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Summary: A Serious Programming Discipline to Consider
Review: Extreme Programming is a software development discipline. XP can use any number of design methodologies to achieve its goal of software delivery: UML, Use Case, Objectory, Object Oriented Programming, or CASE to create simple design. XP does not limit the developer to any one design methology or any orignal design. Design is expected to change as the application is being built. I read the book and considered Mr. Beck ideas seriously. The practical implementation of the XP principles makes sense. XP creates a team relationship between management and development. Managers uses simple schedules, scope, and design documentation. XP represents a shift in the detail of control given to a project manager. Managers plan resources for the project and facilitate communication with the customer. The success of XP depends on the ability to predict when work will be done and what work will be accomplished. XP decreases time to develop, decreases risk, and increases likihood of software application deployment. XP advocates four values: simplicity,communication, feedback, and courage. These values are endorsed by XP as values that decrease time to deliver and increase the quality of the application. These four values are like the proverbial guideline to creating good software and solid long term relationship with the customer. XP focuses around onsite interaction with the customer. Customers are encouraged to write business stories and provide almost real-time feedback to the developers. Developers use the business stories to bridge business requirements into technical requirements and designs. Communication and good relations develop between the developer and the customer. Customer feedback drives enhancements to planning, design, coding, and testing. Small and integrated releases are created. The team approach encourages continual improvement to the application design. Customer's set priorities and drive requirements based on business decisions. The end result is the customer steers the project. Customers focus on features that the developers are steered to develop. Developers use the business stories to create simple designs. XP empowers the developer to use simple designs and specifications to code. Application value is maintained by small releases, integrated product releases, and application comprehensive unit tests. XP believes in building code incrementally. Prototyping is useful when verifying design and business requirements with the customer. Code is used to express ideas between developers. Coding standards must be established among team members. Code readability and ownership is managed by the members in the team. Code is collective owned by members in the team. Coding practices must be consistent among the team. Standards minimize confusion. XP encourages developers to refactor design and code to improve effeciency. Refactoring removes inefficiencies, creates reusable code, and removes redunancies. XP migrates legacy systems incremently into new designs. The book presents an interesting case study illustrating how the author migrated a legecy system over a one year period of time. XP maintains application value by changing content without adversly affecting functionality. XP builds quality into the application. XP believes in paired development. Two developers working together are more productive than two developers working independantly. Paired programming gives the team exposure to a wide range of experience or knowledge specialization. Pair programming allows developers to partner with individuals who have knowledge about different portions of the system. XP believes in building unit tests as a part of the application. If a unit test can be coded then time is taken to build it. Unit tests create a feeling of confidence about changes made to the system and the reliability of the system. XP encourages developers to build quality into the application. XP encourages developers to document code. Documentation helps in the maintenance of the code. The long term cost of maintaining the cost is contained and remains marginal. XP seems to advocate that long term cost of maintaining the code will not become the most expense portion of the life-cycle of the code. Developers are encouraged to gain a fervent commitment to unit testing. XP encourages developers to integrate multiple times during the day. The application is fully-integrated many times through the day. The unit tests are used to make sure the integration worked. Rapid integration ensures that all components within the application have well defined and well known interfaces.
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Summary: Extreme Programming - CMM Principles
Review: One of the most interesting aspects of XP is the focus around metrics. Advance levels of CMM can be facilitated by using XP as a development house standard for the following reasons: 1. Reduction of code complexity 2. Quantitative measurements to predict bugs and defects 3. Statistical models to measure code development time. 4. Inventory Itemization of each component into packages through reuseable components.
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Summary: Absolutely Useless! So is CSCI477.
Review: This book is absolutely useless. The methodology taught is not "extreme", but rather ridiculous...His techniques will never be applied in actual software engineering, as they are completely impractical. For half of the ideas that are practical, they are simply common sense. Such as the 4 values: communication, simplicity, feedback, and courage. Every decent software engineer practices these values. In addition, the author fills up pages by telling stories of his childhood and other needless tales in an attempt to convince the reader that the techniques explained, truely work. Don't waste your time or money. You'll only be aggravated once you open this book
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Summary: Enough to give you a flavor, but just...
Review: This book is just enough to give you a flavor for extreme programming, and to tempt to implement it. It will help keep the embarrassment wolves at bay, but it's not enough detail to actually implement something. This is manager fodder (it's short), but it's a good intro. For details, check out another XP book.
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Summary: Good Introduction, but Needs More Teeth
Review: Kent Beck's book does a good job of synthesizing a lot of programming concepts and putting them forward as a coherent methodology. The book is deceptively easy to read, though that's not necessarily what I look for in a book on theory and methodology. I look for a challenge, because that means I'm learning something difficult. As it turns out, the difficulty is not in learning XP concepts, but putting them to work in your everyday software development process. Here Mr. Beck's book falls way short. To fill in the gaps, I recommend Rick Hightower's "Java Tools for Extreme Programming"--it gives you detailed information for coding and building tests using open source tools. The books complement each other and together present a complete thought on XP development.
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Summary: brash new approach
Review: Just the testing and integration technique alone is worth the price of this book! As he says, this is probably the only part that you can take by itself. If you don't read anything else in this book, read the parts that have to do with testing and integration. These 2 elements are the cornerstone of his entire approach. The rest depend heavily on each other and must be taken as a unit. The theory here is exceedingly simple, but just like dieting, it takes discipline and persistance, and (as he intimates) maybe even sacrificing an odd person that won't "fit" with this management philosophy. Although I would probably not copy every stylistic element of Beck's approach, this makes a lot of practical sense. He is realistic in that this is geared toward a somewhat narrow audience with medium-size teams.
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Summary: Good introduction and overview of XP
Review: Not a bad book for an intro to XP, but don't expect to be an XP programmer at the end of it. XP seems to be one of these classic C vs. C++ and C++ vs. Java debates. To be honest, I don't like all the points of XP, but this book was well written to explain all the points at a high level. Managers, developers and architects curious about XP should pick up this book for a good review. A bit long winded at times, but the content makes up for it. Again, don't expect to be an expert after reading the book, but expect to understand the general principles of XP. A must for anyone considering implementing XP in their development environments. You might just change your mind after reading it, or only take some of the principles and apply them to your existing design and development cycle.
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Summary: Use it from the other side
Review: It's always constructive for an engineer to dive into reasonings that deeply diverge from one's viewpoint. This book presents a good guide for XP advocates, I guess, but also is a valuable resource for methodologists and software project managers looking contrast and enrichment of their own ideas. Strongly recommended.
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Summary: OK general summary of XP
Review: I find the authors style rather long winded. I wish he'd get to the point and not be so chatty. The book provides a good high level, but very general overview of XP. If you want to learn what XP is about this isnt a bad book. It doesn't take too long to read. Many reviewers have rated this book poorly because they dont agree with XP. Thats a seperate issue. As a book it fulfills its purpose and explains XP. Be aware that these XP books tend to regurgitate a lot of similar general information. If you read the others in the series (as I have) you will be disappoined with how little additional information they add.
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Summary: I paid half price
Review: and still felt the book wasnt great. Had I spent [the full price] I'd be annoyed. It could have taught the basics of XP in half the pages. The information is ok, and the book could have been a 3 star book, but its too wordy. Save your money and read Extreme Programming Installed, dont read any others in the series. They all repeat themselves.
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