If you want to buy into six degrees of seperation, the XP-type people I have known, met, or heard and had problems with either their thoughts or their examples include:

A professor/consultant, who was good friends with Kent Beck and involved in the books (SEP: 1) -- he advocated code should average 2.5 lines per method, which is utter hogwash and results in just a different kind of maintaince problem -- which I have oft referred to as politically correct obfuscation. He essentially took the obfuscation inherit in Java's OO model when overblown, and overblew it further.

Another professor, who was a follower of that guy above (SEP: 2)

Various other professors who were fairly hardcore on the subject (SEP: 3) and also advocated similarly lame XP testing practices

Martin Fowler (SEP: 0) (but only on the controversially lame "refactoring" subject, which mostly stated the obvious)

Anyhow, beware the academics who do not practice! And beware the overpaid consultants as well! "Best practices" is always a phrase that must be evaluated carefully and with a rationale mind. Keep asking "well, it sounds good, but does it really work...and why?"

Don't get me wrong, testing can work...but is part of a whole, and I definitely don't buy into XP-based test-driven development, pair programming, puny methods, no design up front, or ... well ... any of it. That being said, I *AM* a advocate for pristine clean code, quality software, and good testing. I'm not slacking here, I'm saying don't buy into the hype, XP doesn't solve as many problems as they claim. And it clearly isn't for everyone.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Testing for Beginners by flyingmoose
in thread Testing for Beginners by markmoon

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