There are several good comments in this thread about agile methodologies. Personally, I think that hype or not, it fits with the perlish notion of a good programmer combining laziness, impatience, and hubris. Echos of it also appear in Pragmatic Programming. And Extreme Perl is a great reference for how XP fits together nicely with Perl.

In terms of understanding the similarities and differences between "agile" and "iterative" development (and how they both differ from waterfall development), I highly recommend the book Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide, by Craig Larman. It written for managers, not for programmers, so conveys concepts and motivations more than specific processes, though it does give an overview of several of the most common flavors of agile/iterative development. Importantly, it points out several of the pitfalls that people encounter attempting agile/iterative approaches. (For example, RUP is supposed to be an iterative process, with timeboxed iterations of a few weeks, not a documentation framework for waterfall design as it's so often encountered in large organizations.) It has great references and citations, too, for following up any of the topics covered. It's well worth picking up if you're even curious about agile development.

-xdg

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In reply to Re^2: Agile programming a skill? by xdg
in thread Agile programming a skill? by thor

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