Programmers adopt 'Extreme' methods
Published: 03 Apr 2001 14:15 BST
Mark Windholtz spent the first 12 years of his programming career writing code alone in a cubicle.
But now when Windholtz creates code, he does so with a comrade at his side -- one of the tenets of the software development methodology called Extreme Programming.
"Sometimes if you're coding alone, you end up going off on the wrong thing for a while," Windholtz said. "If you're 'pair programming', that doesn't happen, or it doesn't happen for very long... As soon as one person runs out of ideas, the other person just picks up on them."
Welcome to a new world of computer programming -- and say goodbye to the image of the solitary code jockey working late into the night on a diet of cold pizza and warm cola. Better yet, Extreme Programming can help produce software that is not only of higher quality, but is produced much more quickly than is the norm.
Pairing with a coding partner isn't the only change for Windholtz and legions of other programmers who have switched to the Extreme methodology since it was first introduced five years ago. Extreme Programming formalises the process of writing code via its series of outlines and work rules.
The goal is to make the code-writing process less random, get software to customers more quickly, and eliminate the inevitable onslaught of bugs discovered during the traditional integration phases.
The methodology is gaining more and more devotees. Ford Motor, Chrysler and IBM are among the companies using Extreme Programming in at least some capacity.
John Giblin, senior vice president of engineering at Dublin, Ireland-based software company Iona Technologies, turned to Extreme last summer to slash software delivery times. "Sometimes because of the length of development cycles, by the time the product is developed, the original set of requirements is only partially relevant," Giblin said.
Since using Extreme for Iona's application server product, Giblin has seen strong results. "At a minimum, we're getting products to the market much faster," he said.
The methodology was invented in 1996, when automaker Chrysler called upon Kent Beck, a software developer, to save a project known as Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation, or C3. The cornerstone of Beck's formula was a set of directions for keeping code "elegantly written". The C3 system now provides monthly payroll information for more than 86,000 Chrysler employees.
It's easy to see why other companies are turning to XP as an antidote to the scatter-shot way software has been produced for decades -- and especially during the stock market's bull run of the 1990s. Many cash-rich technology companies produced software by hiring as many top-level programmers as possible -- regardless of how much it cost to recruit and retain them.
Once assembled, the programmers were closeted in offices for weeks or months to bang out code. The individual efforts were then glued together and submitted to the long process of debugging.
"Normally, there's an integration phase at the end of a product cycle, and you find out that things don't all come together so well," said Kyle Larson, a senior consultant at Minnesota-based Advanced Technologies Integration, who uses Extreme. "With Extreme Programming, there's no killer integration because there's constant integration."
Ron Jeffries, an Extreme aficionado, has worked closely with Beck and co-authored the book Extreme Programming Installed. Jeffries offers his own critique of traditional approaches to software development. "You hire a bunch of programmers, tell them what you want, and there's no organisational structure," he said.
More and more companies may begin turning to Extreme Programming, especially during the current economic slowdown, as they look for new ways to improve efficiency and stamp out defects in software long before they appear in the final product.
"There's an expectation when you deliver a solution that it's perfect," said David Osborne, chief technology officer with Plural, a New York-based e-business consulting company that serves Fortune 500 companies.
Extreme claims to offer exactly that -- a solution to the coding mind-set that a perfect product can't be produced quickly and that a quickly produced product can't be perfect.
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