Dr. Dobb's Journal July 2002
The sign outside the room just says "SMA" — no further explanation. I am in the market for some further explanation right about now. In town for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, and in spite of that keen sense of direction for which I am so widely hailed, I find myself uncharacteristically disoriented, and am hoping for some helpful signage — more helpful than "SMA."
It was Cinco de Mayo that threw me off. San Jose had closed all the streets surrounding the Convention Center as part of a city-wide celebration of the holiday that honors Mexican culture in much the same way that Fort Lauderdale Spring Break honors a college education, and I couldn't make my way to Woz Way. With that Joker removed, the house of cards that is my mental model of the layout of downtown San Jose collapsed, and I was reduced to parking in a Safeway lot between two lowriders and walking too many sweaty blocks back to what I took — I now suspect erroneously — to be a rear entrance to the Convention Center.
And here I am, outside the only meeting room that I can find in this hall of hallways. Inside the room I see mostly men, mostly casually dressed, most likely programmers, I tell myself hopefully. Outside, it's just me and the sign. I hike up my jeans, run fingers through my beard, affect a confident air, and stride in.
Whereupon I am immediately accosted by a 40-ish, bearded, T-shirted specimen so earnest and eager that I am sure I must have walked in on either an Apple event or a Pentacostal revival meeting. His T-shirt, emblazoned "Eschew Process Rigor Mortis," makes me lean toward the former hypothesis more than the latter, but I am still doubtful. What he says then removes all doubt from my mind, replacing it with a nameless horror.
"Welcome, friend," he says, steering me further into the room with a deft and firm grip on my elbow. "Welcome to Software Methodologies Anonymous." At his words, others move in on us.
I am surrounded, in a room full of recovering process freaks. Don't make any sudden moves, I tell myself as I edge toward the tract table, hoping to be able to get out of this with my mind undamaged. Odd, I think: I was just the other day reading Tom DeMarco's take on Process Addiction. "The 1990s were the Decade of Process for IT," DeMarco said in the preface to some book. "We prostrated ourselves before the CMM and ISO...We were determined to 'plan the work and work the plan.'" But I had no idea it had gotten so bad.
Of course, these people all recognize that they have a problem — witness that extra large T-shirt: "Thin is In" — and are working on the solution. So you may wonder at my dismay, but if so, you are not thinking clearly. Because however much we respect and support the heroic efforts of the recovering obsessive, we don't want to be around him during the recovery. The only thing more jaw-clenchingly upbeat than a Mac conventioneer or a Pentacostal revivalist is a former obsessive in the throes of kicking the habit.
I manage to brush off some evangelical advances by pretending to be intent on the tracts on the table. These people understand obsession; my fixed stare at a pamphlet on "Drowning in the Waterfall Model" speaks to their depths and they wander off.
These tracts — "Maximum Capability Maturity = Death," "You Can't Ship Documentation without Code but You Can Ship Code without Documentation," "I Kicked the Planning Habit," "The 12-Step Program to Eliminate n-Step Programs" — are printed in large type with mostly small words, as though years spent in meetings with managers and clients sap all one's intelligence. Perhaps it does; I wouldn't know and at the moment don't care. I edge toward the next table, my plan being to move from one table to another until I am near the door, and then bolt.
Over in a corner, a man whose T-shirt reads "eXtreme Programming" is conversing animatedly with two other members. I lean closer and can make out a few scattered sentences: "I don't belong here." "I don't have a problem." And finally: "One of you has to leave; I only work in groups of two."
This next table is mobbed, and I realize that it's laden not with motivational literature but with junk food. All recovering addicts binge on something else. But something on the table catches my eye and I try to see over the crowd. I'm not sure, but I think it might be the Mythical Man-Month. The recovering process freaks are stabbing at it with steely knives...
Next thing I remember, I'm running for the door.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mike@swaine.com