Of course I know (and agree) with this. However, when (as has been my experience) agile actively makes developers unhappy in addition to reducing productivity, the product will inevitably suffer.

My experience (both as a PM and developer) has been that Agile projects tend to take longer to produce a worse product.

True, but all of that has little to do with Agile specifically.

None of those are failings of waterfall at all. There is nothing about waterfall that requires you to make ironclad decisions at the very start, and there is nothing that prevents you from adapting the course of development as the project proceeds.

In other words, you aren't describing waterfall in your comment. Yes, I'm invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, since that is usually what is invoked when Agile is criticized.

The real truth is that all methodologies can be done well or poorly, including waterfall and agile. The difference that I've seen in practice is that it's incredibly hard to implement Agile correctly (such that I've never seen it done), but implementing waterfall correctly is not a huge chore.

I'll split down the middle of this. In the agile shops I've worked in, there has been a consistent strong aversion to producing documentation that is actually useful: design specs, etc. However, there has also been a consistent trend to dramatically increase the amount of worthless documentation: documenting the process itself (encouraged by tools like Version One).

I agree with your underlying point, that if the team consists of just one or two developers, then process becomes less important (but still important). However, if the team consists of 50 developers, that's a serious problem all by itself, no matter what process is in use.

This can't be overstated. A great process is a process that is nearly invisible to developers, allowing us to get on with the development with minimal friction. Agile presents a great deal of friction. It is a process apparently designed to please middle management at the expense of developers.

No matter how long or short they are, standups are worthless (except, I suppose, if the team is dysfunctional to begin with). In a well functioning team, everything that is supposed to be accomplished in a standup is accomplished in real-time as it happens. So there's nothing new to be said in the stand up.

In my experience, that would be greatly preferable to Agile.

My experience is just the opposite: agile is very nearly the worst of the methodologies I've used. The one great thing about it is something that can be done in any methodology: increased communications. We can throw out the bathwater and keep that baby.

Agile started failing pretty much as soon as it met the real world. I disagree with Andy Hunt's explanation of why, though. It's not because "thinking is hard", it's mostly because of two things: management not allowing agile to be done correctly, and (from the developer's point of view) it drains software engineering of the things that make it a satisfying and enjoyable activity, turning it into the software equivalent of grunt factory work.

There's nothing antiquated about anonymous ballots. Voting secrecy is as critical now as it has ever been, for all of the same reasons: to minimize reprisals from friends, family, employers, and the government for voting "the wrong way", and to decrease the ease with which people can be coerced or bribed to vote a particular way (since the ones doing the bribing or coercing can't verify that you voted the way they want.)

Me either. But those privacy concerns you mention are such a huge deal that I try very hard to never send email to a gmail address. And when I have to send email to one, I say as little as I can possibly get away with.

I don't believe there exists any place in the nation where your only choice for internet service is AOL. There are many other dialup providers that are a local phone call from pretty much everywhere.

The lack of broadband doesn't explain the use of AOL at all. Why aren't people using a better ISP?

"Yes, but back in 1993 its not like you could just Google it."

No, but you could find local ISPs in the phone book. AOL has always been for two kinds of people: those who live someplace that had no ISPs, and those who wanted their hands to be held when they were doing that scary "online" thing.

It's the latter group that leads to aol.com email addresses being an indicator of someone who is clueless. Those people who started on AOL and actually learned stuff soon migrated to something better than AOL.

Of course it does. Is this even a question worth asking?

As others have said, by the people who wrote the language. And by the entire software industry as well. I was honestly surprised that anyone characterized C as a high level language. It's not just wrong (by the usual definitions of what low, mid, or high-level means) but is not the common understanding in the industry.

C++ is a high-level language, though.