodology could be made to succeed with that team.

Don't get the impression that this is a negative work -- it's not. Most of XP emerges intact, and I felt that the author genuinely wanted only to restrain people from adopting XP in inappropriate situations -- not to persuade people to avoid XP. In doing so, he actually protects XP from bad press due to teams failing when trying to adopt XP, them blaming XP itself, rather than their own inappropriate circumstances.

What's bad?

Er, not much. He sort of pulls in some material re Open Source early on, but fails to particularly build on that comparison, moving instead to a comparison of Agile methods in closed source circumstances. This is a feeble objection -- but really, it's all I've got this time!

Anything to declare?

I should probably give a quick sketch of my background before I finish as I am slightly biased -- most of my work has been in the telecommunications sector, where I either worked with a large code-base (legacy) or a large, distributed team (new development). In no way was I working in the XP style, although I became test-infected easily I found it difficult to even imagine how to apply some of the XP practices to my workplace.

XP changed the way I code and work, for the better, but in a large environment, with no contracting customer, and few experts on a complex domain involving simultaneous hardware development I couldn't see any way to do XP. I'm not saying what we did was good, I'll be the first to admit it was broken (hmm, and I'm unemployed now, time to go and think about cause and effect!). The key assumptions of pure XP just didn't fit the industry I've seen most of. (To be fair, McBreen would have called these projects "systems engineering" and placed them outside of the discussion.) Now that I'm seeking employment again, I'm a lot more aware of methodologies and am much keener to work within an Agile framework, as I believe that all of the methodologies, XP included, offer a much better way of developing software. However, the key point remains -- XP cannot be applied everywhere.

Lastly, I should make it clear that I received a review copy of this title from the publisher and did not pay for it. I paid for my own copy of Software Craftsmanship.

You can purchase Questioning Extreme Programming from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

between extremes

[Anonymous Coward]

. Overall, XP emerges favourably, with one serious caveat -- the author concludes that XP is only suitable for a very narrow range of projects, and those that can fulfill all requirements probably stand a significant chance of succeeding using any of the similar methodologies.

Strange definition of 'favourable', that. Not an attempt at a troll, but the rest of the review didn't tell me how XP emerged favourably either.

To each his own

[slantyyz]

As all slashdotters know, computer geeks can be atheists and religious zealots at the same time.

Xtreme Programming is one of the hot buttons (as is Unix, Java, Linux, OSX, etc. - the only common religion here seems to be the hatred for MicroSatan).

Xtreme Programming has a lot of interesting elements (the only one I'm not keen on is the Pair Programming). But, as with anything, if it doesn't work for you, there's probably something similar else you can try - SCRUM, et al.

The title is provocative enough (at least it isn't inflammatory) that XP fanatics will probably find ways to evangelize their methodology and sell it to anybody who will listen. The book does sound like a good read, because everyone needs a strong dose of perspective now and then.

I just wish it weren't called that

[sam_handelman]

I do bioinformatics programming. The people I work with are biologists (so am I, actually, but I also have a degree in CS.) They don't have CS degrees, but are pretty computer savvy.

However, when I say, "we should apply the extreme programming methodolgies,"

they say,
"coding to the max!" or
"what does this have to do with snowboarding?" or
"the mountain dew commercial was not funny."

and so forth. They think I'm joking and it is impossible to convince them that Extreme Programming is not either a) a joke or b) marketspeak gibberish crap.

Now, b) may be true. However, as long as the method is called "programming.... to the extreme!" it becomes difficult to convince people on the intellectually snobbish periphery of CS that it has even potential merit.

Extremely uninterested

[truth_revealed]

Nothing beats a well orchestrated and well executed plan - i.e., a written and documented plan. If software specifications are not worth formalizing on paper - it isn't worth creating. You can keep your extreme voodoo. It just formalizes the lazy practices of programmers. 50% to 90% of software projects fail because of embracing fly-by-night "technologies" like this. I thought Extreme Programming was buried for good with the dot bomb implosion.

Re:Extremely uninterested

[X]

The common pratices before XP became popular were to do exactly as you described. The problems with this are many fold, not the least of which it makes your development process extremely inflexible and unable to adapt to change, the tendancy to get locked into analysis paralysis, and the simple inability to define a plan when tackling a problem or technology that nobody has familiarity with.

FYI, XP isn't a "technology", and it isn't fly by night. It's based on successful practices that have existed in one form or another for decades. I have no idea what practices you think are in XP that in any way reinforce laziness. XP actually fights a number of lazy behaviours that programmers have. All it does is bring together a number of successful practices and espouse doing them "to the extreme" in order to combat the naturally lazy approaches of programmers.

Re:Extremely uninterested

[acroyear]

50% to 90% of software projects fail because of embracing fly-by-night "technologies" like this.

No. 50% to 90% of software projects fail because the requirements, problem domain, and customer expectations change at least 5 times during the course of a one year project. I've been on two failed projects in the last 3 years, both of which failed because the customers continually went back on their own decisions for which we had based our "written and documented plan", long after we had been heavily involved in the code. By the time the "final" decision was made, there was no time to actually implement it.

I'm not saying XP would have saved them (it likely wouldn't), but assuming that a well-documented design and plan will save a project from the curse of changes in requirements and expectations is self-defeating.

Pardon my ignorance but...

[HYauSB]

I read the whole article trying to figure out what he was on about. eXtreme Programming? Can anyone give a definition of it? What exactly is it that XP is, and why does this book challenge it? How did XP change the way he codes and works? What is this "popular methodology?" Because that's what I'm most interested in. The author of the above book review assumes everyone has read the book, or knows all about XP.

Another fad runs its course...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen SO many of these come and go. You can never question them while they're in the ascendancy.

Stage 1 consists of proof by repeated assertion, and "case studies" that actually describe only how projects using the Methodology were _started_. Lots of detail on how managers and workers were organized and brought on board, etc. Anecdotal success stories where you cannot tell whether the success actually had anything to do with the use of the Methodology or whether they just had a good team that would have succeeded anyway, or whether it was just Hawthorne Effect. No clear evidence that _other things being equal_ using the Methodology instead of some other process actually has a beneficial effect.

Stage 2 occurs when a Methodology has been used in enough real projects by a real-world variety of programmers, then you start to see the articles that say "in order for it to work, you MUST have conditions a, b, c, d, and e." One of the conditions is usually the enthusiastic involvement of upper management. But, hey, if you have the enthusiastic involvement of upper management you can probably get ANY project to succeed. Another is usually the adoption of the entire methodology, no "piecemeal" approaches. Another is usually the provision of adequate training. No real-world project ever meets all these conditions, therefore no failed project using the Methodology is deemed to disprove its efficacy.

Stage 3 occurs when people start to notice that the Methodology doesn't particularly work. Well, actually, it's never phrased that way. Nobody ever _admits_ that the Methodology was a fad which has now been abandoned. Instead, they simply say they are adopting the _new_ Methodology, which it is said, DOES work. Or at any rate WILL work. Provided, of course, that you adopt all of it, have the enthusiastic backing of upper management, and adequate training.

By the way, what SEI CMM level _is_ Microsoft at?

Re:Another fad runs its course...

[j3110]

You seem to define fad in an odd way. You suggest that anything that comes then goes is a fad. To the average person, I would asume that fad meant that it came and went without any effect. You are assuming that in Stage 3 that the original item didn't effect the building of the next best thing. Object-Oriented programming is based on procedural programming. Eventually, it could become that procedural programming is abandoned, but will not have been a fad because it's "replacement" is a derivative of the original.

I think XP is great because it was the first system designed to teach how to program responsibly. I'm sure it will be replaced by something better, because AFAIK, no one has pioneered perfection in a new field in their first shot. You can bet the farm that the next "fad" will be based on XP. I think you are afraid to change the programming methodologies you already have; therefore, from your point of view, no programming methodology will be more than a fad, because it's not yours and you will never adopt it.

BTW, I've never heard of anyone saying that peicemeal approaches to XP won't work. I've heard the exact oposite. Some people implemnt pair programming, some have great programmers they can depend on (the reasons for pair programming are so that one can catch the others errors, one may leave and someone will need to take over for him). A lot of people implement the test units because no coder is perfect and the synergy of a large system of object (be they libraries or classes) can cause one small change to break a lot of the system. In a large system, you can't remember every little thing you should test and it would be very time consuming to test them by hand.

All things die to give way for the next generation. That doesn't make yesterday's champions fads, but rather old heros.

Re:Another fad runs its course...

[Petronius]

UML (I yet have to see a company other than Rational do it right)
CMM (ahhh...what level?)
TTM: Time to Market (SW Dev Mgrs love it)
TQM (remember that?)
The V shape model thingie
The SWAT-team approach
XP
Their only purpose is to justify the purchase of books & training programs in large corporations. Small, well-run companies know better than waste time on these things. Instead, they should focus on: people + skills + motivation + ethics.

Re:Another fad runs its course...

[0WaitState]

UML (I yet have to see a company other than Rational do it right)

UML is a kitchen-sink object diagramming standard, not bad, until something a little more concise comes along. I assume you meant RUP (Rational Unified Process, since renamed "Unified Process" to sidestep the folks asking why RUP doesn't have any viral marketshare).

Oh, and if you had used any homegrown Rational software (not purify or clearcase), you'd take it as an indictment of RUP.

Re:Another fad runs its course...

[tpv]

if you have the enthusiastic involvement of upper management you can probably get ANY project to succeed.

You seriously believe that?
The enthusiastic involvement of upper management can help, but it's by no means a sufficient condition.

I've seen lots of anthusiastic managers who don't notice when their teams is saying

• The requirements don't make sense
• We don't have time
• You need to invest in more testing
• This project is doomed

It's not about enthusiasm, it's about management being supportive of the development team, and the development team being right.
If you don't have both of those, then you will have problems.

In my experience management can kill a project, and they can help a project avoid death, but they can't make a project actually work.

Summary

[freuddot]

I'll summarize the book ( without reading it ) :

For extreme programming to work out, you and your team need to have outstanding ability.

XP(extreme programming) is great, but add into it a shaky designer, a loner in the team, or a delusionned (sp?) manager, and the whole thing will crash down in flames. In traditionnal methodology, the problem would rather settle with a non-optimal development process. With XP, you either fly high or crash badly.

The fact that it is a great development model and the fact that it will not work in most places are not incompatible.

But that's just my experience. Take it with a few tons of NaCl.

J.

Re:Summary

[tpv]

XP is great, but add into it a shaky designer, a loner in the team, or a delusionned manager, and the whole thing will crash down in flames.

I'm not sure it's that black and white.
I would suggest that in XP (and most other agile methodologies) you need the following three roles to be well filled:

• Architect
• Project Manager
• Lead Developer

Depending on your project/team size, one person may fill more than 1 role, (or you may need 2 people for a given role).

I don't think the developers need to be that great. It obviously helps - better people produce better results - but it's not required.
I guess if they're hopeless developers then they won't cope, but I think that's true in all methodologies.

Other methodologies will possibly cope without those roles, but they will still (ultimately) be failures (assuming the project has sufficient complexity).

We took an existing development team that was decent, but not brilliant, an enthusiastic project manager and added a couple of experienced people (an architect and a developer), and the project is working very well. Much better than any previous methodologies we used.
Part of that is due to the people we brought in, but they're really only there because we needed some architectural guidance for this project (we were using some technology that was new to our existing architects) and we wanted a mentor (both for XP and for the technology).

Once we get enough people with experience, we won't need them anymore, and I think we will still be successful - but you don't need people to fill those roles.

Re:As a developer, XP slows me down

[HisMother]

>I got fed up with a foul smelling twit sharing my cubicle
That's not the way pairing is supposed to be done. Pairs are supposed to rotate among the team. People who smell bad, or simply can't learn to perform well, are supposed to be asked to leave -- not the capable folks like yourself.

> I've not met someone who can keep up with me when writing code.
So there are people on your team whose abilities are not on par with yours. You don't think that you owe it to these junior team members to mentor them and help bring them up to your level? That's a good chunk of what pair programming is all about. Also -- what happens if you are offered a better job/quit in a huff/are hit by a bus? Isn't it better for the whole team if some of those junior folk have experience with "your" code? If you work a little slower, but your knowledge gets spread around, the benefit to the whole team is much greater than if you work fast in isolation.

>And really, that's not the time for 2 heads, the time for having multiple people looking at a problem is in the design phase - not the implementation.
So the projects you work on have requirements that are frozen in stone, and designs that can be implemented in only one way, without change, with no thought involved? OK, then there are no decisions that could stand to be reviewed in real time. Everybody else could use some advice.

Re:As a developer, XP slows me down

[X]

If you think code reviews are great, then it's hard to accept your arugment about paired programming, as it's a continous code review.

Kent Beck, the guy who started the XP thing going, moves *very* quickly when he's programming... indeed, he does things that really you can only do in a Smalltalk environment in terms of jumping around. Still, he is eminently easy to follow. If you can't be followed, then my guess is it's not about your pace but the clarity of your code, and that *is* something that should be addressed when you're coding.

Generally speaking, programmers working on their own are lucky if they only introduce a bug every couple of hours. With paired programming you can easily go for days without doing so. Not having the bug in the first place saves you far more time than any perceived benefit that comes from "being free to be on your own".

Come on moderators

[sab39]

This is (possibly, arguably) +1 funny, or (possibly, arguably) -1 troll, but certainly not in any way worthy of "interesting".

"new languages like Smalltalk"?

"stop using Object Oriented techniques and move to XP"?

"revenue stream increase of the order of Olog(n)"?

Whoever modded this interesting should be ashamed of themselves: it's not like those gibberish-flags are subtle...

Re:Test First Coding

[blirp]

Where I work we've recently adopted Test First Design

Just remember that TFD is a Design method, and really has nothing to do with testing as in testing the requirements. So it will check that you coded what you designed. Whether that has anything to do with what the customer wanted is another matter.
Which should be checked by the functional testing, but that's written by the customer. And most customers don't know what they want...

M.

Re:As a developer, XP slows me down

[RailGunner]

And therein lies the problem I had with it. The goblin I was paired with was completely useless, questioning every little line I wrote until I finally typed in
::MessageBox (NULL, _T("Fuck You"), _T("I Quit"), MB_OK);
Then I simply got up and left.

As far as the clarity of my code, if someone didn't pay attention in class or doesn't have the foggiest notion about what the STL can do, then why is it my problem? If they don't understand "Hungarian Notation" or MFC or even the base Win32 API, then again, why is it my problem? The goblin I was paired with supposedly had 5 years of Windows programming experience. Methinks he lied on his resume...

If I'm on a tight deadline to ship code, then the last thing I have time for it so break down the logic into small words for little goblins who don't understand the programming language. No, I'd much rather have a code review to where I can explain everything in great detail then trying to remember my place in my thought process and continually getting annoyed at the interruptions.

As far as your third paragraph - that really depends on the bug. If it's a trite little bug that takes 5 seconds to fix, then the time is far better then it takes to explain in small words to a goblin.

Wow, what world are you living in?

[mekkab]

And can I live there too?!?!

If software specifications are not worth formalizing on paper - it isn't worth creating. You can keep your extreme voodoo. It just formalizes the lazy practices of programmers

I'm guessing that you must be self employed or in academia, as it is the domain of management to demand complex solutions to improperly spec'd problems and, oh yeah, we wanted it yesterday. I see this happen all the time where they want a rundown of what are the risks of re-baselining the hardware of our legacy system, and can we get that by Close Of Business today? Oh yeah, and these are the same people who say "BTW, try to follow our Business Practice Process if you can, never mind that we completely violated it already"
Oh yeah, we are a fortune 100 company.

And guess what? I don't gamble. I don't drive too fast, nor sky dive. I don't need drugs to get high. I get my kicks by trying to meet unrealistic deadlines. I love death marches... its the only way to know I'm alive ;)

P.S. XProgramming fits right into this real world model.

XP advantage

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

The main advantage to productivity is that it is unlikely both programmers will share the same opinion about how to waste one's time. Both will feel guilty about wasting the other's time so neither will screw around as much. Slashdot's effect will wane.

Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Extreme Programming seems to be another step in the disturbing trend of turning coders or engineers into robot-computers. Under XP, if you have to fire one of your robots, there'll be more people who can understand what Fired Robot X did, because he never coded anything alone. It also tends to suck the "guru" right out of coding. Consider if you had a pack of middle-of-the-road coders, and one guru. Under extreme programming, the guru becomes a loner, and a drag to the team (note how there aren't actually any individuals, just people to "make code"). Since a pair of fools are better than one guru under extreme programming, you can fire the guru.

The bottom line is not to mistake a business model for a work model, and to avoid anything that mixes business with design.

Re:Horrible

[greenhide]

Sorry, coding isn't saddlery. Or glass-blowing. Or painting. Heck, it isn't even woodworking.

People like to talk about coding as a "craft", and in a sense, it can be. And sometimes, really gorgeous code (either because it's really well written, or beautifully obfuscated and compressed) can be treated like a work of art.

However, the greatest use of coding isn't for creating masterpieces to hang on the walls of the Met. Instead, it is for businesses so, yes, business has to be mixed in with design.

Starving artists are artists who, because they refuse to commercialize their art in any way, shape or form, are unable to sell it (until they're dead, at which point it sells like hotcakes). Ever heard of the phrase, "starving programmer"? You probably haven't. And there's a reason for that. While not all programmers are poor, those who do it for a profession generally try to make their code into a commercial product, or are paid by a business to create it in the first place.

In my own experience, whenever there is a sense of "ownership" over a project or code within that project, the project suffers. It no longer becomes about the code, it becomes about the personality of the programmer.

I think that valuing individuals is a function of company politics, not development practices. Never underestimate the downside of being "irreplaceable." Right now I work in a firm where I'm the only one who is working on a specific project. I"m desperately trying to get others at my job understand it. Why? So I can go on vacation without feeling guilty or anxious about things going wrong, or about the client needing new features. So I can eventually leave the company and go on to other places, without leaving the company in a lurch.

Programmers aren't becoming robots; they still far exceed computers in being able to translate real-world needs into working code.

I am leery of anyone who feels that they are a guru. If you see Buddha coding on your computer, kill him. But eliminate the "guru" label: Since a pair of fools are better than one [more experienced programmer] under extreme programming, you can fire the guru. Wrong. The more experienced programmer can help manage the project, or can serve as one of the paired programmers. A pair of fools are not better. A pair of good programmers are. If the "guru" is truly wise, he will be glad to work within the team. If he choose to be a loner, he probably has some personal issues to work through, and work is not the place to do it.

Half XP required...

[cjustus]

I think that there are some benefits to XP:

Designing for the next iteration -- not the entire system... In some cases for designs to be useful, the developer must code a portion of it as a prototype to demonstrate that their idea will work and is effecient... If someone says that they can forsee all implementation issues at design time, they are either lying or spending too much time designing :)
Regular communication with the end user / customer ... This just can't be done enough... I think that any methodology that calls this to the attention of the development team / project managers is a "good thing".

On the other hand, some things are not so good/realistic... The biggest thing being pairs programming ... I'm not aware of any organization that is actually doing this... Forget about working from home, putting in long hours, etc if you start using this technique... I'd be curious to hear about organizations doing this, with success...

Finally, I agree that change in requirements is inevitable, but I think that it has to be properly managed... You can't keep getting new and potentially radically different requirements from the client every two weeks, without seriously burning out the development team... and you can't tell me that requirement changes don't affect costs... Like everything in a project, changes must be managed and negotiated... The development team can work hard to implement software, but can't bend time and space to do so...

My 2 cents... And yes, I definitely practice what I preach :)

Chris

Re:done it, didn't like it

[mark_lybarger]

you really Kontradict yourself there. you state that XP makes better code and in less time, but you don't like working with other people "directly". then you say, well my code doesn't have that many bugs.

in my experience, people who don't work well directly with other people work on software maintenance, not software development. that's where it's easier to not product bugs because there's hopefully slews of regression test suites left over from the guys who put it together.

i'll admit that working on a team project with lots of people doesn't leave much time for reading /., but are you really missing much? to me the day is much more fulfilling...

one key thing that i've noticed that is missing lately, and the reviewer mentioned it, is team leadership. team leaders have started jumping on this project management kick, and there's really no leadership for the teams. everyone wants to manage, manage, manage. i'm of the thought that a little leadership and the project will manage itself (though the teamwork).

The unreachable utopia

[SunPin]

The reason that professional programmers and uninitiated observers can agree that Extreme Programming is a joke is because it *is* a joke.

The only people that write about ideal methodologies and their theoretical applications are academics. I am reluctant to use the term "scholar" on these people.

The key to a successful project is design. Even OSS projects have a design. Anybody can attempt to write for the project but if it doesn't fit with the design or is too far off base to incorporate into the design, that code doesn't get into the next release.

Extreme programming is a ridiculous term. Perhaps a better description is "ad hoc" programming.

Think about evolution itself and you'll see how much damage ad hoc programming can cause. :)

Re:The unreachable utopia

[Ian Bicking]

The key to a successful project is design. Even OSS projects have a design. Anybody can attempt to write for the project but if it doesn't fit with the design or is too far off base to incorporate into the design, that code doesn't get into the next release.

I think the problem with your perspective, and with waterfall-type methodologies, is that they distinguish "design" from "implementation". This isn't engineering, and programmers aren't construction workers building to the blueprint.

A program is a design. It is the formal specification of what the computer (the real construction worker) is supposed to do. Every piece of code written should be a plan and a design.

Of course, that is not always true -- there's a lot of boilerplate and code that requires no thoughtfulness. But it is up to good programmers to eliminate this as much as possible -- to abstract away the parts that require no thoughtfulness, to eliminate portions that are redundant, and to build ourselves tools that will concentrate our effort.

Re:The unreachable utopia

[theLOUDroom]

It seems to me, that saying "code is design" is a lot like saying "the code is the documentation." Yeah, in a sense it's true, but code by itself is crappy documentation. The same for design. Code to display a JPEG is not a JPEG specfication. You may be able to figure out a partial JPEG spec from code to display them, but that doesn't make it a specfication. You need a design before you start writing code. That way you know if your code does what it's supposed to.
If you plan to do a good job on a complex project, coding is engineering. You don't just sit down and start coding a database/compiler/opeating system you think about it first. You consider things like: "This operation is O(n^2) can it be made O(NlogN) and if so what is the tradeoff?" "How fast does this program have to run? Is that feasible?" "Are these data structures efficient?"
People actually go to engineering schools to get degrees in Computer Science for a reason. Knowing how to write good code, is not the same thing as knowing how to write in some particular language. It requires an understanding of what goes on inside a computer. You need to understand things. A good programmer knows that a floating point division by 2 is much slower that a shift right by two and will use that knowledge. Computer Science is a type of engineering.

XP is so VASTLY overrated...

[cartman]

XP entirely consists of about 20 helpful programming tips:

"write unit tests first."
"leave optimization 'till last."
"develop iteratively."

...and so on. These helpful pointers are treated as if they were the ripest wisdom, but actually they're just common sense. They're obvious to anyone who isn't retarded. The few things in XP that are controversial (like pair programming) don't work.

The importance of XP is exaggerated to an incredible extent. I've heard more than one person compare XP to OO! Consider the vast amount of thinking of research that went into the development of OO. XP is comparable in importance to a "Frequently Asked Questions" file for beginning programmers.

Re:XP is so VASTLY overrated...

[starling]

These helpful pointers are treated as if they were the ripest wisdom, but actually they're just common sense

The thing about common sense is that it isn't very common. If those tips need to be dressed up in some shiny! new acronym to make people follow them then I'm all for it. Just don't expect XP to magically make all projects turn out perfect.

The importance of XP is exaggerated to an incredible extent. I've heard more than one person compare XP to OO!

Oh, I don't think XP's been quite as badly over-hyped as OO.

please move along

[KyleCordes]

I've had very good results with XP-ish techniques. On some projects I use just a handful of the XP practices; on others, nearly 100% of them. I've used all of the practices enough to understand them, and have found that the XP community has an unusual concentration of effective, smart people.

Yet I have little interest in XP-sucks-XP-rocks flamewars. In fact, because of the good results I've had, I'd really much prefer if my competitors decide that XP is a terrible idea, pair programming is insane, writing tests first is totally backwards, integrating every few weeks is plenty often, and changing requirements are a nightmare. It would suit me just fine if my competitors reject XP completely.

So please, if you're curious about XP, forget about it. There's nothing to see here, please move along.

My eXperience

[Lordrashmi]

My team tried out Extreme Programming/Pair Programming (yes, I know there is a different and I guess ours was more Pair then Extreme but anyways) and we had mixed results.
The best team was when one of the programmers was very good at design, documentation and managing how the pieces fit together while the other programmer was good at the 'bits'. Coding an individual section based on what the first programmer told him. That team worked wonderful and churned out alot of work because thier strengths were complimentary.

However, another team just had to programmers who sucked at managing the process, design and documentation and both just tended to write out code. This led to conflict both in how the code worked (each coded a section without thinking how it would work with the other section) and between the two programmers.

We are back to individual programming now, just with freqent code reviews. Also we love to go through CVS checking for bad habits and bash whoever did it (Sucks when you point out a issue and then realize you are responsible for it though).

Summary: I think it all depends on the type of programmers and what they are good at on if any methodology works.

Re:Working in pairs is a bad idea

[Chris Burke]

Did you ever wonder why every commercial aircraft of a certain size has a captain AND a co pilot?

Because the co pilot might realize an error or a danger the pilot did not realize.

And missing an error in the plane is a tad bit more important than in a program. And it's not like if the copilot could go fly -another- plane instead of co-piloting that the airline would get any benefit. They don't get more money for being able to fly more planes.

How many compiler errors do you usaly correct after a compiler run? How long does it take to get 10 lines changed/eddited/added and compiled successfull?


Far, far less than 50% of my time. For each hour I spend coding, only a few minutes will be spent fixing compiler errors.

Anything less than 50% means that XP is a loss, not a gain.

A pair creating 100 lines of code distributed via 3 classes in one day and getting it into production another day or having to single programmers coding 200 lines of code where 50 lines from each one are similar to the other ones code resembling the same concepts expressed by different people?


Forget that lines of code are a horrible method of measuring productivity, and the slanting assumption that 1/2 of each programmers work would be redundant. Actually, don't forget that. If you can't divide work in such a way that your programmers aren't doing more than half non-redundant work, you have problems XP won't solve.

But anyway -- the question is which is more efficient. While I believe that with XP the two-person programming unit is more efficient than a single-person unit, that isn't enough. If the increase in efficiency isn't more than 100%, then you would be better off having the programmers work separately.

Please stop bashing something you have not at least used/applied for a couple of years, and don't call yourself an expert if you have not used it at least for 10 years.

I have a new programming method. I call it Jabbing a Stick into Your Eye. Don't knock it until you've tried it for a few years.

Thank God the rest of us can recognize a bad idea without doing it for years first.

Re:Working in pairs is a bad idea

[Sven Tuerpe]

Did you ever wonder why every commercial aircraft of a certain size has a captain AND a co pilot? Because the co pilot might realize an error or a danger the pilot did not realize.

I don't think that's a useful comparison. Aviation is quite different from programming. In particular,

• Flying is a real-time task. There is nothing on the flight deck the pilots could defer until after lunch.
• An airplane, when airborne, is a closed system. You cannot bring in new staff if you are short on human resources for some reason.
• Flying is a highly interactive task. The airplane is interactive, the radio is interactive, the airspace is interactive, the airports are. Programming is done in the head, then written down and tested.
• Flying is pretty complex in some phases of the flight (take-off, landing). Controlling the plane, changing its configuration, navigation, radio, congested airspace, etc., and all in parallel, are just enough work to keep more than one pilot busy.

So there are more reasons for having two pilots than your simple explanation suggests. Not too long ago, an engineer in addition to the two pilots was standard in commercial jet liners. Perhaps we should introduce triple programming, with one person doing all the typing and the others the actual programming?

Also don't overestimate the gain of having more than one person involved for safety. There are countless reports of social problems within the flight crew contributing to fatal accidents. Some captains do not listen to their co-pilots, some co-pilots don't dare speaking up against their caiptain even if the captain is wrong, and even a crew of three might forget to check the altimeter while trying to investigate a problem with the landing gear. Not to mention communication problems between crew members, distraction by crew members, etc.

Re:Give pair programming a try.

[J. Random Software]

The less skilled of a pair should usually be driving. That way they have to understand their partner's suggestions (instead of letting their eyes glaze over while watching them appear) and they'll become more skilled. Look at it as a training cost. If they can't or don't want to learn and improve, software is not the field for them.

Re:sacrificial lamb

[BitGeek]

Don't feel bad. You're not the only one-- probably less than %1 of the slashdot crowd has heard of extreme programming. After all, perl hackers and other non-programmers have no need for it.

Slashdot is not a technology or programming site-- it is a linux fan site. Unfortunately, a surprisingly small number of linux fans are programmers.

If you do decide to start programming (And that kid who's in his 5th year of CS had better get up to speed!) then XP is something very much worth learning, even if you put none of it into practice.

A big problem with XP

[BitwizeGHC]

... is that it is tied to Smalltalk, and hence to object-oriented methodology.

OO isn't the only way to program. It isn't even the best way to program, in certain situations.

XP, Design Patterns, and fads like these are all nice in that they reflect certain practices which make for good software. But they are the CS equivalent of "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way": great at what they do, good at expressing the concepts behind a particular style/method, not very useful when you want to cross over into other styles/methods.

Re:Working in pairs is a bad idea

[smileyy]

Really though...all else being equal, is it better to have a company full of developers who can cooperate, or a company full of developers who can't? You've got to be a goddamn moron to pick the former.

As for the design part of things...this is just my experience successfully using XP for real business software development: Do you need design? Yes. Do you formal design? No. Do you need to design everything ahead of time? Absolutely not. XP came about in part because enough people found that BigDesignUpFront just doesn't work well enough.

As for my tone...this is some of the nicer stuff I post on Slashdot. Karma to burn.