Re: [school-discuss] Free-Open Baccalaureate Idea

[Massimiliano Mirra <mmirra@libero.it>]

Yishay Mor <y.mor@ioe.ac.uk> writes:

> Thanks for the reference.  I'll save it.
>
> My understanding of XP is that it does not preclude you from having a
> vision, only suggest that you work towards that vision in small steps.

Yes, kind of.  It also tries to tell apart vision from planning,
warning about the latter.

(BTW, I was not criticizing in any way.)

I would like to quote two more paragraphs by Paul Graham that perhaps
state the idea in a more direct way:


    A throwaway program is a program you write quickly for some
    limited task: a program to automate some system administration
    task, or generate test data for a simulation, or convert data
    from one format to another. The surprising thing about throwaway
    programs is that, like the "temporary" buildings built at so
    many American universities during World War II, they often don't
    get thrown away. Many evolve into real programs, with real
    features and real users.
    
    I have a hunch that the best big programs begin life this way,
    rather than being designed big from the start, like the Hoover
    Dam. It's terrifying to build something big from scratch. When
    people take on a project that's too big, they become
    overwhelmed. The project either gets bogged down, or the result
    is sterile and wooden: a shopping mall rather than a real
    downtown, Brasilia rather than Rome, Ada rather than C.


                          (http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html)


My experience with software projects based on voluntary work confirms
Graham's ``hunch'', and the same probably applies for projects in
other domains.  I think what they all are trying to communicate is:
``Start small, start easy, and above all start now.''