{"id":1498,"date":"2012-01-13T15:32:10","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T22:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/162.243.68.163\/blog\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2012-08-07T11:11:53","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T17:11:53","slug":"totally-gay-blog-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/?p=1498","title":{"rendered":"Totally gay blog post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, the word stupid<\/em> is not enough. Today I learned some of the terminology used to describe parts of Agile software development<\/a>. Agile is a popular “methodology” adopted by software companies as an alternative to admitting that they are incapable of putting together a development process that works. It is essentially the same as having no process whatsoever, but with the subtle difference that your CEO can tell investors and large customers that you “have a process.” And he’ll be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

Agile: a flowery way to say Out Of Control<\/h3>\n

Agile allows developers to maintain the illusion of software process, while allowing developers to do whatever they want with no process or plan. How? Agile accomplishes this through the use of Flowery Terms. Each step in software development at a company with no process is documented and given a Flowery Name.<\/p>\n

For example, when collecting product requirements, a developer who follows a process would normally document Use Cases. Agile’s Flowery Name for this is\u00c2\u00a0 “User Stories.” I am not making this up! And the important difference between Use Cases and User Stories is that with Agile you are encouraged to be half-assed and never finish them. Well, officially, you are encouraged to do “just enough” and come back and “finish them later,” but we all know that this never happens. With Agile, we do things just like we always have in the past, except that now it’s our process, and it has an investor-friendly name.<\/p>\n

So I guess I’ve always been Agile. And here I thought that we were “winging it” at some of those companies!<\/p>\n

Surely there is a better way to say this<\/h3>\n

But enough about Agile. Where I work, we have processes and we follow them. They are not overly burdensome and we get a lot of work done. I’ll be damned before I use the name “User Stories” to describe how we define requirements. That term is completely, it’s totally… something.<\/p>\n

I can only describe “User Stories” in one way: that name is Totally Gay. And now I have a problem. Because I’m not a homophobe–but I feel about “User Stories” the same way a homophobe feels about gays. Isn’t there a non-bigoted word that means the same thing? “Stupid” is not a good substitute–it isn’t even part of my definition. Another word that implies all these things at once:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • lame<\/li>\n
  • laughable<\/li>\n
  • contemptible, even<\/li>\n
  • slightly offensive<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The phrase “laughably lame” works, but “laughably” is intellectual and “lame” is anti-intellectual, resulting in a phrase that nobody will use and is hard to say.<\/p>\n

    I want a simple phrase that means the same thing as “totally gay”, but which doesn’t imply that I’m a complete douche. (If you use the phrase “totally gay” without apologizing, you are a douche.) Google turns up nothing.<\/p>\n

    I’m wasting your time<\/h3>\n

    This should all be unnecessary. This whole blog post would fit in one Tweet if I could just say “Agile software development is totally gay” in a way that wasn’t, you know, totally gay…or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Sometimes, the word stupid is not enough. Today I learned some of the terminology used to describe parts of Agile software development. Agile is a popular “methodology” adopted by software companies as an alternative to admitting that they are incapable of putting together a development process that works. It is essentially the same as having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[246,249,245,251,248,247,250],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other","tag-agile","tag-flowery-name","tag-gay","tag-lame","tag-process","tag-software","tag-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}