As you may know, when it comes to ‘programming methodologies’ I tend to be something of sceptic (see Programming, Methodologies and Buzzwords). I was interested, therefore, to read Vassili Bykov’s critique of ’extreme programming’ (XP) on his Cincom Smalltalk Blog. This is all the more interesting since XP is often associated with the Smalltalk language. Just like me, Vassili is rather keen on documentation (something to which ‘Extreme’ and ‘agile’ programmers pay scant attention).
Says Vassili:
“Somehow in Smalltalk, the birthplace of extreme programming, it’s often pretty much taken for granted that in order to be an eXtreme Programmer one has to stop writing method comments. Because "if a method needs comments it needs to be rewritten", or because "good code is self-documenting" or because "comments lie, code doesn’t". Or even because "Beck teaches so". Indeed this is what we Smalltalkers were told when it was all just starting.
I say that is bullshit.”
I like a man who speaks his mind! Read it all over on his Blog
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