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

(This thread was buried in another thread; I'm trying to transplant it 
to the top level so it gets more exposure.)

Things that have changed for me over the past 20 years:

1) Nobody says "XP" or "Extreme Programming" anymore, even when they're 
doing many of the practices.

2) Developers didn't test 20 years ago. Now unit test suites are 
ubiquitous, and many of them are well-maintained.

3) Everybody's talking about User Stories, which were weird 20 years 
ago. Unfortunately, the tools have taken over the meaning, and I need to 
chant, "The card is a token for an ongoing conversation" over and over. 
Sometimes it gets through.

4) I no longer focus on the practices when I spread them; I just start 
using them when I pair with someone, and they catch on (or don't).  
Maybe I should have specific sessions where I focus on, say, 
refactoring, or TDD.

There's probably more I've forgotten. 1999 was a long time ago.

--George

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
     - Doug Larson

Subject: 	Re: [extremeprogramming] What has changed for you over the 
past 20 years?
Date: 	Tue, 29 Oct 2019 08:39:12 -0700
From: 	Jay Bazuzi <[email protected]>
Reply-To: 	[email protected]
To: 	[email protected]



 From Arlo I heard a story that Corey Haines would experiment with doing 
a project without one of the practices that he normally relied on for 
success. He found that his defect rate was steadily decreasing over 
time, project to project, but when he skipped TDD his defect remained 
the same (he wasn't learning) and when he skipped Refactoring his defect 
rate went up (quality depends on design more than on tests).

That seems to match your experience, JB.

-J

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 7:38 AM J. B. Rainsberger <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

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