Bulldozer00's Blog

Wanna go on a wildly fun rollercoaster ride? Then watch Erik Meijer’s “One Hacker Way” rant. Right out of the gate, I guesstimate that he alienated at least half of his audience with his opening “if you haven’t checked in code in the last week, what are you doing at a developer’s conference?” question.

I didn’t agree with all of what Erik said (I doubt anyone did), but I give him full credit for sticking his neck out and attacking as many sacred cows as he could: Agile, Scrum, 2 day certification, TDD “waste“, non-hackers, planning poker, the myth of self-organizing teams, etc. Mmmm, sacred cows make the best tasting hamburgers.

Uncle Bob Martin, the self-smug pope who arrogantly proclaimed “If you don’t do TDD, you’re unprofessional“, tried to make light of Erik’s creative rant with this lame blog post: “One Hacker Way!“. Nice try Bob, but we know you’re seething inside because many of your sacredly held beliefs were put on the stand. You seem to enjoy hacking the sacred cows of the reviled “traditional” way of developing software, but it’s a different story when your own cutlets are at steak.

Mr. Meijer pointed out what I, and no doubt many others, have thought for years: agile, particularly Scrum, is a subtle, insidious form of control. At least with explicit, transparent control, one knows the situation and where one stands. With Scrum, the koolaid-guzzling flock is duped into believing they’re in control; all the while being micro-managed with daily standups, burndown charts, velocity tracking, and cutesy terminology. No wonder it’s amassed huge fame and success – managers love Scrum because it makes their job easier and anesthetizes the coders.

My fave laugh-out-loud moment in Erik’s talk was when he presented Jeff Sutherland as the perceived messiah of software development:

I’ve found that the best books and talks are those in which I find some of the ideas enlightening and some revolting. Erik Meijer’s talk is certainly one of those brain-busting gems.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. – F. Scott Fitzgerald