How many of you are Extreme Programmers?

[Peter Hansen]

Mike Brenner wrote:
> 
> Most of the previous answers stated that they
> do the continual and thorough testing portion of XP.
> 
> Continual and thorough testing was not new to
> XP, and XP did not invent that. We, too, do a lot of that.

It's been pointed out, and repeatedly, and usually by the XP
practitioners themselves (and certainly by those who "formulated"
the approach) that there's nothing new in XP.  XP merely draws
on excellent practices that have been used, sometimes in 
isolation, on other projects and in other methodologies.  If
anything, it's merely the mix which is new.

Note, however, that TDD itself appears to be largely a novel
idea.  I've seen at least one person claim to have done it himself
in the past many years ago, but I've also seen psychics claim 
to have predicted major world events only _weeks_ after they 
actually occurred...

> To be Xtreme, you also need to overcome the social barriers,
> quite a difficult feat. Getting people to see the advantage,
> for example, of two people working together at all times
> is challenging (to the territorial ego of almost all
> developers).

Although the social aspects are not easy, I reject the idea
that almost all developers have territorial egos.  Territoriality
was by far the *least* significant social issue we encountered
in becoming an XP team.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that 
in most cases (in my experience) people welcome not having to
feel sole responsibility for a given piece of code.  Not always,
but very often.

-Peter