Re: PG: Hackers and Painters and squishy phrases

[Zooko <address@hidden>]

 Noel Welsh <noelwelsh@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 1.  XP terminology is full of squishy phrases [...]

Indeed, I steadfastly ignored XP for years because of the irritating packaging 
(starting with the name itself).  But as soon as I picked up _Extreme_ 
_Programming_Explained_ by Kent Beck, I was thrilled to discover a system 
which integrated ideas that I had already adopted on my own with other ideas 
that I was just beginning to seriously consider.

Unfortunately (?), there is not yet any translation of XP from enthusiastic 
and colorful advocacy into dry and standardized industrial prose.  Therefore, 
the way to make a good value judgment about XP is is to first suspend judgment 
while you give it a hearing on its own terms.

I strongly recommend this book, _Extreme_Programming_Explained_.  It is cheap, 
short, and fun, and it presents a comprehensive picture of the practice.  XP 
is more than the sum of its parts, and the book focusses on this fact.  
Mailing list discussions, web pages, and magazine articles will mislead you 
about what XP offers by presenting only part of the picture.

There is much harmony between XP (or "agile practices" in general) and 
lightweight programming languages, and most readers of this list will 
recognize some of the practices in XP as practices that they long ago chose 
for themselves.

By the way, I don't make any money advocating XP.  I spend most of my time 
taking care of my two-year old boy, and I occasionally make money with 
programming and security consulting.  The only lightweight language that 
I have yet managed to make money with is Python [*].

Regards,

Zooko

[*] I mean "lightweight" here in terms of the drag it exerts on my development 
process, not on my CPU.

http://zooko.com/
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