InfoWorld: Is that something that's important in agile programming?

Beck: Yes, that's what you need in a technology.... That really helps in a technology platform. My dad was doing most of the technical side of agile development, programming microcontrollers in assembly language. He had automated tests, he did incremental design, he had small frequent releases, and he wrote rock-solid code.

InfoWorld: Can you use agile methodologies with Java and .Net, or is there another language that would be preferred?

Beck: You certainly can do it with Java and .Net.

InfoWorld: What about scripting languages techniques like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Ruby, and PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor)? Do they fit into the agile paradigm at all?

Beck: Sure. Ruby, for example, comes from this tradition of human-centric languages. And you could write Ruby in a style that's very maintainable, that's easy to change for a long time. I worry when you get to the database, [I think] that change suddenly becomes harder.

InfoWorld: With Ruby?

Beck: With relational databases in general. But the agile community is coming up with techniques to deal with that.  And the vendors are catching on that that's a differentiator, to have databases that accept incremental change.

InfoWorld: What about Web development? Is that particularly tuned for agile development, or is it just another application area?

Beck: One of the great things about Web development is that deployment is cheap. And if you're doing deployments all the time, it's great to be able to just push to a handful of servers and you're done. As opposed to the embattled days of having to burn CDs and send them out. That's hugely expensive to do deployments. But if you can just push a button, write disk images to your server farm, and you're finished, then you have daily deployments or multiple times of day, even, deployments are technically feasible, although you have to work pretty hard to get the reliability of the software to where you can do that. But it's feasible.

InfoWorld: Was there anything else you wanted to bring up?

Beck: Well, I completely dodged your question about the Agile Manifesto, and I didn't mean to, but I'm also not quite sure what to say about it.

InfoWorld: I guess there were 17 people that signed onto that?

Beck: Right. My name was the first alphabetically, so that's why it's Beck, et al.

InfoWorld: What was your involvement in that?

Beck: Well I was in the room and part of the discussions.... We were trying to find common ground.... We share some characteristics, but there's also very significant differences between the original signers. And what I see happening with that word "agile" is it's just getting washed out. Under the glare of exposure, it's fading. It doesn't mean as much now as it did before.

InfoWorld: So what does it mean?

Beck: I saw a quote from Microsoft today about how they wanted to become a more agile organization. At that point, what does it mean to be agile? I mean, my definition is that you accept input from reality and you respond to it.