I have been programming for over 12 years. Many times I felt like quitting the industry due to the practices in most of the shops where I worked. I did my last project using XP and it was a wonderful experience. Now I am trying to bring XP to a Bay Area startup. I have seen many tools and processes come and go, mostly because in the long run they return much less than the effort required to use them.
Real programmers know there is no silver bullet.
Fancy graphical design tools and processes that require more documentation than code just don't deliver. Writing code is a hard mental process performed by craftsman with a multitude of skills. This book takes what has worked over the years for real programmers and makes it into an effective and light weight methodology. Note that this book is not a how-to of extreme programming but rather an excellent explanation of what extreme programming is all about. All rights reserved.