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Inside the World of Extreme Programming

Posted by Hemos on from the under-the-hood dept.

Webi writes ""XP[http://www.extremeprogramming.org/] works best for medium-sized teams where a product can be delivered in stages, and where there's freedom to experiment with some of the more controversial techniques," author Ron Jeffries said. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20348.html"

5 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Buddy Programming kind of annoying by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've always found the whole "buddy programming" concept (part of XP), where one person watches the other code and points out errors, to be incredibly annoying. Maybe you're going to fix something in five seconds (a typo), and it gets called out. Maybe you have a syntax error that the compiler (which isn't getting a salary) could easily catch, but it gets called out. Plus, it makes me nervous to have people watching me and constantly interrupting my flow.

    Also, you're wasting a good programmer having them sit there and call things out.

    Maybe it's just me and some people really like XP...

    --
    May we never see th
  2. hmm... by REBloomfield · · Score: 2, Insightful
    but the managers and customers as well, all working together elbow to elbow. Asking questions

    That's my idea of hell personally... it's bad enough troubleshooting a printer and having the user go "stop going so fast" "what are you doing" etc etc...
    I'm sure it's wonderful in theory, but then so is communism...

  3. It is when you do it wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The 'buddy' isn't supposed to second guess you or the compiler, they are supposed to think strategically while you think at a tactical level.

    Switching thinking modes is incredibly difficult to do by yourself but imagine your 'buddy' as 20/20 hindsight in advance. Remember: a stitch in time saves nine.

    Oh and if the 'buddy' has something tactical to offer (i.e. code) then give him the keyboard and take a step back (mentally, of course).

  4. the weakest link in XP by josephgrossberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is the degree of customer involvement that they expect.

    To quote their site:
    "One of the few requirements of extreme programming (XP) is to have the customer ... be a part of [the development team]. All phases of an XP project require communication with the customer, preferably face to face, on site. It's best to simply assign one or more customers to the development team."

    WTF? How many clients are willing to assign an employee to work with/at the software/website vendor full-time? None, in my experience.

    Unless you're dealing with an utterly massive project for a heavily-staffed client, their IT guy leading this effort has more responsibilities than this one project.

    --

    Joe
    http://www.joegrossberg.com
    1. Re:the weakest link in XP by budalite · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the customer is not willing to commit (somebody's) significant time to the project, it's pretty much a dead horse, waiting to fall. If the customer is not , at the least, completely involved in defining the requirements and the acceptance tests the final product will not be what the customer wants. Period. It might be what you have on record as what the customer asked for, but it will never "fly" for simple lack of interest, and you will have no follow-on work. If you are not serving the customer, you will not have a customer. This has been my experience, anyway. (Perhaps you have been luckier. If so, don't count on it to stay that way. Lots of out-of-work developers out there.) ttfn