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It's an extremely large and diverse field. There are plenty of us who aren't celebrities and don't care about celebrities (except to the extent that it is cause

It's an extremely large and diverse field. There are plenty of us who aren't celebrities and don't care about celebrities (except to the extent that it is caused by deep expertise). Just like you ignore reality TV celebrities, ignore these guys. It's just noise. Turn off Twitter and read "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests" instead.

davidjnelson 8y ago
That really is an amazing book :-)
- sanderjd 8y ago
  Man, I couldn't get through it! It seemed like its own kind of hype-y proselytizing and I didn't find its examples spoke to the kind of issues I actually have. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I don't know, I had been hearing for years that it's so great and I was really excited to start reading it, and it just didn't speak to me at all. Anyway, YMMV I guess!
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - mseebach 8y ago
    It's not a religious text or anything (I suspect that the proselytising tone comes from the fact that at the time it was written, it's recommendations were still a bit controversial, especially in the kind of organisations likely to have these kinds of codebases). If it's not useful to you, then that's that. The point is, other books written ten years ago by people with deep expertise (rather than a hypey blog post by someone who just discovered some principle five minutes ago) probably will be.
    - sanderjd 8y ago
      This is a different topic than my comment that you replied to but the "ten years ago" thing stuck out to me: I think books (and blog posts!) written very recently by people with deep expertise are likely useful as well. Figuring out which ones those are is the tough part.
Kinrany 8y ago
Is it just me, or is the last line basically "other gurus are fake, only this guru I support is real"?
- mseebach 8y ago
  No, it was a quip, basically intended to mean "forget about minute to minute popularity and read a book that is well respected by practitioners in the field and has stood up to the test of time". And I didn't mention the authors, it's about content, not personalities.

davidjnelson 8y ago

That really is an amazing book :-)

sanderjd 8y ago
Man, I couldn't get through it! It seemed like its own kind of hype-y proselytizing and I didn't find its examples spoke to the kind of issues I actually have. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I don't know, I had been hearing for years that it's so great and I was really excited to start reading it, and it just didn't speak to me at all. Anyway, YMMV I guess!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mseebach 8y ago
  It's not a religious text or anything (I suspect that the proselytising tone comes from the fact that at the time it was written, it's recommendations were still a bit controversial, especially in the kind of organisations likely to have these kinds of codebases). If it's not useful to you, then that's that. The point is, other books written ten years ago by people with deep expertise (rather than a hypey blog post by someone who just discovered some principle five minutes ago) probably will be.
  - sanderjd 8y ago
    This is a different topic than my comment that you replied to but the "ten years ago" thing stuck out to me: I think books (and blog posts!) written very recently by people with deep expertise are likely useful as well. Figuring out which ones those are is the tough part.

Kinrany 8y ago

Is it just me, or is the last line basically "other gurus are fake, only this guru I support is real"?

mseebach 8y ago
No, it was a quip, basically intended to mean "forget about minute to minute popularity and read a book that is well respected by practitioners in the field and has stood up to the test of time". And I didn't mention the authors, it's about content, not personalities.