Agile Programming Gripe

Alfred Thompson recently blogged about an interesting interview given by Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++, now professor of computer science at Texas A&M University. As ever the interviewers were after his prescription for the Silver Bullet that will save us all from ourselves. Alfred has already boiled down the interview to a couple of interesting sound bites, and I aim to do the same to his post. The quote that particularly caught my attention was Stroustrup’s comment on the ‘pragmatic’ way in which modern software gets developed. When asked whether the solution might be to educate developers more fully, and to reward quality, and criticize sloppiness. Stroustrup points out that it will never work, because:

People reward developers who deliver software that is cheap, buggy, and first. > >