What is Agile programming?

This is more centered on a team working on a project .. It allows a more streamlined process for a team of say 20+ developers to work together with key communication ..(updated code .. shared ideas)

It's basically how to be a "project manager" for a team of developers

Some programs can have 30,000+ lines of code, and any single person might be working on one line of code at a time , and not even know how it fits into the whole scheme of things

It allows the team to work more effectively

Agile programming is also known as "Rapid Application Development", or RAD. It is suited to situations where the application is under constant development, where parts of the application are in constant use, and where the business context keeps changing. Typically there is a 2 week cycle of developing and thoroughly testing the latest version of the application with the user, before releasing this next version.

Important principles of agile programming are: well-structured and clear code, testing, re-factoring code (where the same piece of code is rewritten to be better), and customer-involvement.

There are alternatives to RAD. The Waterfall method is a typical engineering one, where the project is fully specified and tested before any code is written.