I finally got enough time to put my book online: www.extremeperl.org

The book is evolving.   I hope to finish the continuous design chapter

fairly soon.  Please give me feedback.



Thanks to those of you who sent me stories.  I have them, and I will

be adding them in.  The book has taken a backseat to just about

everything else, unfortunately.



Thanks again to all the people who reviewed the current version.



Rob

Rob,



What would be the best way of providing you with direct feedback?

I'm enjoying the book tremendously so far and would like to offer a

couple of nitty-gritty comments and questions, which I'm not sure

belong in the group blog.



Thanks.

Pete.

chudpi writes:

> What would be the best way of providing you with direct feedback?

> I'm enjoying the book tremendously so far and would like to offer a

> couple of nitty-gritty comments and questions, which I'm not sure

> belong in the group blog.



Well, we're not exactly flooded with msgs on this list, and I enjoy

the kind of feedback public discussion provides.  Why not try sending

a point or two to this list, and we'll see how it goes.



The reason I put the book online is that it was sitting offline too

long without much constructive feedback.  I was falling prey to Major

Release Syndrome.  The only way this book is going to get better is if

people read it and tell me (us) what they think about it.



I've had a few side discussions recently, but they're mostly about

typos or word choice.  Probably best to send those directly to me.



BTW, our little group has doubled in size in the last few weeks.



Thanks,

Rob

After reviewing the list of things I marked, there is only one which

would qualify as 'constructive.'  In Chapter 2, the last sentence in

the Feedback section is an observation by Johannes Rukkers, that "XP

uses feedback to integrate towards a solution, rather than trying to

get it through a discontinuity."  I'm not sure if I follow exactly

what Johannes means by discontinuity.  I was wondering if you wouldn't

mind expanding on that statement?

Admitedly, XP is a concept quite new to me (hence my enthusiasm), so

this could be something obvious to the dwellers of this group.  In

that case, I apologize for introducing redundancy.



The rest of what I had marked were simple formatting errors I noticed,

which will probably get hashed out in editing anyway.  Please let me

know if you would like me to send you a list of these anyway.



Thanks,

Pete.



--- In extremeperl@yahoogroups.com, Rob Nagler <nagler@b...> wrote:

> Well, we're not exactly flooded with msgs on this list, and I enjoy

> the kind of feedback public discussion provides.  Why not try

sending

> a point or two to this list, and we'll see how it goes.

>

> The reason I put the book online is that it was sitting offline too

> long without much constructive feedback.  I was falling prey to

Major

> Release Syndrome.  The only way this book is going to get better is

if

> people read it and tell me (us) what they think about it.

>

> I've had a few side discussions recently, but they're mostly about

> typos or word choice.  Probably best to send those directly to me.

>

> BTW, our little group has doubled in size in the last few weeks.

>

> Thanks,

> Rob

Hi,



On 27 Apr 2004, at 04:13, chudpi wrote:



> After reviewing the list of things I marked, there is only one which

> would qualify as 'constructive.'  In Chapter 2, the last sentence in

> the Feedback section is an observation by Johannes Rukkers, that "XP

> uses feedback to integrate towards a solution, rather than trying to

> get it through a discontinuity."  I'm not sure if I follow exactly

> what Johannes means by discontinuity.  I was wondering if you wouldn't

> mind expanding on that statement?

[snip]



While I still have not had the time to read the book (sorry Rob :-) I

would guess that Johannes means that feedback is integral in the XP

process: from the fine-grained feedback you get during TDD, the

continual feedback you get from having an onsite customer, the feedback

from regular iterations and releases, etc.  With some more traditional

processes the feedback is separate from the development (now we do the

development, throw the application over the wall to QA, QA do some

testing, feedback eventually comes back to the developers - usually by

the time that they're working on the next bit).



More feedback and tighter feedback loops are one of the main reasons

that XP works so well in my experience.



Adrian

chudpi writes:

> uses feedback to integrate towards a solution, rather than trying to

> get it through a discontinuity."  I'm not sure if I follow exactly

> what Johannes means by discontinuity.  I was wondering if you wouldn't

> mind expanding on that statement?



The best example of this I can think of is the development book

itself.  As far as you (the customer/user) are concerned, the

introduction is a discontinuity, a major release.  That's bad, because

it is a disruptive event.



Disruptions can be good with books, because they are outside of the

flow of your work.  That's what is fun about books.  They make you

think (hopefully :-).



Disruption is bad with software, because software is hard to get

right.  If you continually disrupt people with big changes (Windows

98, SE, ME, etc.), they won't use your software (unless you are a

monopoly :-).  If you transition with itty bitty changes, people

accept the changes more readily.  This is why Microsoft and others

have moved to a "patch" model with automatic updates.  Sure, I have to

reboot my machine every now and then, but I don't really notice the

change and the change isn't likely to disrupt my flow.  The problem

with Microsoft's patch model is that they aren't changing anything

fundamentally.



XP allows you to make fundamental changes a little bit at a time.

This works at all levels (like Adrian mentioned).



> Admitedly, XP is a concept quite new to me (hence my enthusiasm), so

> this could be something obvious to the dwellers of this group.  In

> that case, I apologize for introducing redundancy.



Discussion is good.  XP is evolving.  If we get to 10% of the traffic

of extremeprogramming@yahoogroups, we can consider creating a faq for

these types of things.



> The rest of what I had marked were simple formatting errors I noticed,

> which will probably get hashed out in editing anyway.  Please let me

> know if you would like me to send you a list of these anyway.



Please do.  You are the acceptance test of the book.  I try to fix

little errors pretty quickly so they don't annoy others.



Thanks for the feedback.



Rob

Rob,



I would just like to say how much I enjoyed reading your online version of

the book. (I lost track a bit on some of the code examples, I have to

confess)

It is one of the best resources I have struck to introduce Extreme

Programming to newbies. I have found that most references to Extreme

Programming are not overly helpful when you are trying to get started down

the XP path.



If I can help with the development of the book in anyway do let me know.



Lance









[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Lance Wicks writes:

> I would just like to say how much I enjoyed reading your online version of

> the book. (I lost track a bit on some of the code examples, I have to

> confess)



Thanks, and yes, the examples are hard.  It's a feature. :-) XP is

about the code.  There's a good book by Tom Cargill called C++

Programming Style: http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0201563657 I

modeled my examples after that book, that is, I tried to make the code

substantial so you'd have to sit down with a pencil and paper and try

to work out what it does.



This isn't a cookbook or even a patterns book.  It's about how to bend

the software to fit the problem instead of the other way around.  This

is a tricky thing to get across in a few pages (another goal of mine :-).



That being said, if you can tell me which parts are tricky to

understand and why, I'll try to smooth them over with more text or

whatever makes sense.



> It is one of the best resources I have struck to introduce Extreme

> Programming to newbies. I have found that most references to Extreme

> Programming are not overly helpful when you are trying to get started down

> the XP path.



Wow!  Thanks.  I'm glad.



> If I can help with the development of the book in anyway do let me know.



The feedback is great.  Even the compliments help me to, because then

I know that the book is useful.  I'm a bit egotistical about

controlling the source to it right now.  I've put a lot of sweat and

buckets of tears :-( into it, and I'd like to continue with the

writing part myself.  That's unfortunate, because I'm pretty busy with

other things, and the book has to take a back seat.



I may ask for help on the website at some point.  It's a bit simple,

and there's no search mechanism.  Adding an index might be good, too.

But let's see how many people actually read it, and ask for the

features instead of getting into "that would be useful" kinds of

discussions. YAGNI!



Cheers,

Rob

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Rob Nagler [mailto:nagler@...]

>

> BTW, our little group has doubled in size in the last few weeks.

>



I'm a recent joiner.  I got a pointer to your site out of the blue - not

from one my usual XP sources - so I suspect word is spreading.  I've not

seen an email on main xp yahoo group.  There's also a perl unit yahoo

group.  Have you thought of 'advertising' there for feedback?



I've scanned the book, but not had time to review it properly yet.  I'll

definitely do so though as its precisely the book I've not been able to

write myself - we use perl and XP a lot!  One thing I wondered was

whether it might be easier to review as a pdf - or is that just me being

too lazy to print out all the chapters separately?



Karl



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Hi,



On 27 Apr 2004, at 09:43, Karl Scotland wrote:



[snip]

>  One thing I wondered was

> whether it might be easier to review as a pdf - or is that just me

> being

> too lazy to print out all the chapters separately?

[snip]



Another vote for a downloadable version (although a .tgz of the HTML

would be just as useful as a PDF for me).



I get the most time for reading on the train - where there is an

annoying lack of connectivity.



(and if I was less bone idle I'd use wget - I know :-)



Adrian

Karl Scotland writes:

> I'm a recent joiner.  I got a pointer to your site out of the blue - not

> from one my usual XP sources - so I suspect word is spreading.  I've not

> seen an email on main xp yahoo group.  There's also a perl unit yahoo

> group.  Have you thought of 'advertising' there for feedback?



It was a bit of an experiment (I just finished reading the Tipping

Point) to see how fast it would spread with two seeds (xpdenver and

this list).  If you want to mail other lists, you're more than

welcome.



> I've scanned the book, but not had time to review it properly yet.  I'll

> definitely do so though as its precisely the book I've not been able to

> write myself - we use perl and XP a lot!



That makes two of us who use that combination. ;-) It's been fun to

write.  I don't think there is a big audience, but I'm hoping that it

helps evolve our (bivio's) internal process.



> One thing I wondered was

> whether it might be easier to review as a pdf - or is that just me being

> too lazy to print out all the chapters separately?



I had it as a PDF, but that stopped working.  I was using Stas

Bekman's DocSet, and for some reason that broke, and I was too busy to

fix it.  Alternatively, I could probably make the book a single HTML

page fairly easily.  Would that work for you?



Rob

Wow, looks like there's activity here now!



I'm also a newcomer to the group... someone on the san francisco perl

mongers group pointed me here after I gave a talk to them (and the bayxp

group) about the perl/XP process we're following here at Airwave

(http://www.airwave.com).



Reading the book is something I have on my to-do list, but just haven't

gotten a chance yet.  I'm very excited to see if there are cool ideas we

could use here...



The reason I was asked to do the talk is that the XP people thought that

using perl was rather unique, and the perl people thought that using XP

was intriguing.



It sounds like there are other people here that are doing perl/XP

professionally...  so, where is everyone located, what size of group do

you have, what kind of product are you doing, how long have you been doing

perl/xp, etc?



I'll start:

Airwave is in San Mateo, CA, USA (San Francisco Bay Area)... we are

developing (and selling) a wireless network management application.  It is

nearly 100% OO perl that was developed over the past 3 or so years with a

full XP process (pairing/tdd/2 week iterations/etc).  Our group is

currently 7 developers, looking to get to 8 very soon (hint hint).



Let's hear from everyone else!



matt

Hi Matt, I'm Greg Compestine. I had the pleasure of working with Rob in

Colorado back in 2002 and 2003. I'm now in the Bay Area working for this

investment firm called AXA Rosenberg.



This place is an Eiffel stronghold, and I've been involved in the Eiffel

Open Source community for several years. I'm now in the rather strange

position of promoting Perl to a collection of Eiffel and C# programmers.





In some respects, it makes sense for this place to use Perl. There's a

huge amount of legacy VMS processing, and we have Perl 5.6 running

there. All new development is targeting Windows, so Perl gives us a

cross-platform scripting language.



I have one coworker who's quite enthusiastic about adopting Perl (he's

sick to death the DCL, a sort of DOS Batch language with messianic

tendencies). While it's not team programming, he's been having me

regularly review his Perl code and "Robify" or refactor it, using

techniques I learned from Rob. This usually leads to significant

reductions in the size of the scripts, and usually, greater clarity.



Greg



-----Original Message-----

> From: Matthew Albright [mailto:mattalbright@...]

>



It sounds like there are other people here that are doing perl/XP

professionally...  so, where is everyone located, what size of group do

you have, what kind of product are you doing, how long have you been

doing perl/xp, etc?



I'll start:

Airwave is in San Mateo, CA, USA (San Francisco Bay Area)... we are

developing (and selling) a wireless network management application.  It

is nearly 100% OO perl that was developed over the past 3 or so years

with a full XP process (pairing/tdd/2 week iterations/etc).  Our group

is currently 7 developers, looking to get to 8 very soon (hint hint).



Let's hear from everyone else!



matt

Hi all,



My name is Lance Wicks. I am a general IT geek/nerd here in the United

Kingdom (tho' originally I am from New Zealand).



My involvement in Perl is primarily CGI web applications. And mainly for

pleasure as opposed to for work.

That said, the driver that had me looking for XP info and specifically XP

stuff for Perl is a project here to prototype a web based e-learning

solution for The Aziz Corporation/ Pzzaz ( www.azizcorp.com

<http://www.azizcorp.com> ).



I am also primarily a XP soloist, in other words no pair programming

available as I am the sole person tasked with writing code.

I have been using "the planning game" to manage the prototype development

and also to assist in getting buy-in from the sales team and trainers.



From my perspective, the idea of building a working application then adding

to it iteratively is just right. My chances of getting the time allocation

to do a BDUF style development was slim to naff all. As yet I have not

really started using the full XP range of tools/ideas. I have found Rob's

book the best resource so far for a newbie like me. Sites like

extremeprogramming.org are really good but can be intimidating IMHO.



Well... Thats about all about me.





Lance









[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Since everybody else is doing introductions...



Programming since 81. Been paid for it since 86. First used Perl in 96.

Started along the agile/XP route around 2000/1. Joined the extremeperl

list (quick grep of the mbox) sometime in 2002. Have mostly lurked (not

that there has been a lot to lurk around.)



Not had a chance to more than skim a couple of chapters of Rob's book

(this annoying "work" thing keeps getting in the way), but what I have

seen looks jolly good.



Been a contractor / consultant type since 1999 so I don't have my own

little XP team to play with (sigh), but all my clients get the spiel

and a few XP practices thrown in for good measure!



I'm of the opinion that XP and Perl are an excellent fit. The XP

practices  stop the creation of golf/line-noise code, allowing its nice

features to shine through.



Oh yes, I wrote Test:Class for any xUnit fans out there.



Cheers,



Adrian

Hi Rob,



--- In extremeperl@yahoogroups.com, Rob Nagler <nagler@b...> wrote:

> Karl Scotland writes:

>

> > One thing I wondered was

> > whether it might be easier to review as a pdf - or is that just me

> > being too lazy to print out all the chapters separately?

>

> I had it as a PDF, but that stopped working.  I was using Stas

> Bekman's DocSet, and for some reason that broke, and I was too

> busy to fix it.  Alternatively, I could probably make the book

> a single HTML page fairly easily.  Would that work for you?



getting a single HTML page would be a real relief.



--Norbert