Developer Humping or Extreme Programming

Too Many cooks in the kitchen. When is too many developers one project a bad idea?

So I had the chance to meet with some friends the other day. Of course they work as developers like me. They work for one of those companies with allot of money to throw at a web site (a == 1). I found it interesting having 20 developers writing code for a web site. They called it Agile programming or Extreme Programming (Developer Humping). The reason I  called it this was as they (my friends) described agile as two developers sit in a cubicle(but of course no office unless your management right?) one developer coded while the other sat behind him correcting his mistakes.

So what bothered me most was having another developer watching over your shoulder as you coded. Like what the hell. How is that environment inviting to any developer? So here is my way of disgracing this habit as well as promoting it I guess.

Disgracing:

1. Cost is way more than your ROI (Return of Investment) on any project (yes I will argue this.)

2. It is said this type (Developer Humping) of development is good for the customer. what? how does that translate?

3. Somehow Projects get done faster? (wow I could argue that all day.) This goes back to the too many cooks in the kitchen mentality.

Promoting:

1. Both developers learn quick and bounce ideas off of each other.

2. Micro management of developers is much easier.

So in theory if your company has the money to spend tons of money on 2 developers per cubie(cubicle for those not in cubicles) and developing for 1 web site good on you. Truly in my humble opinion Agile development should be used for large “Software” companies with budgets for multiple projects.

This is what our friends at Wikipedia had to say:

Extreme Programming (or XP) is a software engineering methodology (and a form of agile software development)^[1][2][3] prescribing a set of daily stakeholder practices that embody and encourage particular XP values (below). Proponents believe that exercising these practices—traditional software engineering practices taken to so-called "extreme" levels—leads to a development process that is more responsive to customer needs ("agile") than traditional methods, while creating software of better quality.

So why do I seem against this type of development? I guess I am not all that much impressed with it. I love team development. I truly encourage it. I am not of the mind “put a developer in a closet with pizza and a coke and leave him/her be”. I however like my space and love to collaborate with my fellow developers on multiple projects.

Currently I work on multiple web sites at the same time. I like to call it the shotgun development method. I work with 2 other excellent web developers. One is front end (the famous joe) his code is second to none. Then I work with new guy Bryan (still waiting on a blog bryan) who is the C# guru. We all have our pieces of the projects we work on. This is a great work environment. Typically called the Waterfall method.

No developer humping here just straight work hard and enjoy the team work involved.

Let me know how you feel.