Just finished reading Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP:
And I thought I was a master of ranting! Compared to these guys, I am nothing! Nothing, I tell you!
There’s actually some truth in the message here. There is a lot of thought-provoking material (the “XP From the Trenches” stuff tends to be quite interesting), and the book really does bear reading.
Getting to the end was hard though, not because I disagree with the what the authors are saying, but the way they say it rather destroys their credibility.
Shorts rants can be effective, but a book-sized rant is wearisome.
The authors come across as having massive chips on their shoulders…their dislike for pair programming seems boundless, and their disdain for XP’s prediliction for “oral documention”…well:
(snapshot taken from amazon.com’s “look inside” book review feature)
It’s not often that one finds the phrase “What a load of crap!” in a technical book. Sadly.
I hope that the royalties from my purchase can gainfully contribute to the authors’ pharmaceutical needs. Or rehab. Whichever is most beneficial.
