Month: August 2003

Extreme programming

Wired has an article in the print edition about extreme programming, the use of multiple programmers on ONE terminal and how the practice helps weed out simple bugs that seem to plague software development. Programmers are considered (somewhat rightly) as a bunch of anti-social geeks locked into cubes working in almost pure isolation. Xprogramming puts them into pairs, working on one machine, for half a day, letting them bounce ideas off of each other and work through glitches. Basically, one guy knows how some parts work and the other a different section. This helps improve inneroperability between sections of code as it is written. Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone to team up with. Not that it really matters as I don’t have the time to do half of the stuff I intend to do. However, one idea they mentioned I’m thinking of implementing. They go through dozens of index cards with assigned tasks (add this button, change this text, etc). By making realtively simple tasks, almost everything they need to accomplish each day can be done in a matter of hours, unlike the burdens that face me and often are so “”open-ended”” that I refuse to work on them. Now to go find some index cards.]]>