Yesterday (Sunday),
Sam Gentile came into town on his
INETA speaker trip to the
Austin .Net User Group. Since we had some extra time with Sam before the user group meeting, I organized a bbq at my house in
Leander, TX.
We grilled some inch-thick ribeye steaks on the back patio and had a
good time talking about software for hours. We talked about the
merits of FIT, automation, and other things in play in the extreme
programming world. Some people you might know in attendance (and
if I didn't list your name, get a blog) were:
Sam Gentile,
Steve Donie,
Blake Caraway,
Jeremy Miller, and
Scott Bellware.
He said something that stands out in my mind, and I may change the way
I view and talk about the way I work on a day-to-day basis. I've
been using the term "Agile" to describe the group of practices that I
and my team uses. He has convinced me that the term "Extreme
Programming" is a more accurate term. It really is extreme.
There is a solid goal in sight, and we have to be very disciplined
about how we do things in order to keep our software
maintainable. One way to think about it is: How true is the
statment "grass is green". Is that statement somewhat true, or is it
very true? Truth is extreme. It is not relative or
subjective. Truth is truth, and there is no room for negotiation
before it ceases to be true. With extreme programming, if you negotiation, it's no longer extreme: it becomes moderate. Moderate programming.
How good can it get? It needs to be extremely good, not moderately good.
Sam is speaking to the user group as I write this post, and he
explains the principles of extreme programming extremely well.
Great job, Sam!