How many of you are Extreme Programmers?

[Michael Chermside]

Christopher writes:
> So how many of you guys use XP processes?

Well, I'm not sure if I qualify or not. I really LIKE most of the points
that XP makes, but I find many of its proponants overly exuberant. I
think exhaustive, automated tests are a wonderful idea. I believe in
refactoring. I think pair programming works very well most of the time.
I think super-short release cycles (with code that grows feature-by-
feature) is a great idea. I think having a customer on-site is extremely
helpful.

I DON'T think that it's wise to just start coding without a bit of design
up front (although one must keep YAGNI in mind). I don't think that using
the code itself as the only documentation (no design docs) works well.
Most of all, I don't like mandating any particular methodology... the
needs vary from project to project and team to team.

But none of that really matters, because I don't get to set the policy
where I work. We don't do unit tests (except for the ones that _I_ write)
because "they would take too long". We deliver functionality in a single
big release. We don't do pair programming except for very brief periods.
Perhaps someday I can change those things, but for now, I don't get to
practice much of this, except in my at-home-on-my-own-time projects
(basically non-existant since my son was born 4 months ago).

-- Michael Chermside