Category Archives: Uncategorized

Have you ever had a new, slightly fragile idea be damned by someone playing Devil’s advocate? There are ten other personas to oppose him. Next time you hear someone take on the role of a hell-bent lawyer, try one of … Continue reading →

John on the XP group pointed us to this post by Jeff Bigler on Tact Filters. I found it quite an entertaining insight.

Alan Francis writes about the importance of tests’ ability to tell us when we’ve finished a task. (Thanks, Jason, for the link.) He reminds us that TDD is about testing, but it’s not just about testing. For me, the difference … Continue reading →

If an Agile Evangelist falls in the forest and there’s no one to hear him, does he still go on, and on, and on about it? (Not thinking of anyone in particular, unless it’s me.)

Another conversation on the XP Group. Why do some people manage to have successful projects without using Agile methodologies, while others who are using XP still fail? XP is a toolbox. Think about a mini project in which you need … Continue reading →

Reading the latest posts on the Yahoo XP group, it seems that good TDDers understand that the word “test” is developer-speak for something a little more complex. “Test”, in Test Driven Development, encapsulates the idea of specification, design, verification of … Continue reading →

If you’ve ever been wondering what the difference is between Test Driven Development and Behaviour Driven Design, Dave Astels has written a fantastic paper which explains it all, linked here. It mentions JBehave, which is still in version 0.0.1 … … Continue reading →

Looks like LiveJournal are messing with RSS (thanks for the help, Ade). So my feeds are a bit messed at the moment. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

The Yahoo XP group has been having a fairly heated debate about the term “refactoring”. When you refactor, do you change the behaviour of your code, or not? I decided to go have a look on dictionary.com, my ever-ready friend, … Continue reading →

Ben on the XP thread wrote something which made me smile. I hadn’t seen it before – a Google search attributes it to various people but I suspect it originates with Mark Twain (Update: Apparently Blaise Pascal said it first, … Continue reading →