But I strongly suspect that a knowledgable, labels-shy observer with a good view of the project, and a good knowledge of you, would attribute the good and steady progress it has made since your involvement, down to your personality and drive and programming skills; not the currently trendy label, set of checklists or headline statistics for what at its crux, amounts to no more than having a well-thought through set of development procedures. And using them.

I have trouble separating my "personality and drive and programming skills" from the "well-thought through set of development procedures" I use. If we committers can make and meet commitments regularly, perhaps we're doing something right. (Having a comprehensive test suite, reviewing patches, checking smoke tests, developing on branches and landing only when tests pass, and managing our bug queue are not Herculean tasks only supermen can perform.)

... are not Herculean tasks only supermen can perform.

If you read down the other branch of the subtree from my initial post in this thread (the one you originally responded to) you'll find another of my posts (currently a couple of inches below this), where I say:

There is no substitute for competent (not gifted or clever) programmers, who work hard, to achieve the primary goal.

I wasn't suggesting that you were a superman. Just that you have "a well thought-through set of development procedures", and "the personality, drive and skills" to focus upon the goal, rather than theoretical perfection or academic argument.

Open source projects (in the absence of funding), are a peculiar beast as you are managing not budgets of money and commercial aspiration, but peoples (and your own) free time, interest and personal aspirations. You have nothing to leverage. No rewards to offer, nor livelyhoods to sanction. No pool of N x 40 hours with which to work. Your only means of inspiration and control are personal input (and sacrifice), effort and achievement.

The point is that if an incompetent or less driven person had taken over the project and attempted to institute XP/Agile development methods, they would have had far less success than you.

Equally, a competent and driven individual using a similarly well-thought through, but different set of development procedures, might well have succeeded.

To take this full circle. Pre-supposing a prospective employee as incompetent, because of their lack of exposure to XP and/or their inability to score highly on an "agility test", is capriciousness bordering on discrimination.

Equally, precluding a potential employee for a Perl position, because thay have little or no experience in Perl does the employer/project a dis-service. A competent programmer, with good experience, will usually get up to speed with a new language very quickly.

That "agility test" only scores people/teams on their adherance to the methodology--not whether they use it to produce a successful product. It is a self-serving, meaningless statistic. As with all these methodology cults, when the projects using it succeed, the advocates will attribute that success to the methodology. When they fail, they'll blame the team for using it wrongly.

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Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

Pre-supposing a prospective employee as incompetent, because of their lack of exposure to XP and/or their inability to score highly on an "agility test", is capriciousness bordering on discrimination.

I generally prefer your responses when they have at least a tenuous connection to what I write, and especially when you don't put words in my mouth.