I thought a Birmingham Screwdriver was a lump hammer :Hehe:
Nah! lump hammers are only used for precision adjustments.:hehe: For a while I worked in places where a sledgehammer, oxy-propane cutting torch (propane, not acetylene) and 36 inch stilsons (sometimes extended with a length of scaffold pole) were considered standard tools, and sometimes used in a hurry. Really. I'm not kidding! Not as metaphors, as real physical things. After that kind of experience you view the problems of IT slightly differently. 😉
On the Agile front an awful lot of things get labelled as Agile when they are not. If it sounds like a filthy hack then it's a filthy hack. If it's unmaintainable code then don't let anyone tell you that it's Agile.
I agree. The best agile practitioners I've had the pleasure to work with were obsessive about automated testing and refactoring what they produced.
But then, we can only use the tools we know how to use, and sometimes there is a lot of pressure to "get the job done". One man's "filthy hack" is another man's "expedient solution". It doesn't make it any easier when you are trying to sort it out afterwards though.
There are some lessons I've taken away from this discussion:
"tools" I'm going to ask people more about the tools that are being used. I don't/can't know everything. And what I thought I knew may not be quite right any more.
"scale" what is appropriate at one scale may not be appropriate at another, and
"longevity/maintenance/whatever you call it" something which is only going to be used once can be achieved any old way, something which is going to be used and modified again and again deserves more effort.
The trouble is, tools (and fashions) change, things can grow bigger than they were originally envisaged (if scale was thought about at all) and short-term solutions can creep into unexpected places.
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