

We Tried Baseball and It Didn't Work - raganwald
http://xprogramming.com/xpmag/jatBaseball

======
raganwald
A parable explaining away all the Agile projects that failed. What I find
interesting about this is that it can just as easily be applied to all the
Bondage and Discipline--pardon me, Big Design Up Front--projects that failed.

Perhaps--and this is pure conjecture--the biggest problem the industry has is
that people rarely take a process or methodology and apply it as written, but
insist on customizing it for their convenience and according to their
conjecture even when they have very little experience with it in practice.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Perhaps--and this is pure conjecture--the biggest problem the industry has is
that people rarely take a process or methodology and apply it as written,"

Hmmm. Perhaps the biggest problem the industry has is that processes and
methodologies are written by people who are poor programmers?

Think about it. No methodology is written by great programmers, great managers
or great product designers. Why _should_ people use them "as written"?

Taking all the "agile" methodologies as an example, All the signatories of the
Agile Manifesto put together never coded up _any_ great software. The same
applies for CMMi or RUP or whatever.

XP starts from a _failed_ project at Chrysler. They are essentially process
consultants who are good at thinking up processes. Implementing their
reccomendations "as written" would be insane, just as trying to run a company
as per the prescriptions in latest management fad book as written would be
insane.

Come to think of it there are similarities to management books. Comparatively
few of them are written by great businessmen. Most of them have written by
people who've never run a business in their lives.

I don't get it. Logically no one should pay any attention to such
methodologies or books. But people do, to the point where software
methodologies and "Who moved My cheese" books are multi billion dollar
industries.

~~~
gchpaco
Ward Cunningham has "never coded up any great software"? Ever used a Wiki?
Hypercard? Kent Beck "never coded up any great software"? Ever used JUnit? Oh,
but those are too small to be great, I'm sure.

XP is not great for a lot of things and a lot of people; it demands a lot from
folks, and especially a lot from management, which causes problems in
implementation. The on-site customer, which is _important_ , is a constant
stumbling block. They may have fiddled with it since, but the XP I remember
watching take shape on the original C2 Wiki was very simple, sometimes to the
point of being obvious, and not especially flexible within its bounds. But I
give it a lot of credit for a lot of things--the current culture of unit
testing grew out of that, and simple, incomplete but useful testing libraries
have done more to help than anything else I can remember in the last ten
years.

~~~
plinkplonk
I thought HyperCard was created by Bill Atkinson, but hey maybe Ward did write
it and he DOES deserve credit for WIki and I was wrong to lump him with the
rest.

The seventeen signatories of the Agile Manifesto The were: Kent Beck, Mike
Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler,
James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian
Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland and Dave
Thomas.

Who among these (aside from Ward) has contributed original/brilliant software?
Most of them are good communicators and developers of average skill.

I have used JUnit I don't think it is particularly mind blowing software, just
as I don't think Java is a particularly great language. Your opinions differ
obviously. So yes, as heretical as it may sound to your ears, I consider Kent
Beck only a so so programmer. You should read his book "Test Driven
Development By example" to see a sample of his terrible code and "design"
sense. Compare it with something like "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence
Programming" or "C interfaces and Implementation" to see how _great_ software
design is done.

I'll burn at the stake for such blasphemous beliefs to be sure, but that's ok.

All that said it is interesting to note that Ward is the least strident is
marketing his methods as a methodology or claiming that XP/agile is the
ultimate way to develop software. The loudest are people like Bob Martin and
Ron Jeffries, who are the least impressive as programmers. Ken Scwaber is the
man behind the Scrum scam.

So my hypothesis still holds. The very best _programmers_ don't set themselves
up as methodology consultants, even within the ranks of the methodology
consultants. ;-)

"But I give it a lot of credit for a lot of things--the current culture of
unit testing grew out of that, "

If you think unit testing didn't exist before XP, you are wrong. Good
programmers have ALWAYS unit tested their code, well before Java or JUnit. And
a lot of people think XP is utter hogwash. The strength of _your_ belief in
its goodness doesn't counter that.

~~~
hboon
No idea about his programming skills, but I have read Kent Beck's Smalltalk
Best Practice Patterns and it is pretty useful and it was often recommended to
both Smalltalkers and non-Smalltalkers.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-Best-Practice-Patterns-
Kent/...](http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-Best-Practice-Patterns-
Kent/dp/013476904X) (it's not a gang-of-four-type patterns book, more like a
style guide.)

------
ams6110
I've seen this happen time and again, where developers or project managers
will decide to "improve" some part of the clients business process rather than
just do what they were asked to do. It's almost a "we know better than you"
attitude.

And they then don't understand why the clients are unhappy with the system
when it is delivered.

------
plinkplonk
If the man could code as well as he writes these pseudo parables...

------
Semiapies
This is downright Swiftian...if Swift had spent his most famous bit of satire
rambling about prices for beef at Irish butcher shops he'd visited.

It's a nicely written bit of prose, but as satire, it's very weak. He doesn't
seem to so much reference actual targets' arguments and cast the other side as
ridiculous as throw out the central "They're dumb, and they don't get it!"
claim and reiterate that at increasingly odd and tenuous length.

I don't have a dog in this fight, so maybe it's just a matter of a piece not
meant for anyone but those who already cleave to his POV on the issue.

------
mkfort
I thought the article was about Cricket

~~~
plinkplonk
"I thought the article was about Cricket"

Just replace some words to make it about Cricket.. The post is so content lite
it could be made to be about anything with minor modifications. It says
nothing useful while seeming profound.

~~~
bjclark
He's not trying to sound profound. It is satire.

~~~
plinkplonk
"It is satire."

You might be surprised ;-)

~~~
bjclark
What would I be surprised about? I know the conversation on the mailing list
that spawned it. I've met the guy. It's satire.

------
mattdennewitz
id like to come up with a caring and clever response, but all i can think to
say right now is "you must be doing _something_ wrong."

