Teeboo

Perfectly calm. Just eating my popcorn and watching the downvotes on Hacker Reddit.

The same people down voting each comment rather than apply discretion shrug

You are correct, it's just that we wrote down those behaviours and practices used by successful teams and they became the agile values.

It's not self-fulfilling. It's fulfilling.

The same way Doctors wrote down the treatments that worked for patients and it became medicine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHVVKAKWXcg

That's a fair challenge and I can accept I might be over-effusive in my praise.

I am not blindly following it. I think it is sound practical advice given by a titan of engineering.

I have yet to read anything of yours which says why I shouldn't listen to Kent Beck.

For every well respected opinion or technology there is always a group of naysayers. A cadre of individuals who offer nothing of insight in return.

In 1906 John Philip Sousa claimed the phonograph would ruin music. Don't be that guy.

Don't be the guy that says GUI's will never take off, that touchscreen phones will not sell, that the Godfather was a bad movie etc.

You are being contrarian for the sake of it. Kent Beck has a massive canon of work which advances the predictability and success rate of software development. You can challenge bits of it, improve it and contribute.

You are being that guy that makes sweeping generalisations which advance nothing.

What, specifically, do you think needs improved in the OP's article?

I simply searched for the people you referenced and the word Agile. I had no idea your blog would be ranking first page for anti-agile rants.

You find it creepy that you list your twitter profile and you publish an online blog and people then read your Twitter and online blog?

I def believe and am willing to bet a month's salary that you faked those blog comments. I am more sure of it than my own name. We both know you did. It's transparent.

You understand Booch did not write the master programming list referenced by the OP. (No doubt you will edit to remove that erroneous reference but shrug)

Saying Kent Beck, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland etc has not led successful companies or worked in high performance programming teams he he he. That's class.

I hope this post is immortalised :-D

So if Agile is ill-thought out, what is not ill-thought out? By all means, you have the stage...

Not borderline stalker; was just interested in your experience. Was hoping you would blow me away with cutting edge engineering you speak about. shrug

Agile vendors don't tell you how to do your job. They tell you how your job fits within a whole and that whole can be delivered quickly if you play nice with others.

Not surprised you struggle with the concept given your tone. Clearly not a growth mindset and fixated only on your technology.

Nice summary of Booch by the way, neatly side stepping his programming experience and Master's in electrical engineering or his work supporting design patterns. eyeroll

The hate is strong in you.

I would also add, with a little glee, Agile vendors are not going anywhere and you will be listening to them for a long time to come; you know why? Your boss listens to them. Don't be bitter at consultants, the game chose them.

EDIT: Just reviewed your Twitter. It's 2000 tweets of snark and criticism of everything you come across - GoT, other coders, Agile, politics. I doubt we will get anywhere constructive on this thread but my original post remains below.

Original post >>

"Doesn't give him the chops or credibility to tell others how to program or solve problems."

...that cannot be serious. Am actually smiling at that. Also laughing at the idea that modern coders think they have nothing to learn from Grady Booch.

Plinkplonk you are absolutely someone I would never want on my team or contributing to a product I was involved in. Aggressive, combative and dismissive of the precedents that laid the foundations for modern software engineering. You need to mature (my opinion). Your post has not painted you in a flattering light.

But feel free to prove me wrong - in your eyes what DOES give someone the chops to support others with engineering advice? What do they need to have accomplished?

What? Seriously, what?

What argument are you making here? Boxing / Ali was an analogy to demonstrate the widespread respect of the engineering community that KB has earned.

/awkward

To be clear; my post was not about you being boxer.

/awkwardoff

Well luckily there is a book for that ;-)

1996. Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns. Prentice Hall. (ISBN 978-0134769042)

1996. Kent Beck's Guide to Better Smalltalk : A Sorted Collection. Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 978-0521644372)

1999. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. Addison-Wesley. Winner of the Jolt Productivity Award. (ISBN 978-0321278654)

2000. Planning Extreme Programming. With Martin Fowler. Addison-Wesley. (ISBN 978-0201710915)

2002. Test-Driven Development: By Example. Addison-Wesley. Winner of the Jolt Productivity Award. (ISBN 978-0321146533)

2003. Contributing to Eclipse: Principles, Patterns, and Plugins. With Erich Gamma. Addison-Wesley. (ISBN 978-0321205759)

2004. JUnit Pocket Guide. O'Reilly. (ISBN 978-0596007430)

2004. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd Edition. With Cynthia Andres. Addison-Wesley. Completely rewritten. (ISBN 978-0201616415)

2008. Implementation Patterns. Addison-Wesley. (ISBN 978-0321413093)

>> Selected papers

1987. "Using Pattern Languages for Object-Oriented Programs". With Ward Cunningham. OOPSLA'87.

1989. "A Laboratory For Teaching Object-Oriented Thinking". With Ward Cunningham. OOPSLA'89.

1989. "Simple Smalltalk Testing: With Patterns". SUnit framework, origin of xUnit frameworks.

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 ;-)

The average IT hire for a permanent role costs nearly $8,000.*

This includes the use of temp workers, recruitment fees and management time.

If lost productivity is included the figure can be $50K or more.

The reason you think the price of the service is expensive is because

a) You likely haven't had exposure to enterprise organisations spending habits. No shame (see anecdote below).

b) The makers of the service have not put the cost in the proper context for you.

What they should have done is re-stated the cost of a bad hire and given a value statement on the splash page.

"The average cost of hiring the wrong employee is $23,000. Get it right first time with CodeBlimp for $50."

Or

"1 in 3 hired employees never pass their probation period. Use CodeBlimp and make it 1 in always."

Etc

>> Here comes the anecdote: I was a coach at Lean Startup London and some guys had a great product offering. They were current/former Cucumber devs. Amazing engineers and super smart but no idea really how to sell.

They had a cool new service that was ready to go to market that weekend and a salesman joined them during the weekend and Skyped some potential customers.

When a charity senior exec asked them "We love it, how much does your new service retail for?"

They shrugged and said "Ummm $250 a year..?"

The exec looked baffled and said "I literally don't know how to give you such a little amount of money. Do you want my personal credit card?"

The moral is don't underestimate how much businesses will pay.

Tell them the cost and if they don't blink...

...say per user...

If they don't blink again then add...

...per month.

Space is only at a premium because it costs more to have more space.

The real question is "how much space are you willing to sacrifice for energy self-sufficiency?"

In the UK, electric bills hover around $1200 a year for electric/gas households and $2000 a year for full electric.

Renewable households will have a HUGE potential market.

U.K. Residential market is 26 million houses. Theoretical price point of $1500 dollars (one years energy cost) = 39 billion dollar market not including the massive combined secondary services in maintenance, installation training providers, parts, etc.

USA residential would be 6 times that and the provision of renewables to corporates is almost incalculable.

It's an entirely new economic ecosystem divorced from petrochemical.

It a price point higher than $3000 dollars we are getting into a market cap of many trillions worldwide.

This is one of the most optimistic and best things I have read in weeks.

+1

Insightful observation. The quality of the network is eroded by non-human automation.

Elaborate please.

Why is it different?

Great looking landing page, the clarity on the images is particularly good and and it loaded super-fast here in the UK.

The service looks really good too. Good luck gaining traction :-)

But not in this case, the first thing that came to mind was a sufficient rebuttal.

Since you are constantly referencing the legal system you should remember it is the prosecutors role to prove the hypothesis. It is not on the defence to disprove it.

Merely rebutt sufficiently.

You have not made a single compelling argument for not testing coders with the current model.

...and yet soldiers in WW1 and WW2 were subjected to stressful situations lasting years, some of which manifested in mental trauma but many of which actually behaved in the manner required.

My point is; you are neither psychologist nor professional human resources executive search.

Your reasoning for not conducting testing interviews is flawed and can be challenged at every juncture precisely because this is not your area of expertise.

It's not mine either but I am not advocating sweeping policy changes across an entire professional landscape.

If you feel there is a better route; then write up, test it, get it peer reviewed and implement it.

As as we know, engineers are never in stressful situations so no point testing it.

Production never goes down, critical errors don't arise and time-pressure tasks are rare.

No. I freelance and don't have to do any of that.

However, when I was seeking permanent employment I understood that it was not my circus and not my monkey's. I had to jump through the hoops. The same for coding as it was product management as it was for consultancy.

Rather than complain, why not invent a startup that acts as a universal badge of coding ability and is widely accepted as the industry standard for benchmarking technological ability...

The post just screams (once again) "I am a coder you should simply accept my genius and leave me in peace to work."

Law of averages just tells you that there is a bell curve of ability...at least some of the individuals on Hacker News are precisely the individuals that white boarding and puzzles are designed to catch.

I have met some people with degrees, from extremely respected institutions, who I would not let organise the coffee in a startup let alone be involved in serious business tasks.

Likewise, some of the best engineers I have met were self-taught and curious.

Lawyers do not investigate crimes; solving a whodunnit is a terrible comparison.

Plumbers, unlike computer programmers, are typically hired purely by referral or a small amount of marketing. Again, you make a terrible analogy.

A plumber got hired because

A) The risk of a bad plumber is less threatening than the leaking faucet I have right now.

B) a friend said they were a good plumber.

Since JavaScript refactoring is not as pressing as a leaking tap the hirer can take their time and subject you to a rigour out process in order to ensure that the millions of pounds of intellectual property you have access to will be handled in the correct manner.

I agree with the top voted response; the perception is engineers are beginning to whine about everything.

Not you fault, you are just one part of the sum but that sum is sounding more like a spoiled brat than ever before.

Then yeh...HN is not really that kind of space.

Then I apologise for the snark. I thought it was sarcasm.

Here is a look into FB without ad blocker

https://imgur.com/gallery/d10Cb

What? Not sure what has inspired your sarcasm.

I and another poster are discussing the UX experience which differs between browser with ad-blocker and other versions.

Thy kind of sarcasm is not really meant for HN. Do you have an opinion of substance?

You don't see ads on Facebook?

It must be the ad blocker. 70% of the real estate via browser is ad based.

Those ads don't include promoted posts from pages you elected to follow.

The majority of content on FB is promotional.