Observations Of Programmers In The Wild

Someone told me they liked XP because it matched, "...observations of programmers in the wild." I liked the phrase because it captures a sense that our models of programming and programming itself will never be all that close. -- KentBeck

I liked it because it revealed how Light Methodologies try to work with OPW and add only minimal overhead. -- PhlIp

Can observations of programmers in the wild point the way to beneficial transformation of PacksOfProgrammers and their environment in the future? This has got to be the only way forward. Ecology management seems a much better analogy than older ones because our models in that area are (I gather) equally incomplete. But we do need enough positive examples to study, indeed we need to know enough to know what are positive examples.

Yes, great phrase.

-- RichardDrake

Warning: If you repress your programmers' natural instincts for too long, you'l get LordOfTheFlies.

Someone told me they liked XP because it matched, "...observations of programmers in the wild.

Maybe. When I first mentioned XP in my current organization there were a few who responded: "why yes, that's what we always do". On closer examination, it turns out that, actually, those people never wrote unit tests before they coded, for example. And so with many other XP practices. Perhaps there's a "good" missing from that statement? -- KeithBraithwaite

I don't believe XP matches programmers in the wild at all. I've never met any wild programmers who did XP on their own, except WardAndKent, who invented XP. Rumor reaches me that Plauger's group did something similar. -- AlistairCockburn

Programmers in the wild do not consistently do any specific practice, including the 12 Commandments. XP constrains their wildness with these practices. The 13th Commandment is "Behave like a programmer in the wild".