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Why not read both? What is this "read these programmers who have build interesting things" street-cred has anything to do with Robert C. Martin? Are you sayin

Why not read both? What is this "read these programmers who have build interesting things" street-cred has anything to do with Robert C. Martin? Are you saying we should not listen to instructors and don't bother reading books that are being written by someone who haven't "produced" anything in its respective industry?

Silhouette 15y ago
> Are you saying we should not listen to instructors and don't bother reading books that are being written by someone who haven't "produced" anything in its respective industry? That might be going too far, but if someone presumes to teach others a subject, should they not have something that supports their authority and gives their advice some credibility? A track record of doing the job successfully themselves makes pretty solid case in that regard. Another respectable possibility would be having studied the work of others, if the teacher is presenting arguments based on careful observations of that work. However, most of the Agile consultancy crowd have precious little personal track record and precious little empirical data to back up the things they recommend either. Instead, they tend to rely on selective evidence, unwarranted extrapolation, over-generalisation and crude insults as their debating tools of choice. Unsurprisingly, there is also data available that contradicts some of the consultants' favourite arguments. Typically, they ignore such data in their own presentations. If challenged with it, they usually try to hand-wave it away by reinterpreting something they have previously said or conveniently redefining their terms. The trouble is, given the high profile that these consultants maintain, a lot of impressionable new starters in our industry read their writing and do take it as gospel. Then they start working with other people, and their managers and mentors and colleagues have to waste a silly amount of time undoing the damage. I've been that undoing-the-damage guy on way too many occasions. I have absolutely no doubt that people like Robert C. Martin are harmful to our industry. I wish he would keep the preaching in church and leave software development to people who understand that professionalism does not require blind faith in whatever he happens to believe himself. I realise that I have myself indulged in a bit of character assassination without evidence here. This is already a rather long post, and I don't want to double it with all the examples I'm thinking of as I write it. However, if anyone is interested and not familiar with the typical criticisms I've alluded to, feel free to reply and I'll try to back up any specific claims I've made.
- hello_moto 15y ago
  Or perhaps you should read the message instead of looking (and shooting) at the messenger. By the way, I do not own his books at all. None. So... Uncle Bob does not have anything that supports his skill and authority? Just because he worked with clients building internal apps or back-end b2b apps does not mean he has not done anything. If you want to use his software or check his code maybe you should try FitNesse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitNesse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitNesse). I'm not his biggest fanboy nor I care even a slight bit when it comes to TDD, BDD, Agile or whatever. But this guy has written books since '95 and he's doing a darn good job and the customers are happy (check his ratings). http://www.amazon.com/Robert-C.-Martin/e/B000APG87E/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_4?qid=1322365740&sr=8-4 http://www.amazon.com/Robert-C.-Martin/e/B000APG87E/ref=sr_n... While other "consultants" preach Agile processes, Uncle Bob focuses on writing code. Code darn it. Not processes or steps or standup meetings or burn-down chart. C.O.D.E. While others preaching OOP with re-use crap, Uncle Bob made a stand with SOLID and "Object in real world is not the same with Object as program". Actual implementation as opposed to re-hash the same old "theoretical" stuff. Check out his Craftsman articles: http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/publishedArticles.html http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/publishedArticles.html (click the Craftsman, I can't give you the URL). All code. On the other hand, I met tons of developers that write code only for themselves and not other, developers that have huge ego and did the heroic crap, developers that write code without even inline documentation, developers that don't have any professionalism or whatsoever just because they thought that "Hey, Linus never care any of these craps". Let's keep in mind that great programmers like Linus is just 0.01% while others that try to emulate him failed miserably. So yeah, I chose Uncle Bob over Linus when it comes to educating others since 95% of developers are below average (yes, I'm harsh. I could be one of that 95% as well for all I know). If Uncle Bob can push that number down significantly. I'll be much happier. PS: Have you actually look at the article that this HN thread link to? Tell me, what's wrong with Uncle Bob's latest book? All the suggestions are good. Uncle Bob pretty much advised developers to become better. Those 9 points that the blogger pointed are what happening in the real world: developers are crappy in general and that is due to their own character and attitude : "I just want to hack some code the way I want it to be, to hell with the rest". Guess who's going to clean that sucker's code?
wglb 15y ago
"Why not read both?": I am thinking that reading Robert C. Martin is not likely to make you smarter.
- hello_moto 15y ago
  Reading Coders at Work does not make me smarter either (and I've read it). Don't get me wrong, it is an interesting book but let's not forget that it is a personal interview type of book. These people are telling stories about their life + computers. Not necessary to focus on educating other people. If you look at the list of the people for CaW, most of them are either in Research or no longer actively writing code in recent environment. They might write code fragments or design stuffs (more like Architect role). But I do like to pick some of the opinions regarding unit-test that all of these so-called great developers believe and shove them to other developers :).

Silhouette 15y ago

> Are you saying we should not listen to instructors and don't bother reading books that are being written by someone who haven't "produced" anything in its respective industry? That might be going too far, but if someone presumes to teach others a subject, should they not have something that supports their authority and gives their advice some credibility? A track record of doing the job successfully themselves makes pretty solid case in that regard. Another respectable possibility would be having studied the work of others, if the teacher is presenting arguments based on careful observations of that work. However, most of the Agile consultancy crowd have precious little personal track record and precious little empirical data to back up the things they recommend either. Instead, they tend to rely on selective evidence, unwarranted extrapolation, over-generalisation and crude insults as their debating tools of choice. Unsurprisingly, there is also data available that contradicts some of the consultants' favourite arguments. Typically, they ignore such data in their own presentations. If challenged with it, they usually try to hand-wave it away by reinterpreting something they have previously said or conveniently redefining their terms. The trouble is, given the high profile that these consultants maintain, a lot of impressionable new starters in our industry read their writing and do take it as gospel. Then they start working with other people, and their managers and mentors and colleagues have to waste a silly amount of time undoing the damage. I've been that undoing-the-damage guy on way too many occasions. I have absolutely no doubt that people like Robert C. Martin are harmful to our industry. I wish he would keep the preaching in church and leave software development to people who understand that professionalism does not require blind faith in whatever he happens to believe himself. I realise that I have myself indulged in a bit of character assassination without evidence here. This is already a rather long post, and I don't want to double it with all the examples I'm thinking of as I write it. However, if anyone is interested and not familiar with the typical criticisms I've alluded to, feel free to reply and I'll try to back up any specific claims I've made.

hello_moto 15y ago
Or perhaps you should read the message instead of looking (and shooting) at the messenger. By the way, I do not own his books at all. None. So... Uncle Bob does not have anything that supports his skill and authority? Just because he worked with clients building internal apps or back-end b2b apps does not mean he has not done anything. If you want to use his software or check his code maybe you should try FitNesse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitNesse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitNesse). I'm not his biggest fanboy nor I care even a slight bit when it comes to TDD, BDD, Agile or whatever. But this guy has written books since '95 and he's doing a darn good job and the customers are happy (check his ratings). http://www.amazon.com/Robert-C.-Martin/e/B000APG87E/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_4?qid=1322365740&sr=8-4 http://www.amazon.com/Robert-C.-Martin/e/B000APG87E/ref=sr_n... While other "consultants" preach Agile processes, Uncle Bob focuses on writing code. Code darn it. Not processes or steps or standup meetings or burn-down chart. C.O.D.E. While others preaching OOP with re-use crap, Uncle Bob made a stand with SOLID and "Object in real world is not the same with Object as program". Actual implementation as opposed to re-hash the same old "theoretical" stuff. Check out his Craftsman articles: http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/publishedArticles.html http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/publishedArticles.html (click the Craftsman, I can't give you the URL). All code. On the other hand, I met tons of developers that write code only for themselves and not other, developers that have huge ego and did the heroic crap, developers that write code without even inline documentation, developers that don't have any professionalism or whatsoever just because they thought that "Hey, Linus never care any of these craps". Let's keep in mind that great programmers like Linus is just 0.01% while others that try to emulate him failed miserably. So yeah, I chose Uncle Bob over Linus when it comes to educating others since 95% of developers are below average (yes, I'm harsh. I could be one of that 95% as well for all I know). If Uncle Bob can push that number down significantly. I'll be much happier. PS: Have you actually look at the article that this HN thread link to? Tell me, what's wrong with Uncle Bob's latest book? All the suggestions are good. Uncle Bob pretty much advised developers to become better. Those 9 points that the blogger pointed are what happening in the real world: developers are crappy in general and that is due to their own character and attitude : "I just want to hack some code the way I want it to be, to hell with the rest". Guess who's going to clean that sucker's code?

wglb 15y ago

"Why not read both?": I am thinking that reading Robert C. Martin is not likely to make you smarter.

hello_moto 15y ago
Reading Coders at Work does not make me smarter either (and I've read it). Don't get me wrong, it is an interesting book but let's not forget that it is a personal interview type of book. These people are telling stories about their life + computers. Not necessary to focus on educating other people. If you look at the list of the people for CaW, most of them are either in Research or no longer actively writing code in recent environment. They might write code fragments or design stuffs (more like Architect role). But I do like to pick some of the opinions regarding unit-test that all of these so-called great developers believe and shove them to other developers :).