Kent Beck Quotes

The community isn't nearly as afraid as it thinks it is.

The system metaphor is a story that everyone--customers, programmers, and managers--can tell about how the system works.

Code wants to be simple... I had to give up the idea that I had the perfect vision of the system to which the system had to conform. Instead, I had to accept that I was only the vehicle for the system expressing its own desire for simplicity. My vision could shape initial direction, and my attention to the desires of the code could affect how quickly and how well the system found its desired shape, but the system is riding me much more than I am riding the system.

Responsible Development is the style of development I aspire to now. It can be summarized by answering the question, How would I develop if it were my money? I'm amazed how many theoretical arguments evaporate when faced with this question.

If you're having trouble succeeding, fail.

Learning research tells us that the time lag from experiment to feedback is critical.

I tell people to start implementing when they are pretty sure there aren't more important stories out there. An iteration's worth of data is worth months of speculation.

The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes.

I don't like the feeling, but I've got to say that a little fear makes me a more focused, more responsible programmer.

How good the design is doesn't matter near as much as whether the design is getting better or worse. If it is getting better, day by day, I can live with it forever. If it is getting worse, I will die.

I mean, source code in files; how quaint, how seventies!

I've known people who have not mastered their tools who are good programmers, but not a tool master who remained a mediocre programmer.

Make it work, make it right, make it fast.

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.

Testing is not the point. The point is about responsibility.

Listening, Testing, Coding, Designing. That's all there is to software. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

Responsible Development shares many practices with XP but the roots are different. Responsible Development's values are honesty, transparency, accountability and responsibility. These lead me to pairing, test-first, incremental design, continuous integration and so on because they support the values.

Of the four project development variables - scope, cost, time and quality - quality isn't really a free variable. The only possible values are "excellent" and "insanely excellent", depending on whether lives are at stake.

If testing costs more than not testing, then don't test.

I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.

A plan is an example of what could happen, not a prediction of what will happen.

Sometimes the problem has to mature before the solution can mature.