Agile is neither good nor bad, much like waterfall or many other methodologies, what is good or bad is the implementation of it. I am not personally for or against agile it has its place in the right teams.

What does get annoying sometime (and i suspect this is what gets on Dilettantes nerves) is agile evangelists who proclaim it to be the second coming of software development which will solve all previous problems and magically produce better, faster, bug free software!

There are many places that have bad agile implementations either because they have tried to rigidly implement a (supposedly) flexible system, they implemented in a team which is not suited to it, or they just flat out don't understand it.

When i say implement it in a team that doesn't suit it, Agile works best when the majority of the team know a product (or at least the product domain) well, if you have a team that is basically learning the product at the same time as learning the methodology then they are setup to fail.

If you have a team that works on multiple products at the same time then agile does not fit well

If you have a development team of less than 4 people then agile does not fit well.

If you don't have proper business buy in agile does not work that well, as you have to change the way the product requirements are done.

Bits of agile can be appropriated by any developer and are good ideas such as breaking down your work into the smallest possible units i find be just good practice, but for the whole system to work and i have seen agile functioning well, you need the business to decided they are going to do it properly, and it needs to have big enough and experienced teams, and you need to be flexible and use the bits of agile that suit the way your business works and be prepared to change the bits that are not.