OO, FP and XP training (extremely long)

[Dominic Williams]

Hi Jay,

Thanks for your post, now I know I'm not so alone with
this strange combination of interests in XP and
Erlang...

> 1) Agile development will lead to OO languages being
> replaced by FP languages.

I'm not going to make any predictions about how the
rest of the world is going to evolve, but personally I
am a firm believer in the fact that FP, and in
particular Erlang, is a perfect fit for XP.

I'm working on an article which I'll put on my website
shortly, arguing that OO actually obfuscates programmer
tests, that Erlang doesn't and indeed how TDD is a
wonderful fit with Erlang, FP, pattern matching and so
on.

I've started an open-source tool, www.xpdojo.net, whose
aim is to enable XP teams to develop in Erlang - or
Erlang teams to use XP. Of course it's being developed
in Erlang.

However, the XP community, although open-minded about a
lot of things, is fiercely OO. I'll see what I can do
to change that. I'll probably be giving a talk about XP
and Erlang at the Paris XP Day (www.xpday.fr). And, if
I get off my butt and get XP Dojo to a useful state,
I'd like to come and show it at the next EUC.

As you say, many OO developers have come to the
conclusion that TDD does away with the need for static
typing - that's one of the reasons I feel TDD might
also be of interest to Erlang developers, especially
those who think they would like more type checking ;-)

Regards,

Dominic Williams
http://www.dominicwilliams.net

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