Re: PG: Hackers and Painters

[Steve Dekorte <address@hidden>]

On Thursday, May 15, 2003, at 05:17 AM, Zooko wrote:
>  * Extreme Programming
>
> These are three things that some people love and many people hate.  
> I've
> noticed that most of the articles (on ll1 as well as many other forums)
> praising one of these ideas speak from experience.  I tried it, they 
> usually
> say, and it worked well.  Better than I expected, they often add.

I haven't tried XP personally, but I have noticed that every year or so 
there seems to be a new "methodology" that is welcomed and promises to 
deliver where the last one failed. This certainly sells books and 
magazines and perhaps people(who add the appropriate magic words to 
their resumes and learn the new "speak"), but the dogmatic adoption of 
the specifics of each new methodology makes me suspicious.

As an overall pattern, I've noticed that like technology itself, 
productive ways of organizing work seem to be moving towards ever 
greater decentralization. (blueprint -> iterative,  large team -> small 
team, vertical de-integration) Perhaps it would be more productive to 
follow this trend to it's natural conclusion instead of incrementally 
removing one false assumption at a time from current paradigms.

Cheers,
Steve
Io, a small language: http://www.iolanguage.com/