Certain XP practices make project managers scoff and programmers wince. Pair programming (or pairing) is one of them. Based on feedback from some of XP's critics, pair programming gets the award for "practice most likely to offend" -- that is, if you had to pick just one. This month, XP coach Roy Miller talks about this radical way to write code, including the misconceptions surrounding pairing, why so many software developers hate it, and why it's so important to your project's success.

ased on his experiences as chief architect on the Bugzilla Project and his current employment at Google as a software engineer, Max Kanat-Alexander (@mkanat) has formulated a method and philosophy for designing effective code that is, at its core, all about simplicity. He wrote a book about these ideas, "Code Simplicity," in which he explains how developers can optimize the structural plans for their software projects. In the following interview, Kanat-Alexander discusses the negative factors that can lead to messy code and why a large number of developers on a project doesn't have to undermine the quality of software design.

The cost impact to a company of a failed project can be severe indeed. The impact on the reputation of the project manager can be disastrous.
Numerous methodologies are available for mitigating these risks – PRINCE2, RUP, DSDN, eXtreme programming – and these have helped to some extent. This document introduces the 3D™ methodology – a set of best practices and quality tools developed by BuildMonkey, which can be summarised as: De-risk. Deploy. Deliver.

Jay fields shares several strategies to help you adopt pair programming so it sticks and is valuable.

This article explores the functional programming waters and answer the question, how does functional thinking differ from the imperative kind?

In this month's post-summer holiday column I cover two important topics for Makefile builders with a round up of techniques for sorting and searching inside Makefiles and on the file system.

Static analyzers can report possible problems in code and help reinforce the good practices of developers. This article contrasts the strengths of static analyzers with testing and discusses the current state-of-the-art.

Dart is a new structured web programming platform designed to enable complex, high-performance apps for the modern web. Kathy Walrath and Seth Ladd, members of Google's developer relations team, explain Dart's purpose and its applications.

The term reversibility in the context of software development means the possibility of propagating independent changes made to the resulting source code back into the design and analysis models of earlier phases, so these can be kept up to date with what is actually executed.

Poor quality caused by defects continues to be a major problem facing the software industry. Unlike the traditional way of handling this problem where testers detect defects, this article suggests approaches where developers detect defects. This approach builds upon existing techniques, augments certain activities that developers often already engage in, and focuses on detecting defects in existing code. The end result is little additional effort in defect detection, easier fixes, and enhancing the effectiveness of the original intention of the activities.