Martijn Veken


Just having
some fun with .NET

Agile Panic

These days it looks like that you have to be Agile to be a good developer. Agile is the magic word and everybody wants to "do it". The reason for this can be found in the failure of traditional methods, but I think also because of the fact that you can send a Big Design to a low cost country.

But altough many developers want to be Agile, a lot of (project) managers still think that putting two developers behind one computers will double the cost of their project. So developers are looking for ways to implement some agility in their projects and TDD and refactoring appear to be the #1 victims in this process. But because of the fact that they're "doing" agile in a mostly traditional environment these implementations are not quite what the founding fathers of the agile ways had in mind. They are becoming somewhat the victims of their own success and this is causing them to panic.

Yesterday I was reading a post by Paul Gielens, who was having a discussion with Frans Bouma about refactoring and the cost of it. These guys where talking about some real life scenario's in which most of us have to work these days. The discussion got picked up by the XP-group on Yahoo and was brought there by (INETA speaker) Sam Gentile. Looking down from his tower Sam saw that it was necessary to slam down the .NET community who were trying to drag and drop a faulty implementation of refactoring into their projects. After this Sam also complains about his hard life in a world with .NET. At the end, Sam makes a sort of excuse to Paul and Frans, but in my opinion the harm has already been done.

I do think that agile methodologies will help us to build better software in the end (although I have never seen a real life agile project). If the agile and XP communities want their methodologies picked up in the right way, they will have to do better than just telling us that we're all wrong. Rather than that, help us with ways to implement it gradually and gentile (sorry about that ;-) into our environments. Doing it all at once will not work/happen for 95% of the projects.

Posted: Tue, Dec 6 2005 8:03 AM by Martijn Veken | with 8 comment(s) |
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Comments

Dan Bunea said:

A small introduction to Test Driven Development: http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/danbunea/archive/2005/12/07/10480.aspx .

I hope this is my small contribution today to make agile practices easier to grasp.

Thanks,
Dan
# December 7, 2005 6:05 AM

Martijn Veken said:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for that, I posted my comment on your page.

Regards,

Martijn
# December 7, 2005 10:49 AM

SamGentile said:

I think your post has a number of issues for me.
>These days it looks like that you have to be >Agile to be a good developer. Agile is the magic >word and everybody wants to "do it".
I have been doing XP since 1995 when I was part of the original XP people on the Wiki. I do it because the 17 years of RUP like methods didn;t work for me before it. I don't do it because its cool or the "new" thing.

>These guys where talking about some real life >scenario's in which most of us have to work >these days.
And I don't? I have posting for 6 weeks now on a REAL WORLD Agile project that is building a large Financial app with Agile techniques and have attempted to balance my posts with good and bad.

>Looking down from his tower Sam saw that it >was necessary to slam down the .NET community
Just what tower is that Martijn?? I don't real work because I am an INETA speaker? See above. I am on a real world project and I have written hundreds of thousands of lines of code with Agile techniques since 1995. This is totally uncalled for.

>ooking down from his tower Sam saw that it was >necessary to slam down the .NET community who >were trying to drag and drop a faulty >implementation of refactoring into their >projects.
Its a slam to say that many people in the .NET community are behind their Java counterparts when it comes to Patterns, Refactoring, etc? Its not ok to have an opinion? BTW, its an opinion shared by many speakers, Microsoft Architect evangelists and many .NET developers that I talk to. Thats why I try to help being an INETA speaker to share what little I know and keep learning as well.

>ut in my opinion the harm has already been >done.
What damage is that now? Be specific. I have devoted many hours in my life trying to help people and very few speak like you do. Please enlighten me on how I caused "harm?" People who write things on their *public* blogs should expect to have things challenged especially when they make blanket statements about Refactoring just like people challennge me when I write things.

I would like to understand your viewpoint as Frans and I are fine.
# December 7, 2005 4:25 PM

Martijn Veken said:

>I have been doing XP since 1995 when I was part of the original XP people on
>the Wiki. I do it because the 17 years of RUP like methods didn;t work for me
>before it. I don't do it because its cool or the "new" thing.
I was not refering (specificly) to you with this opening sentence, nor am I
doubting your motivation on using agile methods. I know that XP is not new,
but I notice a general tendency among developers lately that we have to be agile.

>And I don't? I have posting for 6 weeks now on a REAL WORLD Agile project that
>is building a large Financial app with Agile techniques and have attempted to
>balance my posts with good and bad.
I was not tempted to read your blog based on your comments in the XP group, but
I've done that now. I must say that is a good read and indeed gives a balanced
view on the subject.

>Just what tower is that Martijn?? I don't real work because I am an INETA speaker?
>See above. I am on a real world project and I have written hundreds of thousands
>of lines of code with Agile techniques since 1995. This is totally uncalled for.
I think that more people are in the situation that they are not free to choose the
methodology they want to use. A lot of people have to deal with the situation they
are in and make the most of it. That was what I was refering to with "real life".
I was not implying that you're work is not. If I've done so in your opinion, I
hereby make my apologies.

>Its a slam to say that many people in the .NET community are behind their Java
>counterparts when it comes to Patterns, Refactoring, etc? Its not ok to have an
>opinion? BTW, its an opinion shared by many speakers, Microsoft Architect evangelists
>and many .NET developers that I talk to. Thats why I try to help being an INETA
>speaker to share what little I know and keep learning as well.
The content of your posts in the XP-group was not as moderate as what you are saying
here. There are bad Java and bad .NET developers (perhaps more), but you don't have
to call every .NET developer stupid. Especially your posts in this group are
(in my opinion) high of the tower. Where replies to your posts try to deal with the
subject of the cost of refactoring, all your posts are about the stupidness of .NET
developers.

>What damage is that now? Be specific. I have devoted many hours in my life trying
>to help people and very few speak like you do. Please enlighten me on how I caused
>"harm?" People who write things on their *public* blogs should expect to have things
>challenged especially when they make blanket statements about Refactoring just like
>people challennge me when I write things.
The "harm" is that instead of trying to "enlight" .NET developers on how they should
do things (at least in these posts), you push them away by calling them stupid. I'm
not familiar with your everyday work so I've no further opinion on that.

>I would like to understand your viewpoint as Frans and I are fine.
I do not know both of you personally nor have I knowledge of your personal relation.
I'm just observing things from the outside and giving my opinion. But I'm glad you
replied, because this gives people a view from both sides. So, thanks for it.
# December 8, 2005 1:01 AM

Martijn Veken said:

<HUMBLE MODE>
Hmm.... well it appears that not knowing Sam Gentile is a flaw on my side. He is all over the internet and very well respected. Next time I'll be more careful in selecting people I write about ;-)
</HUMBLE MODE>
# December 8, 2005 2:28 AM

Dennis van der Stelt said:

>Just what tower is that Martijn?? I don't
>real work because I am an INETA speaker? See
>above. I am on a real world project and I
>have written hundreds of thousands of lines
>of code with Agile techniques since 1995.
>This is totally uncalled for.

Because you're an INETA speaker and wrote hundreds of thousands of lines of code, doesn't mean you can't be a total ass. That's not ment offensive, because I have no idea if you are. But you replied because you think you were offended in Martin's post, and that is exactly what you have been doing the last posts in [XP] and/or [TDD].

Remember my post here as well? Where you said I could not have been any further of the mark? Where a few posts later, Ron Jeffries agreed with me. I think Ron has been around for a while as well.

Later the Paul Gielens Refactoring post came around and you started a complete new thread on how stupid the .NET community is.

Now _THAT_ is offensive and looking down from the tower, in my point of view. And yes, you've appologized on XP about the refactoring thing. But the statements are logged forever.

Now again, I have no idea who you are, neither does Martijn. And perhaps even the sum of our experiences doesn't add up to 17 years, but we're trying hard to do the best we can. And yes, we make mistakes. But from our mistakes we learn. As you said in your reply, after 17 years of RUP you chose Agile. We did Waterfall because we didn't know anything else. Know we say RUP and Agile and try to learn. Just don't call us stupid. But _DO_ tell us where we are wrong, so we can learn!!!

Me personally, I will stick around on [XP] for a long time, hopefully. I'm learning a lot over there. Even from you, Sam :) So I hope we can continue to learn from eachother and hopefully in 10 years or so, we can tell others what to do. Hopefully some time sooner.
# December 8, 2005 4:51 AM

SamGentile said:

I appreciate your comments back Mattijn and Dennis.
>but you don't have
>to call every .NET developer stupid. Especially >your posts in this group are
>(in my opinion) high of the tower. Where replies >to your posts try to deal with the
>subject of the cost of refactoring, all your >posts are about the stupidness of .NET
>developers.

Lets please not rewrite history. I *never* *ever* called all .NET Developers "stupid." Let the record be very clear. I have the XP post right in front of me. I clearly said "stupid drag and drop demos" and I stick by it 100%. Too many speakers give "stupid" drag and drop demos and gloss over the many *real* issues in Enterprise development. Please look at that post again. It does not say that .NET developers are stupid but "lack of
knowledge and depth of these things, Patterns and many things that I find
that Java programmers, well, just know." I stand by that. The community needs to be uplifted away from the arguments of C# vs. VB, and many such things to get on to the meat. It is just a maturity thing. The .NET community has been around far less than the Java community and is just starting to evolve best practices, architectural and methodology disucssions. Thats all I am trying to point out and encourage people to reach deeper.

Again, I stand by what I said and don't find it offensive or looking down from the tower. What I do find is that could have put in a better way and been nicer about it all-)). I thank you for that feedback and I will adjust my presentation and discussion skills.

Yes, my personal belief is that everyone is always doing the best that they could personally do at a given time with what they have. I do not in any way believe that they/you are wrong for that. I will try to re-frame my arguments for Agile in that light.
# December 8, 2005 5:21 AM

Martijn Veken said:

>Lets please not rewrite history. I *never*
> *ever* called all .NET Developers "stupid."
Hmmm... well I do remember reading it somewhere between te lines, but apology accepted ;-)

>The community needs to be uplifted away from the arguments of C# vs. VB
I would really miss that, it's always food for a good laugh. But maybe we should look more at looking for ways to get rid of the "old" Java vs. C# discussion. You can do about the same things in both environments and looking from a methodology point of view there is no real difference. So indeed, lets go on to the meat and stop judging people on the environment they program in.

I think that we indeed should settle it with Dennis' remark that we can all learn from each other.

# December 8, 2005 5:52 AM
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