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I guess so. It's just so easy to be defeatist when any useful tool or technique can be summarily dismissed by jaded technologists as "snake oil". I've had to co
by MartinCron 14y ago
I guess so. It's just so easy to be defeatist when any useful tool or technique can be summarily dismissed by jaded technologists as "snake oil". I've had to come to terms with the fact that from my perspective, lots of developers are just "doing it wrong"
- jiggy2011 14y agoThe definition of snake oil is basically medicine that has a claimed benefit but little/no supporting evidence. Once you have strong backing data , it's not snake oil anymore and it becomes increasingly difficult to make that claim.
- MartinCron 14y agoBacking data that's strong enough to satisfy some critics is impossible to obtain. Anecdotes? Obviously not OK. Small-scale controlled experiments can be dismissed as nothing more than pointless toy exercises that have no bearing on real-world production code. Large-scale controlled experiments are impractical. Blinding and placebos aren't possible. Isolating confounding elements such as individual performance would be difficult. Burden of proof is burdensome, I guess.
- jiggy2011 14y agoBasically yes. I'm sure it would be possible to do a good study but very expensive. Although if the potential upside is increasing the productivity of an entire industry maybe it's worth doing.