craigb
The one new practice that makes me LMAO is team programming where one person literally sits and watches another code.  Unbelievable!

Unionized shop, is it?  

craigb
That article is scrum master bait.

I was gonna call it ... talk talk talk talk ... 

More like sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint.

Have to agree with you slug, agile isn't suited to project management or programming for that matter, it works for software product development though. Best thing about it is having daily standups if only to find out who is swinging the lead.
:)

"My job?  Design the process as requested, and then find ways to circumvent it so that the customers actually gets what they need."
 
This is exactly what I have done for 15 years.  (I am a Network Deployment PM )

Agile could work if the DAILY scrum meetings stopped getting drug out to 1-2 hours!
I also prefer working alone (at least on my part of the project), been coding for 25+ years, don't need a person sitting behind me telling me where I went wrong...
 
I still prefer waterfall as well.  But you have to beware of the bring me a rock syndrome...Where you code something (usually without requirements!) and the customer says now, I need it to do this and this as well as what you have and in this situation do this and in that situation do that.  This could go on for YEARS without a final product!
 
The up side to the above is you don't have anything to support!

I subscribe to the Picard Method: think about what you need and then make it so!
 
The single biggest roadblock to programmer productivity has nothing to do with methodology and everything to do with meetings. 

bitflipper
I subscribe to the Picard Method: think about what you need and then make it so!
 
The single biggest roadblock to programmer productivity has nothing to do with methodology and everything to do with meetings. 

I taught myself to program in AMOS on the Amiga by going through the reference manual with all the commands in alphabetical order, and slowly coming to realize how those commands were combined into useful stuff.  I set about writing a large utility for guitar players (complete with 3D GUI programmed entirely from scratch) which did a load of useful stuff, like working out every possible fingering of a chord and which chords went with which scales etc. Having had no formal training in what was the "right" or "established" way of solving these problems, I loved the whole process of sitting down and thinking "right, I need to do this" and methodically coming up with an algorithm to do it. It felt like describing a big mechanical machine to the computer in intricate detail and to this day I think it probably stands as the most creatively satisfying thing I've ever done. I had reams of paper all over the place with flow diagrams and notes and bits of code scrawled on them, and I was constantly trying to work out ways to make my code smaller and more efficient. In the end the whole thing ended up at around 300Kb including all of the data for the chords, scales and musical theory that was in it. I would bet that some of the algorithms I came up with were actually established practice, and I wouldn't be surprised if I invented some new ones as well. 
 
When later I set out to learn how to code properly from books, I found I didn't enjoy it as much. 

sharke

bitflipper
I subscribe to the Picard Method: think about what you need and then make it so!
 
The single biggest roadblock to programmer productivity has nothing to do with methodology and everything to do with meetings. 

I taught myself to program in AMOS on the Amiga by going through the reference manual with all the commands in alphabetical order, and slowly coming to realize how those commands were combined into useful stuff.  I set about writing a large utility for guitar players (complete with 3D GUI programmed entirely from scratch) which did a load of useful stuff, like working out every possible fingering of a chord and which chords went with which scales etc. Having had no formal training in what was the "right" or "established" way of solving these problems, I loved the whole process of sitting down and thinking "right, I need to do this" and methodically coming up with an algorithm to do it. It felt like describing a big mechanical machine to the computer in intricate detail and to this day I think it probably stands as the most creatively satisfying thing I've ever done. I had reams of paper all over the place with flow diagrams and notes and bits of code scrawled on them, and I was constantly trying to work out ways to make my code smaller and more efficient. In the end the whole thing ended up at around 300Kb including all of the data for the chords, scales and musical theory that was in it. I would bet that some of the algorithms I came up with were actually established practice, and I wouldn't be surprised if I invented some new ones as well. 
 
When later I set out to learn how to code properly from books, I found I didn't enjoy it as much. 

This was actually one of the things I enjoyed most back in the day.  Now all the parts are pre-made and just have to be put in where needed.
 
Heck, I may be the only person ever to have created (against my extreme resistance) a working full-screen editor...  IN COBOL!  I had an idiot manager who didn't understand that it was the wrong language for the task.  One of the other programmers kept a print out of my program on his wall as art - lol!

craigb
This was actually one of the things I enjoyed most back in the day.  Now all the parts are pre-made and just have to be put in where needed.
 
Heck, I may be the only person ever to have created (against my extreme resistance) a working full-screen editor...  IN COBOL!  I had an idiot manager who didn't understand that it was the wrong language for the task.  One of the other programmers kept a print out of my program on his wall as art - lol!

Yes, today programming IS more Google copy and paste!
Not much in original thought.  I guess if you find someone who is good at jigsaw puzzles, they could actually be trained to program.  They know how the pieces fit together!