Values
We have refined some of our values, a few of which we have placed on this page. Our reviewers have mentioned a few things which are also addressed below.
We initially started with a much more complete treatment of XP, and quickly discovered this approach was flawed for a number of reasons, chief among them was an explosion of detail covered better elsewhere. See, for example, Extreme Programming Explained (Beck). Our goal was to boil down the XP process to enough introductory material to make the salient features evident, but at the same time limit the details to those that could be effectively demonstrated with concrete examples. There is probably a need to (slightly) expand the XP introduction, at least enough to define a few terms that are used but not defined. Nevertheless, the larger context in which the chapter appears must be kept in mind: this is a book about Squeak (and to a lesser extent, Smalltalk), with a chapter about XP and Squeak.
Probably one of the most visible (particularly well known, and perhaps not as broadly understood) features of XP is its reliance on the existence of a priori tests as a way to focus team attention, and provide rapid feedback. We definitely believe in the value of testing, and want to encourage the Community of Squeak Workers to start using the SUnit testing framework. Furthermore, we would like to see a shift towards a more measured approach to Squeak evolution by that community. Testing for proposed features even before they exist is a good way to discover their design and utility. Once the feature exists, one then has a way, in the presence of other changes, of verifying that there have been no regressions.
Capturing the spirit of XP for the Squeak audience is a little more difficult than it sounds, and we have been working to refine our understanding of how best to do so. We expect to iteratively refine the examples and suggested (Squeak specific) procedures, and to supplement them with useful, practical code examples. Having something to file in helps to make the ideas presented more concrete, but may not necessarily illustrate an XP process element. We will in such cases depend on prose to make our points clear.
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