One of the foundations of the Extreme Programming methodology basically reads as such: "Users and Developers are on equal footing". This is basis for many of the practical guidelines of XP. As a developer, I'd like nothing more than to see this happen. As an employee of a large corporation, I'm cursed with knowing this will never happen and thus most aspects of XP will fail. Users (read: managers) don't or can't understand software and consider business concerns at the same time. And when it comes down to it, you know which will suffer first. While I think many of the ideas in XP are good and would like to see the methodology as a whole implemented (even if it's just an expirement), I could readily see some of the management friendly aspects (short release dates) being used to the exclusion of some of the more programmer friendly ones (code review, refactoring). Does anyone else envision this happening?
Re:The article doesn't say much.
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It seems to me that "mission critical" means that when it does hit the fan, you have some way to account for it. Unfortunately, having Sun or Microsoft to blame is more acceptable from a business standpoint, even if the need for placing such blame becomes more frequent as a result. CEOs, stockholders, etc., are much more comfortable dealing with a huge public company than the open source movement.
So this brings us to a real question: What can Microsoft do before the hoi polloi will even start to look at an alternative OS?
Obviously, a lot of this depends on the alternatives themselves. But let's say, for the sake of arguement, an OS (let's just call it Z) develops via open source and provides all the functionality that MS provides. I know I would switch in a heartbeat, but most non techies wouldn't bother. So what does Microsoft have to do to piss those people off so that they will begin to see alternatives?
Or do some of those people actually like this stuff?
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One of the foundations of the Extreme Programming methodology basically reads as such: "Users and Developers are on equal footing". This is basis for many of the practical guidelines of XP. As a developer, I'd like nothing more than to see this happen. As an employee of a large corporation, I'm cursed with knowing this will never happen and thus most aspects of XP will fail. Users (read: managers) don't or can't understand software and consider business concerns at the same time. And when it comes down to it, you know which will suffer first. While I think many of the ideas in XP are good and would like to see the methodology as a whole implemented (even if it's just an expirement), I could readily see some of the management friendly aspects (short release dates) being used to the exclusion of some of the more programmer friendly ones (code review, refactoring). Does anyone else envision this happening?
It seems to me that "mission critical" means that when it does hit the fan, you have some way to account for it. Unfortunately, having Sun or Microsoft to blame is more acceptable from a business standpoint, even if the need for placing such blame becomes more frequent as a result. CEOs, stockholders, etc., are much more comfortable dealing with a huge public company than the open source movement.
So this brings us to a real question: What can Microsoft do before the hoi polloi will even start to look at an alternative OS?
Obviously, a lot of this depends on the alternatives themselves. But let's say, for the sake of arguement, an OS (let's just call it Z) develops via open source and provides all the functionality that MS provides. I know I would switch in a heartbeat, but most non techies wouldn't bother. So what does Microsoft have to do to piss those people off so that they will begin to see alternatives?
Or do some of those people actually like this stuff?