alt Hacker NewsTFA first claims that agile invented none of the things it encompasses, seems not to challenge those claims, but then just jumps to agile is dead because LLMs can code based on spec.
This is just a confusing and confused article.
Agile just finally embraced that specs are incomplete and can even be wrong because the writer of the spec does not yet really know or understand what they want. So they need working software to show the spec in action and then we can iterate on the results.
We are still doing that and will be doing it in the foreseeable future. Agile is very much alive and here to stay.
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> Agile just finally embraced that specs are incomplete and can even be wrong because the writer of the spec does not yet really know or understand what they want. So they need working software to show the spec in action and then we can iterate on the results.
I agree, but what you describe is agile, not Agile (capital A).
Agile (capital A) is Scrum (capital S) where you have Backlog Grooming (patent pending) where the team clears any ambiguity to define a spec (ticket).
Deviating from said spec is seen as Scope Creep (gasp) and might lead to complaints during Sprint Review (trademark).
So yes, agile prefers working software over detailed spec. But typical manifestations of Agile (capital A) are exactly the opposite.
Iterative development has existed since forever, since earlier than written history.
It is not something invented by the Agile proponents.
They have proposed a much more specific variant of iterative development, which at least as I have seen it implemented in any company which claimed to implement it, was really bad in comparison with the right ways of organizing development work, which I have seen elsewhere.
Any high quality product must be designed starting from a good written specification. Obviously, almost always the initial specification must pass through one or more update cycles, after experience is gathered through the implementation. This has always been universally used, not just by Agile practitioners.
There have always existed bad managers, who wrongly believed that a development process can always be linear and who did not include in their timelines the necessity for loops, but that was just bad management, so if Agile proponents pointed to such cases, those were just strawmen, not the best existing practices.