Finally figured out my own view on Agile/Extreme Programming

Personally, I've always felt agile development (and previously extreme programming) simply took credit for a few existing good ideas, added a few dumb ones, and then WAY overhyped it.

I've always met some resistance to this - which made me think two things.

1) It acted an awful lot like a religion - faith with no proof and overzealous defenders.
2) Anytime lots of people disagree with you, you're likely wise to reconsider your position - its not infallible, but its a decent indicator you could be wrong.

Anyway, with almost no surprise on my part, Don Knuth has made me realize my own position via a recent interview:

"With the caveat that there’s no reason anybody should care about the opinions of a computer scientist/mathematician like me regarding software development, let me just say that almost everything I’ve ever heard associated with the term "extreme programming" sounds like exactly the wrong way to go...with one exception. The exception is the idea of working in teams and reading each other’s code. That idea is crucial, and it might even mask out all the terrible aspects of extreme programming that alarm me..."

- Don Knuth, quoted from
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856