Comments on: Collective Code Ownership – a misused Agile practice

By: Mark Levison

Mark Levison — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:56:29 +0000

It sounds like there has been a misunderstanding somewhere. Collective Code Ownership doesn't say you should all share the same account for the source code control system.

It says we share ownership of the code and anyone can make a change where ever they think they need it.

Cheers Mark Levison

By: Vladimir Levin

Vladimir Levin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:52:13 +0000

In theory pair programming should act as a form of real time code review, so people really should not find it easy to hide their incompetence. On the other hand, if that isn't enough, then I can think of only two solutions. The first is to do some chalk talks in which you highlight problems you've seen in the code and address how best to avoid them. You can also offer to pair with anyone who wants help. Hopefully that's enough because the second solution is much more extreme: If some people are really not able to write code that's up to par, even after you've really tried to help them, then fire them. Maybe I have too much faith in people, but I like to believe that if you help people to learn better ways of doing things, they'll catch on and improve.

I have to admit that there are areas of PAS where I found myself wondering how so much code was written without anyone really hunkering down and thinking about what needed to be done. Instead there's this mess of kludges that barely holds together, and if you try to fix one part, then something else that was written to balance the first kludge breaks, and so on.

By: Jeff Perrin

Jeff Perrin — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:26:45 +0000

Sounds like somebody needs a vaaaacaaation! I admit I hate crappy code, but perhaps my favorite thing in the world (after beer, golf, and babes) is refactoring that code. It can be almost therapeutic, and nothing beats taking a tangled mess of junk and turning it into a thing of pure awesomeness.