List,

let me add 2 pennies:

begin quote
In a presentation at the SD West 2006 Conference, Construx Software  
Builders' Steve McConnell argued that agile software development has not  
yet lived up to its promise, having been focused more on processes and  
tools than on people and interactions. "It seems to me that the promise of  
agile development has fallen short at least so far," said McConnell. In  
his presentation, McConnell offered his lists of best and worst ideas.  
McConnell claimed that agile development has been framed on the belief  
that developers can anticipate every possible requirement before building  
an architecture, an idea that made his "worst" list. Among McConnell's  
list of best ideas are the imperative of incremental software development,  
that fixing glitches decreases costs, and that software estimation  
abilities can be improved over time. McConnell also lauded the notion that  
full reuse is the most powerful form of reuse, and that intellectual flow  
guides software projects. Making McConnell's worst list are the ideas that  
the only software models are fully iterated or completely non-iterated,  
defect cost increase dynamics do not affect agile development projects,  
and that there is such a thing as a one-size-fits-all development approach.
end quote
from: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/03/13/76420_HNmcconnell_1.html

Needless to point out that "the belief that developers can anticipate  
every possible requirement before building an architecture" is in stark  
contrast with what Smalltalk+Squeak was*and*still*is about :)

No surprise that, given the "applet" rush on and promise of J-static,  
folks (indiv's, corp's, investors) get more and more disappointed while  
asking for more bang for their bucks (and/or time+effort)!

/Klaus