Agile ain't about FAST.... 3

Posted by Peter Morris Thu, 06 Sep 2007 04:48:00 GMT

… it’s about GOOD.

Using Agile techniques, Rails for instance, or any of the other new frameworks popping up more quickly than mushrooms on a cowturn in a darkened room, and things like TDD, BDD, SPEC driven whatever, is NOT about writing code FASTER than previously.

Its about writing code in an acceptable timescale that is maintainable, extensible and more easily supportable.

Sure, if you develop in rails and forgo all the speccing, test script converage etc, you can write code more quickly than the guy in the next cubicle, but what about the poor bloke (possibly you) who has to support it into the future.

Writing in Rails with good test/spec coverage, and careful design, takes time. But the framework itself saves you enough time with respect to other platforms that this extra time is actually saved from other activities.

Expecting a well written RAILS development to be VASTLY quicker than using some other set of tools AND to expect it to be better quality and easier to support is wishing for your cake and eating it too.

Good code takes TIME, it takes THOUGHT.

  1. Kim 5 days later:

    Man you don’t even know how long I’ve waited for this since disabling my own Movable Type widget (that doesn’t work since Haloscan bypasses that code).

    THANK YOU!

  2. Shir 8 days later:

    Of course not about fast… any nice product need time on its making…

  3. Baz 16 days later:

    As you said to me – the problem with Agile is that your coders need to CARE about the project. Because you are putting effort up-front (writing tests first), which can actually slow you down, in order to pull the benefits later (reliability, ease of refactoring and improved readability).

    If your coder doesn’t care about what happens downstream then why invest upstream? As far as management can see one coder finished much earlier than the other one … and is long gone when the consequences are felt.