Comment by newt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by newt | Hacker News Reader

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In what way is chrome's development waterfall? http://adtmag.com/articles/2010/07/30/is-google-going-agile.... And firefox? http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/3860226/Mozilla-Fi...

Those were the first 2 that I googled. I'm sure that some of them are not agile, most likely by default - e.g. the older Microsoft ones, before MS or anyone else discovered agile. But honestly, all you are doing is throwing out names of popular programs without any idea if they are agile or not, and then claiming success on the ones that no-body refutes.

After that behaviour, the burden of proof is on you - back each one up with references or go away.

It would be interesting if you found major projects that evaluated both agile and waterfall and still chose waterfall or deliberately changed to a less agile process, instead of the other way. Rather than just software written before the people involved knew what agile was.

Both projects you site have assets that are indicative of waterfall. Specs, designs, and dot releases.

The only TDD tests I've seen in either project are related to the language specs -- and there the specs were written first.

Agile doesn't simply mean shorter release cycles, although in both articles that's how its used. Iterative waterfall methods result in shorter release cycles.

The key diffs to know the difference: 1) Do you get requirements up-front for a release cycle? The length of the cycle doesn't matter. Can be 1 week or 6 months. 2) Do you have specs for the major features? 3) Do you design up front or do you write tests first? 4) Do you have a big test pass before release?

These are the main diffs in the way waterfall and agile manifests.

Honestly, the only people I know who use Agile are hacks. Every time I've seen anyone try to demonstrate it, it is a disaster. IMO, its the most embarrassing movement in software engineering.

I don't think that you know agile that well. If you define agile as "hacks" then it's no surprise that only hacks will match your definition of agile.

"requirements for a (short) release cycle" is a good description for a scrum sprint backlog. Scrum or agile does not say that you can't have "Specs, designs, and dot releases" in some form if you need them.

I use these specific definitions for agile as they are the ones that come up as real differentiators in practice. Of course Agile by itself is virtually a meaningless term that often simply means, "we're going to release more often", but really doesn't say anything about the SLC per se.

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