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Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

hillelwayne.com

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Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#11

Post by Delmania »

Tehnix wrote: post #2

Well written! I’ve always cringed when I’ve read anything that Uncle Bob writes. It almost seems like his entire existence depends on the acceptance of unit testing, and the unjustified dismissal of tools, especially type systems, seems to me something a only a novice would do when evangelizing their favorite lang (we’ve all been there, right?...), until they get more experience with other methods and approaches.

I never understand why Martin gets the kind of attention he does. As far as I can tell, the only significant achievement he's done for the technical community is the Agile manifesto. Outside of that, he's a typical consultant in that he's got books, training courses, etc. However, I have yet to find a significant publicly known project he's been involved in where he's had to put his principle into practice.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#13

Post by icebraining »

averell wrote: post #7
Tehnix wrote: post #2

Well written! I’ve always cringed when I’ve read anything that Uncle Bob writes. It almost seems like his entire existence depends on the acceptance of unit testing, and the unjustified dismissal of tools, especially type systems, seems to me something a only a novice would do when evangelizing their favorite lang (we’ve all been there, right?...), until they get more experience with other methods and approaches.

It's hard to build your consultant image by telling people that multiple methods and tools might work. It's easier to market a simple cure. Also, the point to "stop making shitty software" is not the same as "stop making mistakes". You can ship high quality software even while being human, it's just slower and more costly. And while I agree with the article in general, I do believe the current balance has shifted tow…

> It's hard to build your consultant image by telling people that multiple methods and tools might work. It's easier to market a simple cure.

The thing about these middlebrow dismissals is that they work the other way around:

"It's hard to build your consultant image by telling people that they need self-discipline and rules. It's easier to just sell them on tools that will fix the problem."

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#14

Post by chrisseaton »

Delmania wrote: post #11
Tehnix wrote: post #2

Well written! I’ve always cringed when I’ve read anything that Uncle Bob writes. It almost seems like his entire existence depends on the acceptance of unit testing, and the unjustified dismissal of tools, especially type systems, seems to me something a only a novice would do when evangelizing their favorite lang (we’ve all been there, right?...), until they get more experience with other methods and approaches.

I never understand why Martin gets the kind of attention he does. As far as I can tell, the only significant achievement he's done for the technical community is the Agile manifesto. Outside of that, he's a typical consultant in that he's got books, training courses, etc. However, I have yet to find a significant publicly known project he's been involved in where he's had to put his principle into practice.

There's definitely two types of very well known speakers.

People who have worked on some really notable project. Linus Torvalds, David Heinemeier Hansson, Joel Spolsky and so on. I know these people are worth listening to because I can see that their code is a success.

Then there are people who I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, Martin Fowler and so on. I don't know if I should listen to what these people say at all. Does it work? What software projects have they made a success that I can look at?

I suppose in the latter case it's usually closed-source enterprise code that they've consulted on? Well if I can't look at it I'm not sure I'm just prepared to take their word that it's successful.

Is this reasonable of me?

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#15

Post by scarface74 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #14
Delmania wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand why Martin gets the kind of attention he does. As far as I can tell, the only significant achievement he's done for the technical community is the Agile manifesto. Outside of that, he's a typical consultant in that he's got books, training courses, etc. However, I have yet to find a significant publicly known project he's been involved in where he's had to put his principle into practice.

There's definitely two types of very well known speakers. People who have worked on some really notable project. Linus Torvalds, David Heinemeier Hansson, Joel Spolsky and so on. I know these people are worth listening to because I can see that their code is a success. Then there are people who I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, Martin Fowler and so on. I don't know if I should listen t…

In fairness, Joel Spolsky has done a lot of great work as a founder - founding Stack Exchange being the most notable — but is any of his personal work open source? We don’t know how well written his code is. Twitter is successful but their code has reputation for being horrible.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#16

Post by jacobush »

chrisseaton wrote: post #14
Delmania wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand why Martin gets the kind of attention he does. As far as I can tell, the only significant achievement he's done for the technical community is the Agile manifesto. Outside of that, he's a typical consultant in that he's got books, training courses, etc. However, I have yet to find a significant publicly known project he's been involved in where he's had to put his principle into practice.

There's definitely two types of very well known speakers. People who have worked on some really notable project. Linus Torvalds, David Heinemeier Hansson, Joel Spolsky and so on. I know these people are worth listening to because I can see that their code is a success. Then there are people who I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, Martin Fowler and so on. I don't know if I should listen t…

There is a lot to it, but people still need to find ways to make corporate development work better. Torvalds et al, while great, can't offer a lot to help here. (Except indirectly by producing a good foundation to build upon, like Linux.)

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#17

Post by chrisseaton »

scarface74 wrote: post #15
chrisseaton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely two types of very well known speakers. People who have worked on some really notable project. Linus Torvalds, David Heinemeier Hansson, Joel Spolsky and so on. I know these people are worth listening to because I can see that their code is a success. Then there are people who I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, Martin Fowler and so on. I don't know if I should listen t…

In fairness, Joel Spolsky has done a lot of great work as a founder - founding Stack Exchange being the most notable — but is any of his personal work open source? We don’t know how well written his code is. Twitter is successful but their code has reputation for being horrible.

It's not open source, but he led Excel development didn't he? I can use that and appreciate that it's good quality software so I want to hear about how he managed that.

I don't know if I'm just ignorant, but to be honest I have no idea if people like Martin and Fowler can program at all or not!

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#18

Post by JamesFM »

Terretta wrote: post #10

Here is the post this post is in response to: http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/10/04/CodeIsNotThe... I don’t interpret the original piece as saying any of these tools and techniques are not useful. I interpret it as saying average developer mindset needs to shape up. I tend to agree. I work with guys who believe in formal reasoning tools (we collaborated with Amazon’s ARG for example[1]), and use all these t…

> I don’t interpret the original piece as saying any of these tools and techniques are not useful.

I don’t even know if that is up for interpretation,

> I have nothing against tools like this. I’ve even contributed money to the Light Table project. I think that good software tools make it easier to write good software. However, tools are not the answer to the “Apocalypse”.

If this is indeed the article OP is responding too I can’t but help he was missing the point. The point is scheduling pressures lead to awful code because quality is cut.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#19

Post by OliverJones »

Defects in code do indeed come from sloppiness. Of course, real people are sloppy sometimes. So real systems need resilience in depth to help resist system effects from localized sloppiness.

The same set of arguments applies to security. The last few years of history teach us that nobody, not even state actors with deep pockets, can keep secrets forever. Don't we need to change our thinking about that, and make it so security breaches aren't uniformly disastrous? It's all about resilient SYSTEMS dealing with localized sloppiness.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#20

Post by [deleted] »

averell wrote: post #7
Tehnix wrote: post #2

Well written! I’ve always cringed when I’ve read anything that Uncle Bob writes. It almost seems like his entire existence depends on the acceptance of unit testing, and the unjustified dismissal of tools, especially type systems, seems to me something a only a novice would do when evangelizing their favorite lang (we’ve all been there, right?...), until they get more experience with other methods and approaches.

It's hard to build your consultant image by telling people that multiple methods and tools might work. It's easier to market a simple cure. Also, the point to "stop making shitty software" is not the same as "stop making mistakes". You can ship high quality software even while being human, it's just slower and more costly. And while I agree with the article in general, I do believe the current balance has shifted tow…

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