TITLE: Pascal's Criticism of Extreme Programming
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 28, 2017  3:17 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 Blaise Pascal believed that the key error of the school of
 philosophy known as
 <A HREF="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism">
   Stoicism</A>
 lay in thinking that people can do <EM>always</EM> what they
 can, in reality, only do <EM>sometimes</EM>.

 Had Pascal lived in the time of software development, he would
 probably have felt the same way about Extreme Programming and
 test-driven design.

 I was reminded of Pascal the philosopher (not the language)
 earlier this week when I wrote code for several hours without
 writing my unit tests.  As a result, I found myself refactoring
 blind for most of the project.  The code was small enough that
 this worked out fine, and I didn't even feel much fear while
 moving along at a decent pace.  Even so, I felt a little guilty.

 Pascal made a good point about Stoicism, but I don't think that
 this means I ought not be a Stoic -- or a practitioner of XP.
 XP helps me to be a better programmer.  I do have to be aware,
 though, that it asks me to act against my natural tendencies,
 just as Stoicism encourages us not to be controlled by desire
 or fear.

 One of the beauties of XP is that it intertwines a number of
 practices that mutually support one another, which helps to
 keep me in a groove.  It helps me to reduce the size of my
 fear, so that I don't as much to control.  If I hadn't been
 refactoring so often this week, I probably wouldn't have even
 noticed that I hadn't written tests!

 One need not live in fear of coming up short of the ideal.
 No one is perfect.  I'll get back to writing my tests on my
 next program.  There is no need to beat myself up about one
 program.  Everything worked out fine.
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