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Ward Cunningham, Blake Stone offer up insights
At the patterns&practices Summit in Redmond yesterday, new Microsoft employees Ward Cunningham and Blake Stone spoke (for the first time in public since becoming Microsoft employees) about tools, productivity, patterns, and more.
Blake, a former Borland employee deeply involved in the Java community for years, spoke to the ways developers write code, and how tools can provide developer productivity. He also spent a fair amount of time discussing the social behavior of developers, such as how we can incorporate what would otherwise be distasteful practices (like code reviews) in such a way to be palatable to developers (such as via pair programming). He then went on to talk about how, contrary to the popular belief that more lines of code equals more productivity, we should be pursuing tools that remove code rather than generate it.
Ward, meanwhile, spoke about the evolution of the Wiki, the lessons learned from it, patterns in general, and how technology enables simplification when the technology itself doesn't restrict people unnecessarily. In a discussion that seemed very reminiscent of the Naked Objects article that ran here on TheServerSide.NET last month, he pointed out that the more rules you enforce on people, the less they are able to accomplish; the less rules and the more flexibility, the more people can get done.
For more on the patterns & practices Summits, see the p&p Summits home page.
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Message #121801
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Ward Cunningham, Blake Stone offer up insights
Code review is more distasteful than pair programming? You gotta be kidding me! :) Pair programming has got the to be the single most important reason why people reject XP wholesale. XP has some good ideas, like any other process, but the problem is it's way-out extreme, outlandishly extreme :)the more rules you enforce on people, the less they are able to accomplish; the less rules and the more flexibility, the more people can get done. XP is diametrically opposed to this with all its "mandatory" packages and rules.
These guys are smart and have some very good architectural ideas, so I hope they keep their ideological leanings and process dogma out of the way when they offer insights on technologies.
It's like Martin Fowler. While his books are good and useful, on one page he advocates UML and RUP, and on the other page he advocates XP, while the two very contradictory, yet called "agile methodologies". If you embrace one methodology, you're automatically renouncing the principles of the other. That's what happens when someone mixes up technologies/techniques with process BS. The result is meaningless drivel.
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Message #121805
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There is a place for XP
As Dave Thomas says....XP is a ritual Rituals can help certain people... especially beginners. When you are experienced you don't need the ritual to make sure that you do the Right Thing (tm).
Pair Programming is a great technique in my experience.
Dion
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Message #121810
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There is a place for XP
There’s no single best or ideal process for all kinds of projects. Some projects do need a lot of planning, up-front-design, and many artifacts, like data warehousing projects. Some projects call for deep solitary thinking and contemplation, like designing a sound and reusable frameworks or inventing new ways of doing things. Some projects just need routine coding, or implementing a quick feature, or building a lightweight application, and pair-programming in these cases could increase the quality of code, and it makes more economic sense if labor is cheap.
I can stand pair-programming may be a couple of times a month to mentor a beginner or getting mentored by another professional when jump-starting a project that uses technologies/tools that I’m not familiar with. May be also to solve a difficult-to-find bug (but that’s pair- or triple- or quadruple- troubleshooting, not programming). Anything more than that would be too invasive and counter-productive for me.
My biggest beef with XP is that they touted C3 as a spectacular success and a validation of XP’s applicability for large-scale projects. But in reality, it was an abject failure! A total fiasco, and the XPers blamed it on Chrysler instead, where they couldn't do in Smalltalk the same task an ancient COBOL dinosaur was doing
http://www.softwarereality.com
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Message #121835
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Ward Cunningham, Blake Stone offer up insights
To understand any process you have to realize there is no process. Both XP and RUP (more RUP) is supposed to be customized to the project, culture and so on. XP'ers says about XP: They are just rules. If they don't work, fix them. I would never force pair programming to anyone. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
If pair programming is not an option, then you better divide all tasks in no overlapping chunks. You don't want one developer to wait for another to check in the file you are both working on. If that happens a lot, then pair programming is a better investment. If you can't work alone, then spend your time helping someone else to work better.
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Message #121869
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Ward Cunningham, Blake Stone offer up insights
Code review is more distasteful than pair programming? You gotta be kidding me! :) Pair programming has got the to be the single most important reason why people reject XP wholesale. XP has some good ideas, like any other process, but the problem is it's way-out extreme, outlandishly extreme. Ward said something in the TechTalk I filmed with him last week (should go up in a month or so, probably a couple of weeks after TechEd), in that developers are used to being ignored by the people around them. (When's the last time you were telling somebody not in the industry what you do for a living, and they "got it"? Hasn't happened to me in many years.) Pair programming is an opportunity for developers to be listened to, and in Ward's experience, developers find it a welcome change.
Look for the TechTalk--I think XP's basic message got distorted over the years. Ward certainly gave me a bunch more insights to think about in our interview, and here I thought I had a pretty good grip on XP to begin with. :-)
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Message #121910
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There is a place for XP
I think you as a project manager, team lead will not use any of them but kind of plug and play different methodologies (agile or non-agile per se) and decide what to use when on the project and people you are working with. Every software problem requires a different solution there are some best practices, proven methodologies out there and success stories but they are not the rule book and the approach should be to pick out the best thing that works the project and team.
Pair programming is a great tool for learning and knowledge transfer, some produce better results and some are loner when it comes to programming so again pick and choose. RUP has its advantages of design and architectural process but XP will always a winner for a short project. I think people has some political issues while adopting to XP as it for one is (was) out of the box thinking, it diverges from the way software was developed and takes more practical approach for smaller teams and projects.
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Message #121916
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Ward Cunningham, Blake Stone offer up insights
Pair programming is an opportunity for developers to be listened to, and in Ward's experience, developers find it a welcome change. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "listened to".
I think this is a very sorry execuse for pair-programming. If a developer is asocial or recessive to start with, nothing in the world will make him open up to other people, not even "pair bedding" :)
I don't need a fella to breathe heavily on my shoulder and watch me for hours to be able to open up and get myself heard. There are a lot of people I'd rather NOT open up to.
If opening-up is making yourself heard from management, then peer-programming won't work. If opening-up means making social relationships with other people, then thank you I don't need eight hours a day to be to do so.
It never ceases to amaze me how XP priests keep spewing out BS about psychology, religion, philosophy, and now sociology.
They used to pathologize someone for not practicing pair-programming as social dysfunctional. Now they're promotoing as the cure to his social ailments.
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Message #121920
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There is a place for XP
Dude, pair-programming, as advocated by XPers, is nothing more than a technique for coverting a creative development team to a bunch of cheap sweat-ship idiots.
No wonder why XP fits hand-in-glove with offshore outsourcsing.
XP is alien to Western individualistic culture.
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Message #122125
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There is a place for XP
"Dude, pair-programming, as advocated by XPers, is nothing more than a technique for coverting a creative development team to a bunch of cheap sweat-ship idiots."
As someone who sees the successes of pairing every day, I find that pretty funny :-). Sad, but funny.
Jim
ThoughtWorks
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Message #122144
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There is a place for XP
Good! I'm happy for you. I mean whatever makes you feel comfortable and more productive, right? If you like peer programming, go ahead, pair! If you don't like it, you don't have to do it.
But don't impose it on people who don't like it, else pathologize them as social misfits and bad apples if they don't.
I bet if a good team like that of ThoughtWorks worked using any mainstream methodology, they would perform as good, if not better. There's nothing special about XP, except that it's a toadying system to corporate bosses to convert respectable human beings into cattle and cram them into sweat shops to make sure they're on leash, "don't fool around", and very expendable. This is why managers buy into it, the same way they buy into offshore outsourcing. It's one more step into reducing humans into faceless corporate assets, and this is why people who encourage the humanity and creativity of teams, like DeMarco and McConnell, don't like XP.
Anyway, sorry if I'm offending some people here. I know this is a very touchy issue for some and involve a lot of politics and religion. And I know this is a never-ending debate between XP proponents and opponents, so I'm stopping here. I guess the "eXtreme" in XP can also be applied to its adoption patterns: you either like it very much, or hate it even more.
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Message #122175
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There is a place for XP
There's nothing special about XP, except that it's a toadying system to corporate bosses to convert respectable human beings into cattle and cram them into sweat shops to make sure they're on leash, "don't fool around", and very expendable. This is why managers buy into it, the same way they buy into offshore outsourcing. It's one more step into reducing humans into faceless corporate assets
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Message #122178
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There is a place for XP
There's nothing special about XP, except that it's a toadying system to corporate bosses to convert respectable human beings into cattle and cram them into sweat shops to make sure they're on leash, "don't fool around", and very expendable. This is why managers buy into it, the same way they buy into offshore outsourcing. It's one more step into reducing humans into faceless corporate assets Sorry about the misfire in the last message. I've never heard anyone complain about pair programming in this vein :). Usually it's the corporate bosses saying "Why in the world would I want two resources on one computer???".
Haven't you read the forty hour week rule? I felt far more human with that in place than working 80-100 hour weeks at those waterfall shops.
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Message #122184
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There is a place for XP
I’m happy for you. Like I said before: whatever makes you tick.
But XP fanatics want to impose their dogma on others and force them to follow their narrow-minded strictures. Let people be, man!
Some people actually enjoy their jobs and don't mind spending extra hours. Other people are more productive working late and waking up late. I don't blame XPers for minuite hoarding.
XP hijacks your flex time and imposes bureaucratic constraints on you. It’s against human nature and unhealthy. It forces two human beings to interact with an interface designed for one.
I want freedom to innovative and think creatively. I don’t want to be shackled with a fella eight hours a day. XP is gay ;)
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Message #122244
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There is a place for XP
"There's nothing special about XP, except that it's a toadying system to corporate bosses to convert respectable human beings into cattle and cram them into sweat shops to make sure they're on leash, "don't fool around", and very expendable"
Etc etc. Wow. You really believe that crap. Well, since I got my implant I can't think of a cogent response to such paranoid nonsense, so I'll just go about my business. My pair's waiting for me. Coming, darling!
Jim
ThoughtWorks
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