Big Words Like Constantinople and TerminationCanBeSuccess


XP grew up in and around the C2 Wiki Web (see http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgrammingRoadmap ). The Wiki is a great idea. It s a way for large and disparate groups of people to collaborate on a single, ever-growing knowledge base, to produce a hyperlinked encyclopedia of their favorite subject. The Wiki s invention is attributed to Ward Cunningham (the granddaddy of XP and mentor to Kent Beck).

XP practitioners sometimes set up their own project Wikis to track user stories and acceptance tests. Wikis are also starting to spill out onto non-XP projects, because of their usefulness as a way of easily creating a collaborative web of pages linked by key phrases or buzzwords .

One of the Wiki s strengths also turns out to be one of XP s odd little idiosyncrasies: the mixed-case hyperlinks . To link to another page on the Wiki, you simply run some words together into a single, mixed-case word, such as SpacesNotAllowed or XPersLoveToEatSnackFood. As long as there s another page with the same name , the Wiki system will create a hyperlink to that page. Pretty cool, huh?

One slightly unfortunate result, however, is that XP culture is now littered with mixed-case slang and acronyms that grew out of the Wiki Web. Some common ones are OnceAndOnlyOnce ( shortened to OAOO ”actually quite a good one ”see http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?OnceAndOnlyOnce ), RefactorMercilessly, YouArentGonnaNeedIt (YAGNI), and DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork. You will often see that last one shortened to DTSTTCPW ”to see this, simply go to http://groups.google.com and search for DTSTTCPW.

You might wonder why this is unfortunate. As with many aspects of XP, this is primarily a taste thing. Either you love the XP culture and revel in it, or you find it slightly annoying and at best tolerate it. With XP s increasing amounts of hype and exposure, it s becoming impossible to ignore.

This aspect of the Extremo culture was initially a tool to help differentiate XP from the other software processes that were around at its birth. Therefore, the Wiki words are stronger and less compromising than the message that XP is really trying to promote. This is a prime case of the parallel Extremo culture being a counterculture to the real ivory-tower XP. Ironically, ivory-tower XP is a lot less extreme than the real-world Extremo culture.

For example, phrases such as YouArentGonnaNeedIt (usually shortened to YAGNI) may be used as a cudgel by XP coaches to prevent the programmers from even thinking about designing ahead for something that isn t needed in the current iteration. Thus, the XP coach has to have an arsenal of short, snappy acronyms that he can throw at his team ”short, sharp medicine to help make the point quickly.

In some teams , this use of uncompromising phrases and acronyms is a necessary practice to keep the XP programmers strictly to the path . This is because (as we previously explored) XP s guidance runs completely contrary to the very foundations of conventional software wisdom. The result is that certain parts of XP go against the grain of most programmers preferred way of working (e.g., not thinking ahead in terms of the design, test-first design, and constant pair programming).

It s great that XP encourages people to think for themselves and to question even the XP teachings, but this could potentially be a real pain for an XP coach faced with a real project, real customers, and real deadlines, who just wants to get the next increment out the door. Thus, real-world XP is at odds with XP s teachings (there s that pesky difference between practice and theory again). There s a certain disconnect between XP as seen in the Addison-Wesley series of books and the Extremo counterculture that has arisen as a reaction, a way for the common programmer to accept and adopt XP in whatever way he or she can.

It has been suggested that XP is mellowing ”it has made the necessary impact to become accepted, respectable even ”and now the Extremos can afford to cut back on the hubris . However, as XP continues to go mainstream, the signs are that the Extremo culture is becoming, if anything, even more extreme. YAGNI, BDUF, DTSTTCPW, and OAOO continue to be shouted across the Internet and across the rooms of real-life XP projects. The very idea of designing something in detail before you code it has become open to ridicule. The inmates have stormed the asylum and taken over.




Extreme Programming Refactored
Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP
ISBN: 1590590961
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 156

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