A critique of 'agile' and an interesting response

Steve Yegge has a nice rant about -isms, including the agile movement at:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html

Everything he says is correct, but he misses the point. All things that are apparently effective will have also-rans. The whole .com era was about that!

He says that he’s observed a lot, but doesn’t give us details. I’d like to know them. I don’t think he’s actually ever pair programmed, and no, ten people at a keyboard is not better.

The revolutionary thing about the XP methodology (XP is just one of many agile methods), was that it wasn’t revolutionary. It just gave me language to discuss what I’d already been doing.

He then goes on to discuss the google agile methodology. It sounds great.

But, the best response I was pointed to is at:

http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/jatBaseball.htm

We Tried Baseball and It Didn't Work Ron Jeffries 05/02/2006 An allegory? Sarcasm? Humorous pastiche? You decide. The fanatical proponents of baseball tell us that it is a very exciting game, fun to play and fun to watch. They are clearly either stupid or evil or both, because we tried baseball and it didn't work. ...