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Mastering Programming (2016)

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Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#51

Post by petersellers »

bdcravens wrote: post #33
petersellers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this kind of empty criticism frustrating. Do you have anything constructive to add about this article specifically?

I think the point is that at some point, the "thought leaders" start to lose relevance when they're not day-to-day practitioners. I'm not saying it is or isn't true about Beck (I've always enjoyed listening to him speak), but is critical thinking we should apply to anyone.

That's not critical thinking though, it's fallacious thinking. Whether or not someone is a "thought leader" has no bearing on the quality of the article.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#53

Post by sandofsky »

hyggetrold wrote: post #39
sandofsky wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The initial claim to fame of the XP crowd was the C3 project, an attempt to upgrade Chrystler's payroll system to handle Y2K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... What nobody really talks about is how the project was ultimately cancelled. Reasons for the flop include unclear requirements, and the customer representative resigning due to burnout. That's fine, though many XP proponents sell i…

I thought early Twitter took off in part with help from XP? My understanding was that Jack poached a lot of XP practitioners away from Pivotal Labs to help build both Twitter and Square?

I had a long post written, and I've decided that it probably belongs in a blog post rather than a random Hacker News comment, so I deleted it. But I'll just say no, Twitter is absolutely not an XP success story.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#54

Post by bsder »

Your regular reminder that Kent Beck was part of the Extreme Programming brain trust behind the massive failure that was the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens...

Programming advice from him and his cohorts (Ron Jeffries and Martin Fowler) should be regarded with several large grains of salt.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#55

Post by bdcravens »

petersellers wrote: post #51
bdcravens wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that at some point, the "thought leaders" start to lose relevance when they're not day-to-day practitioners. I'm not saying it is or isn't true about Beck (I've always enjoyed listening to him speak), but is critical thinking we should apply to anyone.

That's not critical thinking though, it's fallacious thinking. Whether or not someone is a "thought leader" has no bearing on the quality of the article.

Would the article have gotten as much traction if it had been written anonymously? If there's an appeal to authority, then an evaluation is appropriate.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#56

Post by doctor_eval »

bsder wrote: post #54

Your regular reminder that Kent Beck was part of the Extreme Programming brain trust behind the massive failure that was the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... Programming advice from him and his cohorts (Ron Jeffries and Martin Fowler) should be regarded with several large grains of salt.

I haven’t heard of C3 before, but I’m a big fan of reading about software project failures, and I’m not a fan of every aspect of XP, so I was certainly curious about this.

That said, the Wikipedia page neither supports nor refutes your assertion, and Fowler himself discusses C3’s failure here: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/C3.html

Fowler refers to notes that don’t seem to be in the Wikipedia entry any more: “In particular the entry in Wikipedia is misleading and incomplete, much of its comments seem to be based on a paper from a determined XP critic whose sources are unclear. Certainly its comments on performance are a misleading interpretation of material in my Refactoring book.”

Do you have any other links to this project? The fact that it went live and then reverted to the COBOL version is interesting.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#57

Post by petersellers »

bdcravens wrote: post #55
petersellers wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not critical thinking though, it's fallacious thinking. Whether or not someone is a "thought leader" has no bearing on the quality of the article.

Would the article have gotten as much traction if it had been written anonymously? If there's an appeal to authority, then an evaluation is appropriate.

Where is the appeal to authority? I'm not seeing it.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#58

Post by whstl »

doctor_eval wrote: post #56
bsder wrote: post #54

Your regular reminder that Kent Beck was part of the Extreme Programming brain trust behind the massive failure that was the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... Programming advice from him and his cohorts (Ron Jeffries and Martin Fowler) should be regarded with several large grains of salt.

I haven’t heard of C3 before, but I’m a big fan of reading about software project failures, and I’m not a fan of every aspect of XP, so I was certainly curious about this. That said, the Wikipedia page neither supports nor refutes your assertion, and Fowler himself discusses C3’s failure here: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/C3.html Fowler refers to notes that don’t seem to be in the Wikipedia entry any more: “In part…

There is some discussion in C2 by the people involved about whether it was a failure or not: http://wiki.c2.com/?HighDisciplineMethodology

I believe the characterization of C3 as a "failure" is because it wasn't able to deliver the goal (goal was paying 87000 people – it only reached about 9000), and was later discontinued for multiple reasons (some unrelated, like people leaving, the merger with Daimler). The claim that "XP was banned" there seems overblown, it seems it's just that "people at DaimlerChrysler stopped taking terms like Smalltalk, OOP and XP" (per link above).

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#59

Post by bsder »

doctor_eval wrote: post #56
bsder wrote: post #54

Your regular reminder that Kent Beck was part of the Extreme Programming brain trust behind the massive failure that was the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... Programming advice from him and his cohorts (Ron Jeffries and Martin Fowler) should be regarded with several large grains of salt.

I haven’t heard of C3 before, but I’m a big fan of reading about software project failures, and I’m not a fan of every aspect of XP, so I was certainly curious about this. That said, the Wikipedia page neither supports nor refutes your assertion, and Fowler himself discusses C3’s failure here: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/C3.html Fowler refers to notes that don’t seem to be in the Wikipedia entry any more: “In part…

I suspect I have some cached references, but I would have to go dig a presentation out of my backups.

Unfortunately, all parties involved in the C3 project would rather that it be forgotten. As such, it seems that it is going down the memory hole even faster than most Internet things. :(

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#60

Post by pavel_lishin »

GMoromisato wrote: post #38

I was ready to crap all over this--I've seen so many of these kind of posts--but this was (IMHO) quite good. There's a ton of (as the kids say) alpha in each of the bullet points. I can't say that I practice all or most of these habits, but the points about "calling your shots" and "concrete hypotheses" resonate. For example, when I add a debugging printf/log, I always ask myself, "will this output invalidate one or…

> There's a ton of (as the kids say) alpha in each of the bullet points.

Come on, I know I'm about to hit 40, but slang can't be evolving that fast! How am I supposed to be keeping up with all the kids?

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