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Did agile lead to this?

Features are planned in sprints. Add a widget here, remove a widget there. We end up with no design principles or vision, just a Frankenstein monster of junk.

His process sounds a lot like (dare I say) waterfall. Spending a long time in the design phase until you know what you want to build.

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From the video and what I've read at folklore.org it sounds more like what Agile purports to be, writing software in a tight iteration loop, trying things, getting feedback and adapting to the changing needs of the project.

I think where Agile goes wrong is people thinking that you don't need someone who is actually experienced and good at writing software like this (like Atkinson), you can just pick a random individual off the streets who a lot of the time can't even code, and have them take a theoretical course about writing software like this.

Your question made me throw up in my mouth. RAD, Agile, Dacom, etc. were attempts to codify natural processes so that there could be some semblance of accountability for the resource allocations. They were not a glimmer in the eye of their warped creators eyes until decades after Lisa.

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