Ignore a common misbelief, or actively fight against it? I would say: Get successful ignoring it, and then openly "admit" that you don't share that conventiona

Ignore a common misbelief, or actively fight against it? I would say: Get successful ignoring it, and then openly "admit" that you don't share that conventional wisdom. It can be very tedious, impossible or unfavorable to convince people who just parrot common misconceptions. Or, as Proverbs 27, 22 pithily says: Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him. It's much easier when you have success on your side. I would guess that's the main reason why nobody talks about the majority of Dijkstra's list anymore: There is a overwhelming lot of examples who succeeded ignoring or opposing them. Waterfall software development isn't on the decline because smart people won an argument, but because even big companies realize that the most successful software today wasn't made that way.