It seems that each software design/development system, ideology, and practice has a good reason it was created, and has certain inherent benefits. Each may solve (or at least help with) some common problem.
For instance, abstraction is good and short methods are good to some extent (who wants to read a 2000-line function?), but as John points out in the article, these can be taken too far, where they create new and perhaps worse problems.
It seems there's a pendulum that swings back and forth. We go from big up front design, to Extreme Programming, to a pervasive object-oriented design culture, back to other paradigms.
For instance, abstraction is good and short methods are good to some extent (who wants to read a 2000-line function?), but as John points out in the article, these can be taken too far, where they create new and perhaps worse problems.
It seems there's a pendulum that swings back and forth. We go from big up front design, to Extreme Programming, to a pervasive object-oriented design culture, back to other paradigms.