[Teeboo]

All spoken brilliantly as someone who has not seen the nuance beyond the post. The Facebook note was written by Kent Beck, father of eXtreme Programming (XP) and original Agile manifesto signatory.

He is not saying follow this methodology because a company made money.

Invert your thinking; he is saying the majority of companies that utilise the following values and techniques have far fewer failed projects and deliver far more projects to scope, meeting customer requirements in a suitable timeframe.

To say that this man needs to consider other approaches is akin to saying Muhammad Ali should have considered other boxing styles ;-)

[plinkplonk]

The man created a methodology [1]. That is wonderful but (imo) it doesn't give him the chops or credibility to tell other people how to program or solve problems.

Think about it.

Does Grady Booch (builder of yesterday's, now forgotten methodology) have some kind of special wisdom to dispense? If not why does Kent Beck? "Mastering" Programming, heh.

That said, sure no one can argue against such 'motherhood and applepie' statements at such a high level of abstraction.

Here is one from me "Think about what you do and act accordingly". you are saying "well duh?"? Exactly my reaction to this pablum.

Not sure any of these aphorisms are particularly relevant in practical work. Still, whatever makes people happy. If you find these useful, good for you.

[1] Not ignoring his work on JUnit which I used extensively when I used to work in Java. Of all the agile gurus, I respect Kent the most, because he has actually written useful code. Just playing devil's advocate a bit..

[wpietri]

> If not why does Kent Beck? "Mastering" Programming, heh.

He is also the person who (re-)originated test-driven development. And his day job for the last few years has been mentoring Facebook's new engineers.

And you ignore that he answered your question in the first paragraph of the piece. You might agree or disagree with his explanation, but ignoring it just looks sloppy.

[plinkplonk]

"From years of watching master programmers, I have observed certain common patterns in their workflows. From years of coaching skilled journeyman programmers, I have observed the absence of those patterns. I have seen what a difference introducing the patterns can make."

Is this the paragraph? I fail to see how such self declarations of uber competence and self labeling as "master programmer" should be accepted by others on his say so. Sure he originated/pushed TDD.(and what happened to that project on which all these 'masters' worked?) You seem to think it is a good practice, worthy of elevating Kent to 'master'. Which is fine I don't.

If his day job is to train FB engineers, and he enjoys it, good for him. If Facebook needs its engineers thus 'leveled up' by TDD etc, good for them. It is a free market.I have no quarrel with any of this.

However in my experience, the very best programmers (in any subfield of programming - Linus/Carmack/whoever, or even very good anonymous programmers working on simple CRUD systems) don't go around calling themselves 'master programmers',putting themselves at the top of imagined pyramids, or offering pithy aphorisms about how they can 'coach' other 'journeyman'(and so lesser skilled as compared to 'master' programmers) into 'mastery' by following "patterns".

This is just standard agile coach/methodologist talk. If someone calls himself a 'master' programmer, he better have world class code/coding skills on a consistent basis to back it up. Methodology religion propagation doesn't cut it (imo, ymmv and that is all right).

[wpietri]

You are not so good with the reading. In that paragraph, he does not claim that he is a master. He claims that he has watched master programmers.

[plinkplonk]

He claims he coached 'skilled journeymen' programmers.

The 'master - journeyman-apprentice' pyramid jargon is part of the 'software craftsman' movement. In this structure, 'masters' train 'journeymen' who serve an 'appreniceship' and help them breakthrough into 'mastery. Lots of jargon from the old guild structures.

So Kent is implicitly (imo) claiming to be a 'master'. At the least he is claiming to better than "talented journeymen" engineers at FaceBook.

That said, I grant you he may be using the words without that implication. Not likely, but possible.

Whatever. All these agile/methodology guru types like to pass themselves off as skilled programmers without any supporting evidence and should be (imo) ignored totally when they pontificate about how others should program etc

YMMV. That's fine. Peace. Out.

[wpietri]

He is claiming to be a coach. Coaches don't have to be master players to be good coaches. The rest is stuff you are making up because you have an axe to grind.

Which, fine, grind your axes. But maybe you could stick to ranting about what people have actually done and written rather than just barking about things you imagine. For somebody very concerned about the credibility of others, you aren't working very hard on your own.

[jondubois]

Except we don't all do boxing and we aren't all Muhammad Ali. But some of us may be masters of our craft nonetheless.

These 'guidelines' would mean very little to someone who programs microcontroller chips - Not saying these guidelines aren't useful, but in some environments there are more important aspects like will my program fit in flash memory? Do I have time to refactor this code or should I just patch it quickly and work on something more urgent/important?

[AnimalMuppet]

> These 'guidelines' would mean very little to someone who programs microcontroller chips

I program embedded systems, which is pretty close. I still thought that the guidelines were spot on.