Dangerous knowledge?

This speaks to a very important, in fact, vital understanding that students must have, and it is this: a great many of the teachers of guitar, and a great number of all instructional materials out there, are only useful if you already know certain things, or already have overcome or bypassed certain obstacles. Otherwise, these teachers and instructional materials are actually harmful, they will increase your problems, and, if followed over time, will ingrain those problems more completely into your technique.

Wow. I found this quote in today’s newsletter from Jamie Andreas. I gave up guitar long ago, but I still subscribe to her newsletter because she’s a very good teacher. Let me repeat: she’s a very good teacher. She really cares about how to get to mastery.

Now is this relevant to XP and agile? You bet! The bitter truth I learned is that going head on for XP with TDD and incremental design might not work well, unless the team has a solid enough grasp of the basics of software design. The authors of the Grand Old XP Books were raised in a primordial broth of object-oriented design; they lived and breathed it. Not so for the kids these days: OOD is not fashionable. All we hear and care about is tools and frameworks.

The advice in Rapid Development is always sound: work on the fundamentals!

2 Responses to “Dangerous knowledge?”

  1. Indrit Says:

    Dear Matteo,

    I had a quick look to the Rapid Dev book (I was not aware of) and it seems to me very interesting. Do you suggest to buy it?

    Thank you very much in advance.

  2. matteo Says:

    Dear Indrit,

    I definitely recommend you to read McConnell’s Rapid Development. It’s a very good book on software project management.

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