Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining • Hacker News Board

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#91

Post by Silhouette » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 5:47 AM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #89

wpietri wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never argued that "no-one" encountered those ideas, and your repeated exaggeration of my position is frustrating. Nobody in the Agile movement claimed novelty for individual pieces. What was different was the way the pieces went together, and the shift in values and cultural norms that they required. That wasn't purely novel either; the fact that several people invented similar processes at the same time sugge…

I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated with this discussion. I'm afraid I just don't understand what your "main points" are supposed to be, if you think I'm only picking nits with the details. I started this subthread with some fairly black-and-white statements about the relative timing of good practices being adopted, Agile taking off, and less proven practices entering the picture: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…

> I found a comment on Martin Fowler's personal web site claiming that Kent Beck coined the term "refactoring" in the mid-'90s, for example

No, I didn't. Sorry. I had read something similar in several other places, and when I did a search (since Fowler's site itself was blacked out) the resulting excerpt was truncated in a critical place that made it look like the above was true. Still, there are plenty of people who have claimed that the Agile movement originated ideas like refactoring in on-line forums and the like, so aside from setting the record straight regarding Fowler's site, my original point stands.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#92

Post by Silhouette » Thu, Jan 19, 2012, 5:51 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #90

Silhouette wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not claiming TDD as something widespread before Agile. I'm claiming TDD as something unproven that the Agile consultants started mixing in later. (Please see the list in my second post to this thread.)

For the third time: you are incorrect about the history. Test-first development was created by working programmers as part of Extreme Programming before the term "Agile" even existed.

I'm not necessarily disputing that, though I note that you have changed from TDD to merely test-first development, which I don't think is the same thing.

My point is that TDD, like several of the other practices in XP that do seem to have originated with those people during that time period, is to this day not proven as any better practice than the alternatives.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#93

Post by jt2190 » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 12:41 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #47

jt2190 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make a political speechwriter proud, which didn't actually say anything at all about the prac…

I don't notice any hesitation from those "seasoned developers" when it comes to advocating specific practices elsewhere. According to Bob Martin, if you don't do TDD you're not even professional, for example.

Yes that's what I was implying. (I guess I wasn't clear enough.) If Bob Martin said something like that, and he couldn't list even _one_ case where TDD wasn't the best approach, I'd question whether he had fully thought out the problem.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#94

Post by Silhouette » Sun, Jan 22, 2012, 3:55 AM UTC

jt2190 wrote: post #93

Silhouette wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't notice any hesitation from those "seasoned developers" when it comes to advocating specific practices elsewhere. According to Bob Martin, if you don't do TDD you're not even professional, for example.

Yes that's what I was implying. (I guess I wasn't clear enough.) If Bob Martin said something like that, and he couldn't list even _one_ case where TDD wasn't the best approach, I'd question whether he had fully thought out the problem.

Bob Martin has said exactly that, without any kind of qualification at all, on many occasions over the past year or two.

Then again, this is the same man who doesn't think there are any more kinds of programming language left to be invented.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#95

Post by dcsobral » Tue, Jan 24, 2012, 1:28 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #24

Assuming facts not in evidence error at line 1: Presumption that Agile ever ascended. The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make a…

Citation needed.

Please provide studies to the effect that the practices you consider "proven" are, indeed, effective and references to the fact that they were widely adopted before the agile movement.

Because, so far, you've drawn a line based on personal opinions -- actually, just your own personal opinion -- about what's effective and what's not, what was common practice and what was not, said everything effective was common and everything not common is unproven, and then, based on this edifice or your own single opinion, declared that the agile movement didn't improve anything.

I'm very impressed with how much you deduced from your own thoughts, which means you are probably omniscient. In that case, you'll have no trouble providing actual evidence backing your statements.