begin quoting Gabriel Sechan as of Sat, Dec 09, 2006 at 02:33:12AM -0600: > >From: Christopher Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Ironically, I also suspect this was one of the reasons why Beck pushed for > >"Extreme" adoption of best practices. By taking out notions of compromise, > >middle ground, etc., you leave little cover for slacking off or breaking > >discipline > > The exact opposite- by pushing everything to the extreme you garuntee that > people will break discipline, because people won't put up with it.
Yeah, with pair programming, there's no time to slack off and play xpilot or minesweeper. [snip] > Throwing out design entirely doesn't work. Getting rid of all foresight > and coding only whats needed in the next week doesn't work. Forcing > everything to be broken into 1 week blocks rarely works. I must have read a different XP book than you; there's design in XP -- but it's not all done at the front. It's just done a bit at a time. I don't agree with the foresight thing (in XP), but I see where it comes from. The other extreme is just as dangerous and often does not work as well. > Pair programming > not only doesn't find more bugs, but it drives the programmers insane. Depends on the programmer. There are programmers that I love to pair-program with. There are others that I don't. And won't. And you're right, it doesn't _find_ more bugs -- but if you have compatible programmers, it *prevents* bugs. Mostly due to greater adherence to discipline (like writing good comments, writing unit tests, choosing good variable/function names, etc.), I think. > Some of the ideas these are based on (unit tests, avoiding the waterfall, > demoing, and code reiews) work well, but not in the insane form XP uses > them. > > Especially pair programming. I'm personally willing to give an awful lot > at least a try, but if you tell me I'm going to have someone standing over > my shoulder all day, I'm quitting on the spot, no 2 week notice. Um, you trade off, y'know. At a minimum, both programmers need to be able to touch-type and also need to be competent in a programmer's editor. It helps if one person is a "morning person" and the other isn't, too. -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
