I was thinking about creating this blog for few years now. I still thought that I am not ready to share my opinions with others, that I lack knowledge, and I didn’t want to mislead people on their way to become good developer.
I am not writing about misleading without a reason here, because of such a misleading I finished “Extreme Programming Explained” by Kent Beck just today and not few years ago. Although better later than never.
About eight years ago I found a first trail of “Extreme programming”. I was then learning about Agile, which was
totally new for me, in particular about Scrum and Evo, but there were some clues about XP too.
What was appealing to me back then is the first part of name - “Extreme”.
I thought “yes, this is tailored for me, I want to be EXTREME, but certainly I am not gonna jump with parachute”
(still I had no idea what extreme meant there).
Hapilly I started to read about XP in web. It wasn’t a long period, quickly I found some entry on some “pro” board
saying that XP is old and outdated, that it has 15 years and it doesn’t work in most projects,
“you should focus on Scrum” they said.
I thought there that I am so lucky that some savior enlightened me this fast and I won’t waste time thanks to him.
My journey with XP ended before it really started.
Now after next eight years of experiences, dozens of read books dealing with software development, I got “Extreme programming explained” in my hands. It’s not that I didn’t learn anything about XP during these years, I did a lot, but I didn’t really know that it was from XP. Ok, so I have a book, nothing better to read for now and week of holiday.
I devoured this book in two days. It was that good.
During reading it stroke me that almost everything I have learned last eight years, HARD WAY, is here. And much more.
Question is - would I learn all of that much faster if I read that book earlier? Most probably yes.
This book is like a set of roadsigns (or a map) for developers that are serious about their jobs.
It won’t take you to the destination on a plane, or even a horse, you still have to walk on your own (learn about
testing, planning, CI, simple design, communication, pair programming etc.).The point is you will know about these
places and you won’t be lost on your way. I was lost many times (I got into DDD tactical patterns trap,
hard to get out, simple design rule would help me there). That book read earlier could save me a lot of time.
Conclusion for all - before you will believe in something that someone is saying, check it in a few more sources, the best would be sources that has some authority in the given domain.
Conclusion for me - I have to learn a lot about writing blog posts
PS This post is an experiment for me. I just had to write anything to get started. Next posts should be much more concrete, ripe and with plenty of raw meat (code).
