Review of ‘Extreme Programming Explained’

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TBR writes “In the five years since the first edition of Kent Beck’s ‘Extreme Programming Explained’ the world has moved on considerably. Extreme Programming (XP) has moved firmly centre stage, one of the most well-known of a number of agile software development methodologies. The core practices that XP adopted – from test-first development to automated builds to continuous integration – are now becoming part of the development landscape. Inevitably this success has had a number of consequences. Firstly there has been a rush to adopt the XP-cloak. These days even proponents of heavy-weight processes claim that they too can be agile. Secondly there has been an inevitable backlash, witness for example ‘Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP’ by Doug Rosenberg and Matt Stephens. Finally, XP has become so trendy that just about everybody claims to be using it. Which in turn reflects badly on XP when projects fail.

In this updated and rewritten edition of the book Kent Beck reflects on some of his own experiences in the intervening period and casts light on where he thinks XP is now and where it’s going.

This is a very different kind of book on software development practices. It’s almost a personal manifesto rather than an ‘objective’ look at software theory and practice.

Read more at TechBookReport

Link: techbookreport.com