Yes, Smile and Repeat Yourself

If you care enough about something, you will repeat yourself. That's a good thing.

"I love you!", I said to my wife this morning. I said it yesterday. I've said it for over a decade. I never grow tired of it. I care about my wife and that miracle we call love.

Writing great code is important! Creating things of value is important! Being someone of value is important! Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage, and Respect are all important values.

If I am asked the same question repeatedly, I am happy to answer someone who sincerely seeks knowledge and wisdom.

Human communication often requires things to be repeated. It may take 10 times! I saw this in a training class I just took. The same question was asked 2 minutes after the answer was already given. The trainer, Brian Button, calmly responded with a smile and gave the same answer.

That's the way to go! Smile, support communication, and move on.

XP Principles Support You - Kent Beck Again

I read and heard something extremely powerful which led me to share with you this link to the Implementation Patterns book interview with Kent Beck: http://www.infoq.com/interviews/beck-implementation-patterns. I wish to share with you one small sliver of insight said in this very inspirational and insightful interview.

In response to "XP is ...practice oriented.........patterns and XP and how they work together?", Kent Beck goes way beyond the question and shares beautiful Agile insights. Here is one insight:

He reminds us there are 3 things to consider with Agile Development; values, principles, and practices. He talks about being Agile and not just doing Agile practices.

In answer to a statement such as "XP was made for the people and not the other way around", I hope you and I remember that that is why Extreme Programming (XP) Principles are published too. They are in the XP white book and are listed in Martin Fowler's Bliki.

When a practice is not working for us in a particular context, Extreme Programming Principles are what we can retreat to. Sitting on our XP principles, we can figure out how to tweak a practice, replace a practice, drop a practice, or add a practice as we need to.

In that Implementation Patterns book interview mentioned above, Kent does a great job of telling us how we should step back and examine a practice in light of a principle. It's said in that interview, it's said in Martin Fowler's Bliki post ( http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PrinciplesOfXP.html ), and it is repeated here.

Hopefully, you and I will remember.