Why comments are evil

Comments usually are not maintained and sooner or later become confusing rather than helpful.

Recently, I have experienced another proof that comments are evil. I needed to examine usages of an identifier (web control name), that could be used both in C# code and in ASPX markup. Thus I needed to use "Find in files", i.e. text searching. There were found 51 occurrences, of which only 4 were not commented out. 47 occurrences were just slowing me down.

I wish there was an option "skip comments" in "Find in files" dialog box.

I wish people preferred deleting stuff to commenting it out.

Troubled Agile Adoption

Adoption of agile software development fails often. It has been written much on why does it happen. Recently, Cyndi Mitchell from ThoughtWorks Studios published an article named The half-agile path leads nowhere. I also liked the reaction of Steve Moyer, saying that Scrum is easy and XP is hard.

Scrum is rather easy. That is why companies tend to apply Scrum when they want to be agile. And they all want to be agile nowadays, don't they?

So what is the problem? James Shore wrote some year ago about The Decline and Fall of Agile, and he pointed out that it is how Scrum is applied that is bringing the disappointment. He even managed to put a reason -- people tend to say agile when in fact they mean sprints and daily meetings, that is to say processes and tools that Scrum offers.

And that is unsatisfactory, of course. They do not value Individuals and interactions over processes and tools!

I believe it is Manifesto for Agile Software Development that should guide you in becoming agile. Any processes and tools, although valuable, are secondary.