ok - devil's advocate: Open Workspace - done it. great idea but I want to pick the other programmers who go into the pod with me. Iterations - of course. Retrospective - put some lipstick on this pig.
It all sounds great but what if you don't want to give up your cushy office to sit in a big room with a bunch of lousy programmers explaining things to them all day before a deadline only to see them leave at 4 in the afternoon while you stay 'till 2am to finish the coding. And repeat that every day for 2 months and then watch the pointy haired boss pat them on the back for their hard work. What if I want to telecommute? Many brick and mortar companys have bad programmers that are lazy and just don't care that much about deadlines because nobody ever gets fired. This is a shame since many good programmers are unemployed right now. I totally agree with disposing of much of the formality. Most people get so wound up with formality like the Rational Unified Marathon of processes that they completely forget about a little something called "common sense". Here is a typical senario from an IT shop: - let's call it IT shop "X". Use Cases are produced whith complete jiberish straight out of a Rational Rose example which makes absolutely no sense in this particular application. Wasting weeks completing verbose documents that don't even resemble the finished system and never get read by anybody and get lost in the corporate backup of Terabye infinity. Users that scratch their heads while saying "yah. Yah - that makes sense I guess." when you know full well they don't understand a damn word on the document. Why not dum down the use-case so that it actually describes what the system does? I don't think Rational carved their examples in stone. Pointy haired manager gives analyst a pat on the back for producing more than 4 pounds of documents. Programmers code quitely in the corner with the REAL use-cases in their heads. Bad Programmer "C" makes a pretty collage by cut/pasting code from other better programmers. A new IT directive is emailed out: "We will switch technology every 2 months randomly and for no good reason so that we don't get really good at anything and we don't spend too much time building actual applications. Programmer "X" would really like to work with technology "Y" so we will take the highest priority project and announce to the entire company that we will complete this project in half the required time with the completely new technique that nobody knows yet.... and we will do it while blindfolded... and smoking a cigarette. Ready - set - go." You're much better off getting a couple of GOOD programmers to understand the system AND sit in the same room to hammer it out. Down with documentation! Who's with me? (did I say that out loud?) XP sounds great for ideal situations but I don't think some of the practices would fly in all shops. Although I wish I lived in a utopian world where users and IT could get together, share a coke while holding hands and singing Cum-ba-ya. Sometimes it's like trying to bring peace in the Middle East (which I also wish was possible). I can see XP being hyped, mandated, tried, failed, try it again, failed and being dropped for ever like ISO9000. People aren't convinced they have a problem. People know they have a problem, but are afraid to risk doing something different to try to solve it. People know they have a problem, are willing to try to solve it, but misunderstand the problem they are trying to solve. People know they have a problem, are willing to try to solve it, understand the problem, but are constrained to the status quo. Some people are complete idiots without a stitch of common sense. These people will always have problems. ...anyways. It's the programmers that actually get the job done. Managers and users are merely window dressing although we do have to make them happy:-) Disclaimer: The characters of Bad Programmer "C" and Programmer "X" were ficticious. Any similarity to actual programmers is completely coinsidental and should in no way be used to incriminate me. The pointy haired manager is real person and I can give you his address if desired. Here's lookin up your old address, Stan Andrew Hill wrote: >Oh nonsense. We use XP and I can assure you that its not a conspiracy. >Honest! Thats just propoganda put out by bourgeious neo-imperialist >running-dog pig capitalist roaders (who will be first up against the wall >when the revolution comes). > >We like XP so much we use what I like to term 2XP - or double XP. >Like normal XP 2XP involves 40 hour weeks, only we figure if you can get a >lot done in one 40hour week, imagine how much you can get done in 2! So we >have 2 40hour weeks every 7 days. >Instead of wasting 2 programmers on pair programming, with one coding and >one watching, we have one programmer fulling both the watching and the >programming role. (Now whenever my boss asks me why Im just watching the >screen and not doing anything I can reply: "Im doing XP!") > >Seriously though, I dont think I could stand using a method other than XP. >It would be soooo inefficient and slow, and troublesome, and error prone. >How did people survive before XP???? > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Galbreath, Mark [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 03:31 >To: 'Struts Users Mailing List' >Subject: RE: XP (and not the Microsoft kind) > > >XP is a Communist conspiracy. > >-----Original Message----- >From: Cliff Rowley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 2:01 PM > >A bit of off-topic, but it's Friday, so there :) > >Today I read an new article on IBM developerWorks on eXtreme >Programming, in which the author pretty much sorts the wheat from the >chaff in explaining XP, and I am very interested. I'd avoided XP in the >past because all the FUD that surrounds it made it difficult for me to >determine exactly what it was and what it involved without spending a >significant amount of time researching it (time is money!). > >Now I am curious as to who is using XP and how true it is to it's >promise of increased collaboration, increased productivity and more >importantly increased project success rate. > >Being unedjumucated, I have found it difficult in the past dealing with >projects in the various ways I have experienced. I've not had a great >time all in all, with too many horror stories for someone with only 4 >years professional experience. I've found myself asking 'why?' quite a >lot, and I've always wondered if there was a better way. This also has >a lot to do with why I operate as a one man band, and generally try to >avoid 'complicated' development. > >If anyone has any views on XP or any real world world experience with >it, I'd love to hear about it. It appears that XP is being more widely >adopted these days, with JUnit and various other tools available that >support the XP processes. > >The article is here, for anyone interested: >http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-xp0813/?n-j-8152 >-- > >Regards > >------------------------------------------- > Cliff Rowley | [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Software Engineer | www.doctype.co.uk > +44 (0) 1206 514263 | www.cliffrowley.com >------------------------------------------- > > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: ><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >For additional commands, e-mail: ><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: ><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >For additional commands, e-mail: ><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
