You should have written that article, I think. As another pretty ancient developer, I agree with more or less all your comments. I think pair programming has it

You should have written that article, I think. As another pretty ancient developer, I agree with more or less all your comments. I think pair programming has its occasional uses, but that's about the only thing I'd add to the stuff you've written. Silver bullet thinking is a big warning sign, and advocating some shiny tech generically (e.g. TDD) means " go somewhere else for advice". I really like this article, for advice on how to write code: https://bit.ly/33fb94w https://bit.ly/33fb94w ("write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend"). Copy-paste is definitely a useful practise, at the right time and place.