WhereIsTheJoy

We were having this panel discussion, probably 100 people in the room, with four or five XP dignitaries at the front, taking questions from the floor. The discussion had been rambling on for a while about something or other, and clearly one of the attendees had become a little bored and disillusioned. The question they put was "but where is the Joy?" That would be MikeHill

First to answer was Martin Fowler. That down to earth Brit came straight in with the logical answer that the joy is in the coding. We enjoy coding and XP makes coding especially enjoyable. So that's where the joy is.

Next up was Kent Beck. Being a bit of a philosopher, he waffled a bit about beauty in design and expression of simplicity (or something) and recommended a book. I think it was "the joy of smalltalk" (someone please correct me?)

Then it was David Parnas. You have to remember that he is a veritable god in software, having written tens of books, being a professor, having hundreds of letters after his name, and generally being white haired and well respected. Quick as a flash, he answered the question, saying "Yes, I would also like to recommend a book. It's called 'The Joy of Sets'!"

I'm still not clear whether that was Sets or Sex, but anyway the general effect was to lighten the mood somewhat :-) (It was the 'Joy of Sets' - IvanM - BTW who's written up this page? It's good. Thanks! It's me --EmilyBache)

"The Joy of Sets: Fundamentals of Contemporary Set Theory" (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics) by Keith J. Devlin ISBN: 0387940944

The book that Kent reccommended was Samual Florman's TheExistentialPleasuresOfEngineering, which should be on the reading (and re-reading) list of everyone who seeks to be a professional technologist. -- KeithB

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