I'm the proud owner of several Kent Beck's books and one in particular is Extreme Programming Explained.
Helpful links: http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming You don't have to follow all the rules and many developers find that they are already doing many of these already: http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html You can easily combine several methods across projects - we find some projects can't obtain the same level of quality upon delivery using XP while others require it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process Specifically at Dialog Medical - we believe strongly in small iterative releases, team work, collective code, standards, and refactoring. Many of these apply itself thru the proper uses of OOP but can easily be applied to even procedural languages such as scripting (ASP, Perl, PHP, etc) and M. Number one turn-off for many is "pair programming" but don't get too scared of it at first. You can try that out last. We do it all the time out of necessity when something "interesting" is being developed. And get the book - it's a great read. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321278658/103-7103296-6167042 Greg, the number one problem with open-source projects is geography, leadership, and teamwork. (I'm sure there's more as I'm not really thinking too hard on this at work). It's hard to just put up a project, give a mission statement, some rough roadmap, and expect a bunch of people to come in and help out. It would require a full-time development manager just to make sure things were getting done and usually the "original author" for OS project is someone with no interest in managing the project full-time. The key difference between an application built in-house and online would be that level of teamwork and leadership. You could work out geography many ways but it's much easier when the infrastructure is provided by your employer. David Sommers, Architect | Dialog Medical -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Greg Woodhouse Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 6:46 PM To: Hardhats Subject: [Hardhats-members] Open source, Vista, and XP (and I don't mean Windows) A very general question: Is Extreme Programming (XP) an appropriate model for open source? With all built in tests, pair programming, and all that, is it even workable? I have never tried consciously to adopt XP as a practice, but many of the principles and practices in XP resonate well with how I like to work as a developer (and how I think I work best). Big open source projects seem hard to fit into this model because of sheer scale and because of the (typically) geographically diverse nature of the development team. On the other hand, I am struck by the lack of attention paid to analysis and design on this list. I also wonder if this is an entirely bad thing -- While I don't believe good software can just organically "evolve" with no clear understanding (on the part of the developers) of what it is supposed to do, I also believe that design is best thought of as an ongoing process and (though the waterfall development model is no longer fashionable), we tend to handcuff ourselves with the "first requirements, then design, and (only) then construction" mentality. I agree with Kent Beck that in his otherwise brilliant "Code Complete" Steven McConnell pushes the construction metaphor too far. Developing software is (or should be) a learning process, and we gain insight into how better to build a piece of software by working on it. It seems fruitless to think that any large problem can really completely understood "up front" before we even begin to create a solution. "The most profound technologies are those that disappear." --Mark Weiser ==== Greg Woodhouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idt77&alloc_id492&op=click _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
