[extremeprogramming] What has changed for you over the past 20 years?

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 3:16 PM Ken Auer <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Thanks, JB,
>
> I was surprised.  Let's see what happens.  The timing is interesting as I
> was just recently prompted to dig out some old articles/papers I've written
> and have some reflective time to publish updates... what is timeless since
> the early 2000s and what has evolved (at least for me).
>

This leads to a wider discussion regarding what has changed for you as an
XP enthusiast and practitioner over the years. I'd like to keep the
question wide open, so don't hold back.

I recently experimented with evolutionary design without tests and I found
it enjoyable and illuminating.

I worked with a group of 3 people. They wanted to practise microsteps and
to see a design evolve. For 3 hours, I drove while they typed. They
practised the microsteps inside their IDE (elementary refactorings,
keystrokes) and we went through 2 features of one of my teaching examples,
"test"-driven (meaning that we wrote and ran the tests in our heads). It
worked surprisingly well! They got to see some simple design evolve (albeit
with no pressure from tests) and that made them happy. They could more
clearly _see_ the power of evolutionary design, related to being able to
defer commitment and change directions as needs change. We also just went
more quickly than we would have had we written the tests.

Of course, I told them that if we got into trouble, then we'd start writing
tests. Fortunately, we didn't get into trouble in just 3 hours. :)

So it turns out that after a decade or two of practise, one can live
without the tests a surprising amount---at least in some contexts.
-- 
J. B. (Joe) Rainsberger :: https://tdd.training :: http://www.jbrains.ca ::
http://www.thecodewhisperer.com

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