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Questioning Extreme Programming
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.
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 sourcesPete 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?
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.
OK, I'll take the fall here: am I the only one out there who's never heard of eXtreme Programming? Judging from the name, it sounds like hacking code on a laptop, nude in the snow. WTF?
Just like Clinton.
I personally prefer to be on my own. I could see how managers prefer it because it forces more work to be done and yeah, it prevents a lot of errors, from my experience.
But I hate it - I hate working right with someone else.
I personally would rather to just be near someone and ask them questions about code if need be, but I hate the XP experience personally.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
. 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.
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 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.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
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.
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.
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?
But in all seriousness, and at the risk of sounding incredibly arrogant, I've not met someone who can keep up with me when writing code. ...not to mention reading and posting to Slashdot is really a one-person operation.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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.
Initially we took an old project and applied Unit testing to it, which really turned us off the concept. But once we started a new project, and wrote the test cases before our code it suddenly made sense!
Now its instinctive for us to write the test cases first, It also allows cuts down on refactoring later as all our code is at its simplest level always. If our code is changed in the future, any problems will be identified straight away.
I'm sure in the future we'll attempt the other concepts behind XP
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
XP has an active and interesting mailing list.
More information about XP can be found here or here.
Check this out.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
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.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
I have to agree with you. I would just assume that the program is designed properly and then sectioned out to each programmer to work on. Just make sure that the programmers in your shop all have a uniform way of documenting code and naming variabless so that at periodic stops, you can look at and optimize each others code. The working tandem thing, just doesn't do it for me.
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".
sigs are a waste of space
It is a good idea (for somebody) to experiment with software engineering ideas. I have no problem with that. However, these conditions should be met:
1. Test it on willing and knowing *volunteers* only.
2. Don't claim it is "better" until it has been road-tested for a while. At least 3 years and preferrably 15.
3. Identify where it works and where it does not, or at least be clear about the domains and situations and scope about where it does work so far.
There are too many credit-cravers and talking heads out there pushing buzzwords into the mainstream before they are tested properly. They should take some clues from the medicine industry. Sloppy pushing may not (directly) kill people, but it can certainly kill the economy and IT credibility, as we have already seen.
Table-ized A.I.
If that isn't achievement enough, XP also made testing sexy again.
Erhm, no, it didn't. Nothing's sexy about XP. IMHO, XP took much of the fun out of programming. The chaos that is open source development brought it back.
People seem to think that pretending programming is always as complicated as particle physics is going to somehow produce better code on time. I don't. Sometimes coding 9-5 in pairs and creating ten AbstractFactoryContainerXYZYourMom objects each time there's a need for a one line getter method just isn't the way to do it. It might be necessary when working on safety critical systems, but I doubt even that, as formal methods is probably what will dominate in those cases anyway, and for your average off the mill app there's just no need. But, as I've already said, what's worse is that it's no fun.
And don't give me that "statistics has proven XP is not only more reliable, but also much faster"-bullshit. I've seen it in action. It just ain't true.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Hahaha, nice one.
The funniest thing is that mods took you seriously: you got moderated 'insightful' and 'interesting'. I'd say you'd deserve 'funny' or 'troll', but eh...
You have trolled, you have won, have a nice day!
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
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...
Didn't this get addressed in the old file "The Tao of Programming"?
(to paraphrase, since I don't have the original text handy):
A manager approached a programmer and asked how long it would take to build an important project. The programmer said, "Six months."
The manager said, "that's too long. What if I assigned two programmers to it?"
"Then the project will take a year."
"That's terrible. I'll give you four programmers!"
"Two years."
"Aigh! I'll give you a hundred!"
"Then the program will never be completed."
Dig?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Jack-
I don't understand your comparison between OO techniques and the XP methodology. Seems like apples and oranges to me. Can't you write OO code using an XP method? And isn't the use of the XP method *supposed* to result in good, well encapsulated OO code?
Troy
(I can see why you posted AC, because you would likely have been modded down.) Anyway, your observation matches my experience: at our shop we tried pair programming and it not only resulted in a fair slowdown, there were also other effects that we noticed:
- the pairs spent a lot of time talking to each other about off-topic things.
- it lead to the formation of "expertise" domains, where one developer would do a specific task because he was treated as the expert, when the other just sat nearby and stared.
- the number of bugs was not significantly reduced
- bad design was not eliminated
So what we do know is, we build small groups of programmers and give them a modular task. They can do as many meetings and talking and planning as they like, but then they distribute the work amongst themselves and get it done alone. The code is then later reviewed by a "review partner" from the same group. It works nicely!
One of the ideas behind XP is that the process you've described really doesn't work that well. Requirements can and will change. Design usually cannot be properly understood until you're in the middle of the implementation. XP takes those things into account.
pooptruck
We used these four concepts and since the code we put out was so much better than anything our clients had ever paid for, we had more work than we knew what to do with. It was incredible.
Oh-and Boss, take the guys out for a beer at lunchtime every once in a while, and encourage a 5 minute break every hour or so. A happy coder is a good coder.
They'd point towards "the planning game," the XP deliverable for project management. (See Planning Extreme Programming for details.)
They'd point towards "user stories" (very similar to use cases), one XP deliverable for requirements gathering.
They'd also point to projects where the requirements weren't well defined up front and changed very quickly, and the cost of maintaining detailed requirements deliverables would have slowed the project down enormously.
And what project doesn't fall in that category? It's a fantasy to think, ala classic "waterfall" development, that the requirements can be set in stone before any of the design, coding, and testing is done. Requirements grow and change as the project progresses, in ways peculiar to the "softness" of software development. (No one would start a project to build a footbridge over a creek, then halfway through want a rail bridge over the Mississippi River.)
XP may not be the best way to address this, but it's one way; and even as McBreen concludes, it's a good way for some projects. For all projects? No one's saying it is.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
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.
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.
This is my main argument against XP and why I refuse to submit to pair programming. It prevents me from being "in the zone".
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
most programmers don't want to learn and don't care. A lot of them aren't young, malleable, impressionable kids that can be fooled by shit like XP, most of them are older, entrenched in their career, do their time and go home type people.
And mentoring junior people is a pain in the ass. You have no time to do your job because you're spending it all trying to do yours. Unless you LIKE working 16 hours a day, in which case, you should be shot, not modded up.
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.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
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.
0xfeedface
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.
Wow, a sports joke on slashdot. Now I *have* seen everything.
The only acceptable sport / hobby / whatever for which such a prefix can be done justice: Extreme Ironing.
Perhaps this will help: The Rules and Practices of Extreme Programming
Except for the Pair Programming I don't see these as anything other than a verbose idealistic approach to the customer --> product cycle everyone knows well.
0xfeedface
Maybe you should point out to them that many of the Agile Process folks are fond of saying, "Good Process is no substitute for Good People."
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
No, it's not. It's really very structured. The simple definition given above is one of the main reason XP-projects fail.
Basically XP is a bunch (11 or 12?) of well known best practises taken all the way out (if code review is good, then more code review is better, so let's code review all the time).
It's heavilly based on communication, so it will break down with large teams. It's also missing an architecture step, so large projects tends to fail, if you don't "cheat". And it's missing testing. But if the product is rather small, the people on the team communicate well, and your QA-team gets a go at the app occasionally, you'll be doing great.
Probably the best thing about XP is that it brings back the fun in programming. Writing out-of-date documents isn't any fun.
M.
You know, what we used to call 'cut-and-paste'.
Seriously, cruft is not just for code and UIs anymore
And how long exactly did you work in pairs?
I mean, you are very convinced that it does not work: the slower on drags the pair down
I get it now, you tested it and While they are wasting time coordinating with each other is just becaue one was using the keyboard and one the mouse?
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.
Same for programming in pairs. One person is more the organizator, planner, black board, defect and error finder while the other one codes.
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?
How long does it take to get 10 lines into production?
And furthermore: what is more productive?
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?
Now you have 200 lines to test, to maintane to debug, to refactor to zip compress and install.
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.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Note to grammar nazis: boxen is an accepted term, as is ubergeek, even though both of them make no sense unless you combine english and german. English: the extensible language.
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 :) ... 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".
Regular communication with the end user / customer
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
Platform independent bug tracking software
What are the basic mechanics? Usually, one programmer is typing and thinking out loud about what needs to be done. The other sits and offers suggestions. Sometimes, the keyboard changes hands.
The first few times are not typical. You will spend time discovering tricks with editors and discussing personal work habits. You will find it exhausting, and neither will be unable to type for more than half a day each. Remember to pass the keyboard back and forth, and keep your paired days short.
After the novelty has worn off, you find that every partner is different. Nevertheless, the benefits seem not to depend very much on whom you work with.
What is one guaranteed benefit? All code written by two people is at least understandable to two people. Two people can maintain it, so others are more likely the find the code maintainable as well. Upgrades and bug fixing will always consume more of your time than the negligible first draft of a program. If your code can't be maintained, then you really cannot afford to ship it, no matter how useful the functionality.
Better, the two of you are thinking about the code in different ways. While the typer is thinking about one screenful of code, the companion is thinking about the effects on other code. Maybe this bit of functionality belongs elsewhere. Maybe this information can be encapsulated. Maybe we're making a bad assumption here. You catch many opportunities to simplify your code and improve flexibility.
It's hard to think about the big picture and the details at exactly the same moment. While you're thinking about one, you mess up the other. With twice the brain capacity, one of you can focus on the details, while the other checks the context and adjusts priorities.
I also find that we get more than twice the work done of either of us working alone. A speed-up isn't guaranteed, or even necessary, but there are good reasons why it happens.
Much of the time you spend in front of a terminal is wasted by context switching. "OK. Where was I?" You decide something must be fixed or refactored before you can make any progress. You spend twenty minutes making the extra change and you lose the thread. Your original idea goes cold. Or you postpone and never get back to the necessary refactoring. Worse, you may spend an hour restructuring code, then realize it was not necessary after all. There was a simpler way to solve the same problem, or you misunderstood the problem. Two people will stop each other from wasting many hours this way. One or two such insights can justify the entire session.
Pair programming is also constant code review. You get to discuss and and explain the design at the most optimum moment, when it is being written. Alone, you might get ninety-five percent of a design perfect, so that no one could possibly improve on it. But that stupid five percent could have been avoided by almost anyone you pull in from the hallway. You could have avoided it yourself on Tuesday, but today is Thursday, and you were using a different part of your brain. Two people are less likely to have the same blind spots.
Each programmer has a high tolerance for complexity in certain types of code. Certain strange idioms are second nature to you, but to no one else. You won't know for sure, unless someone is sitting next to you asking "What the heck is that?" Then you'll break the one clever line into several readable lines, and move on.
You'll like your work better, others will like your work better, and you'll get more done. That should be enough reason to give pair programming a try. Maybe it won't work for everyone, or everyday. Don't force yourself or others to participate. You must be relaxed and receptive. As with any new skill, it works better with practice. Try with different partners and different problems. If you find yourself staring blankly at the screen, then surely you can't do any worse with someone else in the room. Try it right then.
What if your programmers work in different cities? Try using an instant messenger, such as IRC, Jabber, or Yahoo's. These allow you to pass files and snippets of code back and forth. You can archive your conversations.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
In my company all tasks are defined to be 30 minutes long.
A person gets 6 to 8 tasks assigned per day.
One who can not cope with 6 to 8 taks in 8 hours is overworked, overstressed in relation to his abilities.
The guys who COULD do 10 to 16 of the taks because they are faster are oblieged to help/educate the guys who fail.
Pretty easy. Someone who is not able to share his knowledge by "helping" is asked to write a how-to and to give a 30 minutes talk about it.
The missing hours in the 6 to 8 tasks above are spend in meetings, email or at customer side, or: in making how-to's and giving talks.
If one thinks he is giving to much og his knowledge away, he is at the wrong place.
If one can not explain what that is he had just done/made he should make it in a way wich does not need explanaition.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Of course, if she's 5'8". 36-24-36, and in her 20's, I might have to change my mind.. :)
36-24-36?
Haha... only if she's 5'3"
I can see where your comming from and I totaly aggree
What happens when the single progammer is sick or leaves, yeh I can see how productivity is going to sky rocket.
How about the cross training that goes on when you have more than one person working on a project, that's useless of course.
Social aspects to working with someone else are a right pain, I wan't to work for a company that sticks me in a hole and leaves me there, that'll get the most out of me, and I'm sure to stay.
"Windows vs. Linux", Ok I'm no windows fan but has anyone noticed all the bickering that goes on in the Linux comunity,
I can see the productivity gains apearing right before my eyes (are there still atleast two VM's kicking around?)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The time that is used up when the better programmer is slowed down does not get repaid through gains in productivity of the pair. The slower programmer will simply drag the programming pair down.
I've been involved with pair programming for about 2 years now, and while we don't do full XP style development, it has been extremely beneficial. We are both expert programmers, but I do all of the typing. The benefits are the ability to have conversations about issues the moment they are encountered. Rather than coding a workaround or the first thing that comes to my mind, we discuss it and the results are spectacularly better. We decide upon a solution and code that, generally much better than what someone would come up with alone. Ideas are questioned and assumptions are challenged.
He is also able to be giving me a constant just-in-time code review. We catch dumb mistakes that the compiler wouldn't, simply by having more eyes looking at the code. When writing test cases, we both come up with test scenarios that the other hadn't considered... as a result, the test suite is far superior to what it would have been.
Additionally, working in pairs means that more than one person knows the code. This is good for lowering the "bus count". (That is, how many people can get run over a bus before your project is seriously in jeopardy.) With more people understanding the code, I can go on vacation without worry of a critical bug being discovered, and trying to tell them how to fix it from a phone halfway across the state.
Yes, it does slow us down a bit, but I wouldn't consider it a waste whatsoever. It's an incredibly bug-free, totally reliable system. That means little to no time wasted trying to figure out crashes. The time is more than made up for when you consider debugging time.
My experience with non-paired programming does not have as good of results. Even if you threw out everything else about XP, the testing and pair-programming have been the two most valueable ideas it offers.
The fault here really lies with your boss, who should have known that most mythological creatures don't have the educational background for modern software development. Your coworker should have been placed in a position that could more directly benefit from the strengh areas of his background, like mischief and evil deeds.
Everyone is posting about XP but I would like to address the review.
It was rather thin. I didn't see much insight into the book's ideas or even the writing style. I didn't come away with any sort of idea if I should buy this book or if it would be of use to me.
I like book reviews. I think this was more like a very short book description and summary of the table of contents. Reviews talk about a view and not just a summary.
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. :)
Laws are for people with no friends.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EmbraceChange
:)
That is something that should be read by all "Waterfall" developers like you. It is very useful, even if you don't change your opinion.
Damn. IHBT.
XP entirely consists of about 20 helpful programming tips:
...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.
"write unit tests first."
"leave optimization 'till last."
"develop iteratively."
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.
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 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.
Coding in isolation is a bad idea.
The problem is that the "better" programmer you're talking about is often not the "better" programmer at all; he just thinks he is.
The programmers that are actually worth something are the ones that try to spread their knowledge to their teammates to improve everyone's efficiency.
They're also the ones that recognize pair programming as a way to share that knowledge, and also to get feedback about what they are doing wrong, or could use improvement in.
The result of all of this should be a team that works well together and uses the best practices to their advantage, rather than getting slowed down (in isolation) by the not so good practices.
Regardless of whether or not the "best practices" for that team end up being XP practices, I can't believe you'd advocate closed-door isolated programming as a reliable means for the production of high quality code.
Remember the good old days before coding and climbing were 'extreme'... Its seems as though the XP methodology ignores the common sense approach that a small group of motivated talented people with a bit of leadership is what you need, no amount methodology replaces these things. I don't think people who are really good developers can work in the environment XP requires, its to limited and suffocating. Maybe some day management will understand that the secret to good code is people, and not just the latest fad in methodology. MM
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
Here's another review from the Extreme Programming camp that takes the book to task on several issues.
Ken CauseyI don't think that's a useful comparison. Aviation is quite different from programming. In particular,
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.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
I've since moved out of coding, but back in school we used to collaborate (really collaborate -- not copy) frequently on assignments. There was this one guy who invariably dragged the rest of us into these annoying conversations about the stupidest things. Nice guy, good coder, but the best way for me to work with him was to lock him in a separate room, disable talk and msg, and only respond to his emails once per hour.
During our OS course -- our most brutal required course -- I specifically avoided this guy by finding my partner a few months in advance. After working out the design together, my OS partner and I would start off working on separate pieces, but eventually, we'd end up pair-programming. This was incredibly effective for us. With both of us on one computer, we actually wasted LESS time co-ordinating with each other, since we understood each other's pieces better, could integrate code faster, and we made fewer dumb errors because there was always someone to look out for them. While we might do the grunt coding separately, the tricky parts and the nasty debugging always ended up in being completed in a pair.
Mind you, though I couldn't work with the first guy, other people I knew could do so effectively.
The point is that pair programming doesn't work for every pair of people. When you have a good pair, it rocks. When you don't, it bites. You not only have to respect each other's skills, you also have to have complentary working styles and thinking styles. In my pair, I was better at high-level design and creating test cases, while my partner was better at hammering out the implementation details and diagnosing bugs.
If I ever went back to coding, I'd want to do it in pairs -- so long as I could respect my partner.
I can spell. I just can't type.
"mentoring junior people is a pain in the ass"
Thats one of the best part of the job.
1. Go on for hours about your past heroic programming stunts and how today's kids have it so easy.
2. Use them as the recieving end of social/comical abuse. As the "new kid" they are too scared to fight back.
3. Tell them old tired jokes. Unless you get all your jokes from the Internet, they haven't heard them before.
4. Learn from them. Young and inexperienced, they still have a different and maybe better point of view.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
It is a management tool made to look like a geek toy.
/.) may sound nice to management, but it doesn't make for a nice working environment - in fact I'd say it drives people very quickly to being burned out.
The name attracts geeks: they like 'extreme', they like programming, so XP must be great, right?
Wrong...
In XP, the idea is that two programmers are constantly working together. One of the two types code, the other watches his every move. "Don't forget that semicolon!" "No, don't do it like that!" "You don't need to do that right now!".
Having a slavedriver who puts the whip on you whenever you stare out the window (or browse
Another mantra of XP is "never write anything you do not need right now". As with top-down or bottom-up programming, this tries to force the way a programmer thinks into a narrow pattern.
Personally I've found that I'm at my most productive when I have a good flow going. That may mean writing some support classes first (and completely) and then building something on top, or it may mean going chaotically all over the place adding bits, but it never means doing things precisely in one order.
I've also noticed that it is not possible for two people to sync their 'flows' when they're coding. Yeah, bring forth the lame jokes...
The problem with all software methodologies is that they are usually associated with some software guru who is trying to make big bucks as a consultant selling his brand. Also methodologies very often become religions, with the head guru being the leader of the cult. This is understandeable since most software developers depend on a song and a prayer to get their code to work. XP is a good example of both trends.
I wrote a white paper on software methodology which you can download here. I am an agnostic when it comes to methodologies, but there is alot you can learn from what's out there.
We used to do this in college all the time. Someone would get stuck on a problem and suddenly there would be 2 or 3 other people trying to help. The same at work: Someone stares at a problem for so long they need a second set of eyes to double check some piece of code. We did not have a name for this but I suppose we could have called it "Ganging up on a problem before going out for a beer".
Research XP. Research the alternatives. Use whichever works best.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
.. and I suspect 95% of the people here are dumb enough to make a sexist remark like that in front of said girls.
------
http://cooltech.org
If it ain't cool, it ain't coolt
In the case of structured programming, I wouldn't say that it's come and gone; rather that it has simply been pretty generally adopted, and hence isn't trumpeted or bragged about.
Some IT fads eventually work and some don't. In my observation the success ratio is roughly about 1-in-5. Structured programming (no Goto's) and relational databases seem to have pretty well "stuck". OOP and Client/server are kind of in the same middle-land boat. They seem to work okay in some niches but not others. I remember the tail-end of the CASE craze. Then there was the Expert System craze. In the late 1970's was the "extreme" top-down craze, which was actually the extremist end of "structured". It later mellowed out to being at a routine or module level instead of application-wide. Thus, even good things can be taken too far.
Now we have web-applications, web services, UML, and XML-everywhere fads that are having their try. (Curiously, I just saw part of an article that claimed very UML-like approaches were tried, and failed, in the 1970's IIRC.) Most of these I would not personally bet on lasting in their current form, beyond minor roles. I think B-to-B web applications will be replaced by "remote HTTP-friendly GUI" technology of some sort (like XWT or SCGUI).
Table-ized A.I.
I'd recommend this article as a well-argued critique of XP: Case Against XP
Just use the acronym. Acronyms always sound professional.
And missing an error in the plane is a tad bit more important than in a program.
WRONG!
You have no way of knowing what other people are programming, but buddy, if you miss some types of errors in some types of programs, Bad Things Happen. Many of the moving things in the world are fly-(or drive-) by-wire - what do you think is figuring out "for this input, do that output"? A program.
Quick example - the first Ariane 5 blew up due to untested software and hardware reuse - they took a piece of equipment that worked fine on the Ariane 4 series, stuck it on the 5, and didn't test it throught the full flight envelope - but a software design decision that worked on the A4 (not to bounds-check certain values) was invalid on the A5 (you COULD get that many bits of the values on that rocket) and when it happened, the software said "It's gotta be bad hardware! Turn it off!" and swapped to the redundant module - which was busy locking up with the same error. Boom.
Now look at the millions of lines of software in the Boeing 777. The microcontroller in your grandmother's pacemaker. The computer-controlled milling machine that shapes the turbine blades of jet engines.
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.
No, he'd get laid off. That's economics. Airlines don't want spare bodies getting paid salaries - if they could train chimps to fly, and the FAA would approve, they'd do that.
Lines of code may be a horrible way to measure productivity, but it's very hard to get accountants to believe in "function points".
I agree that XP isn't as efficient as "normal" programming when both programmers are experienced - what I've seen work in practice is the use of XP (adapted slightly) as a training ground, where inexperienced personnel are combined with experienced personnel to cross-train. It works both ways - you can have a wily old Unix coder sentenced to work on MFC sitting next to a kid who's only done Visual Basic, and both will learn a lot, and be more productive as a team than either or both separately. It's a matter of chemistry as much as management.
But then, that's just an opinion. It matters little.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
The one thing I could never see anyone in upper management buying into (aside from the name Extreme Programming) is the concept of Peer Programming. Allocating two perfectly capable resources to one desk during all development time simply does not seem feasible (not to mention desireable) to me. How many of you true developers out there would like one of your co-workers over your shoulder the entire time you were writing code? Or better yet, how would you like to be relegated to being in the passenger seat and simply observing and offering verbal input to the development process? Not very many of you I'd imagine.
Extreme Programming does have quite a few refreshingly positive aspects to it however:
Come out with small releases and come out with them often. This keeps the customer very involved in the entire development process and goes a long to to ensuring they (a) get what they want out of the system and (b) take on a true partnership role in the project. This is especially helpful, since we all know that specs often will begin to change the minute they're committed to paper anyway.
Full testing of the entire system each time a release comes out. How many times has a small change in one area of the system ended up affecting another in some unexpected way? This concept takes care of that situation as well as gauranteeing comprehensive Q/A in general.
No fear of code refactoring. I love this one, because we all know what a pain in the ass it is to have to completely reengineer some piece of code or process that is in place and working, but is discovered to be unscalable or deficient in some way in regards to future use. Building around it only makes the situation worse though, doesn't it? Don't be afraid, rewrite it and make it right. There's usually no way of knowing everything a specific process may be called on to do from day one anyway.
We all own this code. The concept of all developers being able to work on any piece of the system makes much sense. I used to work in one shop where the brilliant mananger decided everyone would have one area of responsibilty, thus having him make statements to users like "Oh sorry the search engine is not working, but we can't get it fixed till tomorrow since Andy is out today and he is the Search Engine Guy". Everyone being able to change the communal code does require that you have a group of developers who are all competent of course - which is not always the case in the real world.
I guess my take on it is that you simply cannot apply the principals of Extreme Programming as a simple "black-and-white" practice. It's really got to be somewhere in the middle to make it work in the real world ...
Depends on your development environment - change a fundamental header file in C, C++, even Java, and you can waste several builds watching the dependencies come out of the woodwork... clean rebuilds are the best way to handle large change packages during development, IMHO.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
- Both XP and Agile advocate self organizing teams. This is most certainly how Open Source works. Corporate development models force developers and users into certain roles without any real organic feel for who really should do what.
- The point of pair programming is to put more than one eye on the code. Yes, it most certainly does slow a project down but it also increases stability. In most corporate waterful environments, more than one eye has not seen the code. Most Microsoft bugs are careless mistakes. With Linux, although there is no real pair programming, Linus or an experienced developer does look over all submitted code. It's the same end result.
- Microsoft has very long periods inbetween releases. Not even final releases are "production quality." Linux has incremental releases more similar to XP. The only difference is, because Linux is so mission critical, they don't label each release as "production quality" -- but compared to most commercial software, a BitKeeper (they don't use CVS) snapshot of the Linux kernel is better than "production quality" code from MS.
Other comparisons, such as an on-site user, simply do not apply to non-desktop software.-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
Context? Articles written by convention attendees? ;)
Ok, ok, seriously. I don't know; the point of the original joke was that one programmer working alone can control his design and work quickly, and that too many cooks spoil the broth, right?
Well... If I have to work closely with someone in a partnership, then I'll have to compromise with him on every issue in which we differ. Reaching those compromises will take time and result in a mediocre product. Arguing over design philosophy will take additional time. Shouting matches over which widget we're going to use this week will take up more time and annoy others. It would be much easier and cleaner if we were each given our own independent modules to write, with a contract laying out the interface we have to follow, wouldn't it? Instead of teams -- distributed, independent development.
Sort of like the programmer telling the manager, six months if he works solo, a year if he has a partner, and so on.
But, you're right; I dropped it in out of context. Still -- you have to admit, it's a killer description of a fundamental truth.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Personally I like XP. For all the usual reasons. But, you see, my boss doesn't like for all the usual reasons. So I don't use XP. In the corporate world, it's "to each his boss's own."
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
check it out!
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
You have no way of knowing what other people are programming, but buddy, if you miss some types of errors in some types of programs, Bad Things Happen.
:)
No shit. But if you're programming that type of thing, you know it, and that's completely separate from the issue of whether XP actually increases programmer productivity.
No, he'd get laid off. That's economics. Airlines don't want spare bodies getting paid salaries
That was exactly my point. Pilots aren't programmers, so the doubling-up of pilots in airplanes is irrelevent to the discussion.
Lines of code may be a horrible way to measure productivity, but it's very hard to get accountants to believe in "function points".
I've always liked the productivity measurment "accomplishing goals". But I'm old-fashioned like that.
what I've seen work in practice is the use of XP (adapted slightly) as a training ground
Yes, that makes sense. Actually, some people who work near me did that when one was leaving the job and another was picking it up.
Which seems to be what the book says -- there are specific cases where XP is good, but it isn't something to use across any (or even many) situations.
The enemies of Democracy are
You know, I like XP and all, but having a chapter title like Hype or HyperProductive (which sounds like Working Hard or Hardly Working... aka Super Lame) is just... Oh I give up, I'm just the Roadkill on the Information Super Highway and other really bad puns or office jokes.
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
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.
That's interesting. I've noticed that XP seems to have caught on among Objective-C developers that I know. I wonder if it's something that works best with decent OO development environments.
I've never read any of Beck's books, but programming in pairs is something I've done from time to time over my career, and it seems to work best with someone whose design philosophy and coding style are *very* close to my own.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Look at the quality of Windows vs. Linux. Windows is developed collaboratively with meetings and close contact among the programmers.
Sorry, but you're not taking into account the quality of the coders in question.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Stage 1.1: Buzzword Oriented Development projects.
This stage occurs when the fad is recognized as the "next big thing" to have on your resume. This is because the PHBs will all assume that they can blindly apply the new methodology to their problem space. The negative lessons learned from this blind application of the new methodology leads directly to stage 2 (i.e., this is where the "...conditions a, b, c, d, and e." come from) but in the meantime people with the right buzzwords on their resume can command top dollar salaries because the PHBs believe the new methodology is THE silver bullet. THERE IS NO SILVER BULLET so each new methodology becomes a fad that is misapplied as if it were. The true believers and the people who want to have all the right buzzwords on their resume contribute to the fad. After the fad has run its course (post stage 3), it may end up contributing some tools that are effective when applied to the appropriate problem space.
And, yes, by this definition, every advance in programming methodology was at one time a fad.
Deal with it.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
You know, that's a generalization and an insult.
I'll have you know that I throw like a fairy.
why run from Vincenzo?
But my point remains - on a team, the weakest link slows everybody down, and unfortunately some managers refuse to fire negatively productive (ie, write more bugs then they fix) people.
Extreme Programming may work for you, but in my experience it hasn't worked for me, in fact, it's a reason for me to leave a company.
It's also not a matter of being able to communicate - quite frankly I shouldn't have to explain what CListCtrl::SetItemData () does, for example, while getting reamed for slipping behind in a schedule. Had that lasted more then a week, I would have gone even more insane then some people claim I already am.
As far as looking good checking in code, why, yes, that's exactly what I do, and in turn, because my code is good, I make my supervisor look good to his boss, and he remembers that and gives me pay raises.
It's not that I don't want to work in a team environment, it's that I don't want a goblin breathing down my neck for 8 hours a day.
I joined a company a year and a half ago, becoming part of an Extreme Programming development team. And I was pretty skeptical at first.
/share/ computers? That we have /weekly/ design meetings? And all sorts of other strange and unfamiliar things.
/before/ the code was written, and the code couldn't be checked in until the tests -- and all existing tests -- passed.
/had/ to be held standing up. (I.e., everyone starts to get tired, and when people start sitting down a meeting had to end.) We took a fifteen minute break every two hours to keep from getting into fugue states, and because of that productivity we were never working overtime (thus keeping us from burning out). It was one of the most rewarding development experiences I've ever had.
/fail/. We lost support within the rest of the company for the XP process, and that hurt a lot; XP relies on getting weekly or bi-weekly feedback from your 'customers' (i.e. the target for your project), as well as having them set what the more important tasks for the next two weeks were. Suddenly, we were having to plan out things six months in advance and operate in a vaccuum, which really hampered the Extreme Programming method. In addition, our team was expanded...and we learned the difficult way that while XP works really well for an 8-person team or so, it does /not/ mesh well with larger teams.
I mean, here I am, coming into a compiler-and-assembler design team and I'm being told that we have to
But to my surprise, it worked. We each had our own 'personal space' computer for e-mail and everything else, and when we were working we went into our lab as a group. We'd look at the board of current 'stories' (overall larger tasks) and pick a 'task card' from the story. (Literally, taking an index card off the corkboard and clipping it into a little holder by our computer.) And then you sat down at a computer with two monitors, two keyboards and two mice and you pair programmed. If there were an odd number of people, you had to have someone else go over your code with you before you checked it in. All code had to have tests written for it
And to my surprise, it worked. With two people looking at code, the little mistakes were harder to make. Design problems were more easily tackled. Because we all shifted around and changed partners a lot, we all learned all the areas of the code and had a better understanding of the system as a whole. The way tasks and suchnot were partitioned out worked very well. Meetings didn't interrupt the flow of things, because almost all meetings
BUT...this also became a story in how Extreme Programming can
So, I actually would probably agree with the book's assessment; XP is well-suited for certain situations (small team, active customer feedback and support, quick dev cycles), but will fail miserably (and I do mean miserably, as in ruining the morale of the team) if you do not have the full support infrastructure.
Admittedly, some of XP's practices -- tests written before code, meetings held standing up to keep them from dragging on indefinitely -- work pretty well even outside XP. But the system as a whole works well only within a specific target range.
--Rachel
1) This is evidence that the developers you work with are "small" people. People with over-developed egos shouldn't be hired into an XP environment
;)
2) If brittle features are being produced, then the coding is poor. It's my belief that short cycles are more likely to produce better code, given a decent coder.
3) I think this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It's not the absolute simplest thing that can work that should be done, but the simplest thing that makes sense that should be done. A co-worker of mine has a sticky note that says "don't copy broken code". That might be ammended to read "don't write crap code". also see me response to #4
3b) If the developer is tweaking a test just to co home, they need a swift kick in the ass. see the recommendation not to write crap code above
4) This is what re-factoring is for. As soon as you have repeated code in a few places, it's time to site down, actually think, and refactor the code to remove the duplications.
It very much sounds to me like the problems you've had with XP are not problems with XP itself per se, but problems writing decent code in general. XP is not a magical want that will make everyone's code beautiful, efficient, and flawless, but it does provide a framework in which high quality software can be produced and maintained relatively efficiently and painlessly. My experience with it has been extremely positive - maybe I'm biased
Wether or not XP is going to stick is a very interesting issue. However, There is a very important point that goes unnoticed: WHY all this talk about XP?
In the past few years, most software processes were generally loathed by the average geek, because there was "so much documents to generate, and so little code to write". The real extreme (no pun intended) geek would even consider business process analysts a "project overhead". All he really wanted to do was coding.
Then came those agile methodologies like XP, and all of a sudden there are loads of people preaching that this is it, that XP will save us. that using SCRUM improves your lifestyle. etc.
My point is: a lot of people tend to like XP NOT because they acknowledge it is efficient as a software process, NOT because they used it and their project was a ressounding success.
My point is: a lot of people tend to like XP because they, in a way, are seduced by its promise of working by a methodology where the focus is coding. seduced by the promise that they dont have to write "useless" documents and activities, and their project will thrive if only they follow those simple rules...
Im not saying that XP is garbage, on the contrary, I think it brings some VERY interesting ideas like pair programming, and its test-planning.
what I AM saying, is: if you are considering to use XP you should be very careful and try to look at it with reason, rather than passion.
you should ask yourself at least this two questions:
1) "The problems I faced in my experience would be eliminated if I had followed the rules of XP?"
2) "The practices of XP would be enough to make my project a sucess?"
whatever is your decision, I guess we could call this a good start.
Wow, you got nasty fast.
So, you would like to know how a team should figure out what the interface between functional modules of their system should be?
Here's what worked for my team (Yes, I was the team lead, and, no, you're wrong, no one was fired, in fact the company took us to Atlantic City and then, dinner, to thank us for the work we did).
First, the team lead comes up with an overall design. He discusses the overall design with the team in a brainstorming session, and improvements are incorporated in the design. There may be arguments, but they're limited to this initial speccing out session.
The project is broken up into modules, and each module is broken up into function calls. The parameters and the return values for each function call are then agreed upon. You might say, "function foo will take three strings, fooey, hooey, and spam, and will return a properly formatted URL as a string." The programmers each take the modules they are most interested in. People agree on the overall plumbing, then go their separate ways with their modules, to code them without interference.
As each module is completed, it is integrated with the greater whole by the team lead. Debugging is done with driver programs and function stubs, and everything is separately unit tested. Programmers are responsible for their chunk of the system, and its interface. They don't have to put up with a lot of baloney like having to justify what they're doing to a partner who's looking over their shoulder. The overall design is handled by the team lead, who keeps an eye on how the individual modules are going together.
Modules can be built by internal staff, or by outside agencies. They can even be purchased and just integrated in. The point is that everything is modular, and everyone is responsible for his/her chunk, without interference.
Overall, this results in the least amount of argument, and the fastest overall forward progress because everyone is working in parallel, simultaneously. Projects can be completed very quickly at minimum expense if everyone pulls their weight.
I think that my point was that whenever programmers have to collaborate on a single stretch of code, they will inevitably disagree on implementation details and algorithms, and that this will lead to unproductive debate that will bog down a project. You missed the point entirely. For any given piece of code, there should be one programmer who writes it as well as he can without interference.
My joke about the Tao of programming was just a joke. But the basic idea is valid. Too many cooks spoil the broth. So you have one cook doing broth, another doing steak, another doing salad... And, the restaurant owner or head chef determines the menu.
Respond if you must. But I have said all I wish to say. You're too judgemental for my tastes.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Y'know, I'd think that someone's personal hygine and habits would have a lot more influence on their acceptability as an officemate (grad students: we don't get paid much, but at least we have offices) than their gender or measurements. I mean really, I'm not quite that poor and desperate to be tempted by this, since they pay me here an all, so it's just too incredibly degrading to be eye candy at work for some "hotshot" coder.
Look! Brains! They're much more important than the rest of it, especially in a coworker. It doesn't mean a thing that I am right around that description. It matters who I am and what I do.
Lea
... 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.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
We had the exact opposite happen, actually. I was against the idea of XP when we first started using it at my previous company, but once we got into the swing of it, I grew to love it. It sounds like you guys weren't actually sticking to the XP very well.
You should have a lot of problems with pairs getting off-topic- that's the reason you have a coach. If your pairs are spending their time talking and going over estimates, somebody should step in. You should be having regular meetings to discuss estimates and figure out what will and won't get done, so I don't see how people can just go over like that.
You shouldn't grow expertise domains because two people are working on any given thing at once. If you're pairing with somebody and they start doing things that you don't understand without talking to you, you should stop them (and I don't see how non-XP processes would've done any better for you in this situation) and ask to drive so that they have to explain it to you while you code it.
Our bugs were significantly reduced because we always had more eyes designing, writing and looking over code. It's important that you not let people just go off and write one component over the course of two months or something. You should be focusing on small components done on a short schedule and constantly rotating people so that there's no code ownership.
Also, were you not doing good unit testing? That alone should bring your bugs down significantly.
It really sounds like your new system is just XP-lite... If you really stuck to XP I think it would save you a lot of time (no need for scheduling meetings and reviews) and get the same end results.
Another thing we tried at our old company was "demos" at the end of every phase (phases were two weeks) where we had to show and explain to the rest of the dev team what we coded that phase- this greatly reduced bad design and was akin to your peer reviews, but we just gathered up the whole dev team and spent a morning doing it. It sounded like a waste of time but it significantly helped, because everybody understood how every component of the system worked.
-- atomly
Clarification of the central paragraph:
I should have known better. Someone is already judging me based on paragraph II, so I'd like to state more specifically what was meant. Jesus, I should have known better.
Ok. It's my opinion that a solid design can best be reached by either one person working alone or a team lead who handles the overall design and breaks it up into subtasks for his team to handle.
It really comes down to what sort of political system you follow. If everyone is equal and there's no one directing the action, the result is anarchy. If there's centralized leadership, and everyone is doing their job and staying out of everyone else's hair, the result is harmony.
This lines up very neatly with system design.
A programming team where everyone's working on the same code is going to end up arguing about just about everything. Debugging is going to be a joke; nothing will be accomplished. Similarly, programming in pairs with one person coding and the other mouthing off is going to drive everyone crazy.
The basic idea I proposed was what has worked for me in the past: a central team lead breaks up the project into component parts, and programmers select the parts they want to complete. The group agrees on the plumbing and then scatters to do their work, everyone working in parallel. As each chunk gets completed, it is provided to the lead for integration. Chunks are unit tested with driver programs and function stubs.
the IDEA is, programmers end up working independently, following an agreed upon interface, and everyone can be happy and get along. Other benefits include:
1. Each module has a consistent coding style throughout.
2. Each programmer is responsible for his/her own module, so over time, they can respond to bug reports and so on.
3. Programmers can choose the algorithm they think is best, without having to sit around jawboning with their "partner" about whether this or that widget is the best to use. No one gets stressed out, and everyone is happy.
Anyway, we're getting away from the point. The point was, "too many cooks spoil the broth". So, the head cook has one cook doing broth, one cook doing the roast, another doing salad and so on. And, everyone can relax and just cook, instead of having to argue about whether they should add once pinch of salt or two.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Actually, check out this paper for an experimental that shows that the extra time you spend in pairing will increase the quality of the resulting code. So you have a choice: program alone and get buggier code faster, or pair and get less buggy code a bit more slowly (but the quality gains are larger than the speed loss).
That is all.
"You are obviously a very fluid writer, and not too bad at bragining either. I should imagine that you other skills have suffered because of this, though most mangers wouldn't notice and would probably take you out to lunch."
That's very nice of you to say, but I don't think that being a good writer and being able to bargain skillfully automatically means that my other skills suffer. Balance is important to me. I may spend most of my time programming, but on the side I keep up with mathematics, a little physics, literature... It keeps my mind sharp and prevents burnout.
As for managers taking me to lunch, well, I'm afraid that I'm not a particularly social person. I tend to keep to myself. Besides, I'm somewhat nervous about associating with managers. When managers decide they like you, they generally tend to try and make you into a manager as well. This reminds me a little too much of count dracula. He tried to promote people HE liked, too... So, I generally try to be invisible and avoid managerial notice.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
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.
pooptruck
Duuuuude, I worked on combination of experimental code and legacy code that we had not written, with still-under-development hardware that I only had a crappy datasheet for and a completely new suite of remote tools with a truckload of documentation. It was all horrrrrilby slow - looking at docs, plugging boards, typing, debugging - Then I managed to pull some guy off a project to come and work with me. Speeeed! One could browse through the docs while the other was still coding then he'd suggest where to go to implement some new functionality... the problem was the system was so large and new to us, there were just too many things for one person to remember at one time. Working in pairs really worked in that occassion.
Now, if I was doing routine GUI stuff for some lame application, pair-programming would not add anything. Would it?
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
A. You can negotiate with a terrorist.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
... to 1976. Remember PSL/PSA? RSL/RSA? All their brethren and siblings? Probably not -- many of you hadn't yet achieved zygote status at that point.
Anyway, the same breathless hysteria about how processes improved, productivity increased, errors decreased, etc. etc. blah blah blah was rampant back then. I was a (very) junior member of a non-profit team hired by the Army to figure out whether these claims were true or false.
Our conclusions were simple. The productivity and other claims were hopelessly inflated. However, we were able to conclude that any systematic methodology seemed to produce somewhat better results than no methodology at all -- and it didn't really matter what the methodology was.
Deja vu all over again.
No, but they may want it.
The biggest thing I like about XP (and other agile methodologies) is the requirements approach.
I'm sick of projects where the requirements change, but there's no formal process to handle the change.
The team has to keep changing things to cover the requirements change, but process doesn't officially recognise the change, things just go crazy.
The biggest benefit of agile is that it recognises that change happens. It happens because, over thel ife of a project, the business needs change, and also because it is very hard for people to even know, let alone explain what they want up front.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Um... You just said I'd have to be a moron to choose the company of developers who can cooperate. Heh heh heh!
Damnit...I knew I'd fuck up that grammatical construction.
I guess my biggest problem is that those who reject XP are usually those who've never tried it, and dismiss it with straw-man arguments. Especially here on /., when its something I do know something about, and few other people in this thread seem to.
For me, its the software development methodology that makes sense to me. And for those people it doesn't seem to make sense for...well..they're some kind of weird freak. =)
pooptruck
So what's the real objection to Extreme Programming? Well, like any other 'extreme' activity it's simply an moron's way of making whatever he happens to be doing sound cool. This was pathetic when it came from frat boy losers and their 'extreme' sports, but it's even more stomache-turning when the geek set decide that they, too, are 'extreme' - and while sitting on their fat asses plunking away at their keyboards.
Get a life, you 'extreme' losers.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
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)
Extreme Programming Debunked (Archie D. Bunker)
Extreme Programming Filters Into Academia (Fileas Snodgras, PhD)
Learn Extreme Programming in 21 minutes (QUE Books)
Extreme Programming Departs And Thanks You For All The Fish (Sqeeeeeek sqk sqk sqk)
Designing, Touting And Debunking Methodologies For Fun And Profit (Popular Science Press)
Extreme No Money Down Real Estate (Carlton Sheets)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
...unless you call it that.
Call it an Agile Methodology, or the Beck Methodology, or the XP Methodology.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
XP is the revelation of divine spirit, in my book,
because it saves me from the alternatives: Water-fall
management, or the Unified process. I would
be equally enthusiastic about Fascist Programming
or Insects-for-Lunch Programming if it saved me
from Unified.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
You can choose your order.
And you can design your tasks your self.
I do not dictate WHAT exactly has to be done.
But every task needs to deliever a QA able result in at max 30 minutes.
E.g. find the 15 core use cases and describe them in 2 sentences each.
Elaborate one use case by describing 5 to 7 scenarios of it with 2 to 4 sentences.
Elaborate one use case by giving a somewhat detailed description, as much as you can do in 30 minutes.
Refine such a use case to drive it into implementationable state.
Analyse a scenario and find classes and methods to implement it.
Allways after 15 minutes sit back and look: are you working in terrain you lack knowledge about? If so your analizis was not good enough so far. You struggle by finding the right solution? Then you do not know enough of the problem.
Stop your work, abandone it, and go one or two steps back. Otherwise you will fight your way through the jungle of your mind, tricking your self by thinking hart and believeing you are bright when you finaly find a tricky solution. You would have found the solution far faster by going back and reworking the prerequisits a bit.
If you can not reach a goal in 30 minutes, you do not know what your goal is. Find a goal wich is in shorter times to reach.
You are coding a class? What is your goal? To support one scenario, that should be the goal.
If the scenario is worked up pretty, you can code a class in 30 minutes. If that does not work, the class is to big, and should be split up into more than one class.
Needing to much time is a indicator that you are wasting time.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Version 2 will be based on a plug-in architecture.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
But so as not to be merely flaming you (and with all due seriousness and respect), let me deal with your points individually again:
- Formal specs or IT AIN'T WORTH IT -
Puleeaase. This is great, maybe, if you work in a company that does shrinkwrap software, you have no real direct link to your customers anyway, and a great marketing department to convince your users that what you came up with for "what they want" based on the little bit of focus-group-based market research you did is really what they want.But the VAST majority of software projects are internal to a company or are bespoke software developed on a contract basis. In those cases, getting the requirements exactly right is very important, because you actually have a contract that states that you will meet the customer's goals, the goals are explicit but often conflicting and from multiple interested parties w/in the client, and they almost always change before the project ends. So your assertion basically reads, "90% of software shouldn't be written and companies should stick w/ phones and pencils."
- It just formalizes the lazy practices of programmers -
Well, if programmers are lazy (Larry Wall says they are, and he's pretty smart), then you better design your software processes (and programming languages -- Thanks Larry!) to accommodate or explictly capitalize on that. All of the Agile Methodologies are somewhat premised on the fact that people are the ones that write software, so you better choose a methodology which capitalizes on their stengths and mitigates their weaknesses.- 50% to 90% of software projects fail because of embracing fly-by-night "technologies" like this -
Well, last I heard is that the "canonical" figure is that 78% of software projects fail because of a variety of by now well-understood (by everyone but people making decisions on software projects, apparently) factors such as a) requirements change (that's right, there was an IRON-CLAD spec, but it changed repeatedly); b) unrealistic and inflexible project deadlines set before the project was initiated; and c) poor developer morale, growing exponentially over time because of the cumulative effect of a) and b).So, all of the Agile Methodologies attempt to address these things. You may not agree with the details of how they do it.
But I doubt most of the software-using world will agree with "lets stop writing almost all software," either.
I would highly suggest reading Ward Cunningham's "XP is guru friendly!" position paper, which I believe is part of the OOPSLA 2000 proceedings.
Your evaluation is the exact opposite of the intent of XP. Martin Fowler has often railed against the notion of "plug compatible programming units" so prevalent in the minds of many IT managers.
XP is a very humanistic approach, it relies heavily on oral history and varying the master/apprentice roleplaying model. It is guru-friendly, assuming the guru wants to share the love. If he/she doesn't have the desire to communicate his ideas to others, then he probably doesn't belong on any team - let alone an XP team.
-Stu
The distinctions you draw raise the granularity of the metaphor. Pilot/co-pilot is a metaphor to a pair currently programming at a point in time. Not to the whole project.
"Flying is a real-time task"
Programming is too. Sure, you can change mistakes later, but it helps if someone catches it right then & there. It also helps if you keep your code clean right then & there, and don't allow bad habits to seep in.
"You cannot bring in new staff if you are short on human resources for some reason. "
This is a false. You're not going to hire someone in-flight, just like you're not going to hire someone mid-method/function. You hire in-between pairing sessions.
"Flying is a highly interactive task."
So is team programming - it's one of the most interactive tasks you could possibly come up with! There often is constant collaboration, lots of questions. A team that has heads-down, earphones-on programming style does happen, but arguably isn't tremendously effective.
"Flying is pretty complex in some phases of the flight "
I've seen pretty tricky designs during some of my pairing sessions.
Now obviously it's not a perfect metaphor, in that pilots/co-pilots are a life-critical exercies. But it's useful in a number of ways. I think your post does more to justify the metaphor than to convince otherwise.
-Stu
and show me how they don't have design patterns. every programming form has design patterns, patterns that have evolved to solve repeatable problems. It' s like you're completely ignoring the context in which this stuff was created. Do you solve everything from first principles? They're not tied to object orientation.
-Stu
this one would be a reasonable intro, though supplement it with online resources. the 1st book "extreme programming explained" is the manifesto. the 3rd book "extreme programming installed" is the how-to. the 2nd book is details of the planning process..
another book is "Agile Software Development" by alistair cockburn.
-Stu
XP can work, but it is not a first-order success factor for projects. I would suggest the critical success factors for projects are
a) management support and consistency
b) technical competence
c) communications competence
d) process competence
XP fits into (d). If you're missing ANY of the above 4, which are in order of importance, chances are, you'll only succeed by accident. Sadly, most IT projects are delivered purely by accident.
In detail:
a) XP was created because many projects completely screw up one or more aspects of the above, and Kent Beck was sick of creating software that couldn't be used if the project was cancelled. So, XP is about delivering continuous value. But management (customer) must be consistent, they must speak with one voice, lest you fulfill the wrong goals.
b) Success always, always depends on the people you work with. Surprisingly, often people are very good. Sadly, sometimes they're not. That's hiring, not XP.
c) Team = Product. The quality of your team dynamics and communications are going to reflect the nature of the software that you write.
d) Process provides a framework for agility. It aligns interests and ensures people's needs are being met. Traditional waterfall methods don't do this. Incremental and interative (i.e. agile) methods do do this.
XP is but one of many agile methods, but is also a very special one because of its value system: communication, simplicity, feedback, and courage.
Many projects and companies are politicized and play the CYA (cover your ass) game. They play "not to lose" the game. XP isn't like that - they play to win.
-Stu
I've had the opportunity to do a little pair programming in a large, modular framework project, and frankly, we mixed both approaches (the one you describe here, and pair-programming). From my own experience, if algorithms are really hard and complex it is better to pair program, even if it takes longer. XP is not just about programming faster, it is also about being able to maintain the code, and about shared ownership of that code. It also makes more sense that the algorithm has a higher probability of being correct when somebody needs to understand what you're doing and starts asking questions.
I also agree that some jobs just don't need pair-programming. Writing a string class and a test-suite for it is something you can do by yourself easily, and adding a peer to review your code might help you with typos' but since compilers are getting pretty fast and verbose these days, the added value of having a peer sitting next to you significantly drops.
At the moment I'm in the situation where we don't have enough highly skilled people to do any pair programming, in a large & highly complex project with a lot of timing, data & code dependencies (a game), and this sometimes leads to clashes and refactoring, and to people getting confused by the internals of the code, and code that doesn't allways behave like it should in border-line cases.
Sometimes the fun is in the details
With great power comes great electricity bills.