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Extreme Terseness: Some Languages Are More Agile than Others

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Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering (XP 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2675))

Abstract

While XP principles are independent of the languages in which software is developed, we can distinguish properties of programming languages that affect the agility of development. Some languages are inherently more agile than others, and the experience of developing software in these languages reflects this. A family of languages descended from the mathematics notation developed at Harvard in the 1950s by Iverson [1] shares properties of extreme terseness and abstractive power with weak data typing. The history of software development in these languages foreshadows some of the characteristics of XP projects. To these linguistic communities, XP offers the prospect of rehabilitating styles of software development that fell into disrepute with the rise of software engineering. Conversely, these languages offer XP practitioners the possibility of radical condensation of the conversation between developer and customer.

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References

  1. Iverson, K.E.: A Programming Language, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1962

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  2. Iverson, K.E.: Notation as a Tool of Thought, 1979 ACM Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 23(8), August 1980

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LambentTechnology, 81 South Hill Park, ndon, NW3 SS

    Stephen Taylor

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  1. Stephen Taylor
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Piazza D’Ami, 09123, Cagliari, Italy

    Michele Marchesi

  2. Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Center for Applied Software Engineering, Piazza Domenicani 3, 39100, Bozen/Bolzano, Italy

    Giancarlo Succi

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Taylor, S. (2003). Extreme Terseness: Some Languages Are More Agile than Others. In: Marchesi, M., Succi, G. (eds) Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering. XP 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2675. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44870-5_44

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44870-5_44

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40215-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44870-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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