penitent, turbulent, multiplex!

A few years back when I taught first-year computer science at Waterloo, we experimented with introducing extreme programming principles into the curriculum. I don’t quite remember how it turned out compared to traditional methods, but in the process I was introduced to a bit of the ideology from our team XP guru. I’ve always meant to read the books about it, and last week when Extreme Programming Explained literally fell into my lap at work, I decided to give it a read.

It’s a short book that has the pacing and minimalist syntax that one would expect from a work that is describing an ideology, but it had enough depth to it that I flipped through it a second time to see if I’d missed anything. I don’t really have much to say about it, since I don’t really feel comfortable criticizing a methodology until I’ve tried exercising it to its full extent. However, reading the book really motivated me to get started on a personal project that I’ve been stalling for a while, so it was definitely worth the time spent just for that alone.