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Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

hillelwayne.com

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Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#81

Post by mannykannot »

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…

> So you have two camps. People who believe correctness is important, and people who think continuous deployment is an answer to bugs.

I am curious as to how the people of the second group (if they do, in fact, exist) think that the continuous deployment of serially faulty code is a solution to anything.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#82

Post by 201709User »

bad_user wrote: post #63

My problem with Uncle Bob's opinions is that they are pretty common within the industry, even if "discipline" really isn't the issue and all those negative feelings people allude to are warranted. In general, people are made to feel guilty for not being able to use the shitty tools and techniques we are given. Lets take for example ORMs and Hibernate in particular. I can't tell you how many times I've seen horrors re…

Bob makes money selling TDD to chumps.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#83

Post by mirceal »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #25
ducttape12 wrote: post #23

I've thought for a while the real solution to bad software is simple: hire intelligent developers who care Only problem is, they are few and far between... (in my 10+ years in the industry, I've worked with only 3 people who I'd put into this camp)

Those intelligent developers who care need to make sure the less intelligent, more indifferent developers up their game. Tools and processes are put in place to mitigate risk from that second group, but it's the seniors that need to be able to transfer their mindset to the others. Which may not always work, mind you. What should be avoided if possible is the hero developer; the risk there is that the hero dies or mov…

The risk? Hahaha. It’s the reality. The hero eventually moves on an you’re left holding the bag

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#84

Post by eesmith »

chrisseaton wrote: post #76
eesmith wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not reasonable of you to ask unless you've made a reasonable effort to look for their software and failed. Robert Martin's best known open source software contributions are for FitNesse, which is reasonably well known in the testing world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitNesse Tell me, have you read the Space Shuttle control software? There are dozens of not hundreds of papers about NASA's development process.…

Sorry I didn't really mean about reviewing the code - I meant being able to see the successful project. I listen to Torvalds when he talks about how to write his software, because his software is a massive success. I'd listen to NASA because their missions were a success. Why should I listen to other people like Robert Martin? I had seen FitNesse in the past, and while I'm sure it's a useful and well-written bit of s…

Ahh, I apologize. I misunderstood your original comment.

I'm still a confused off by your comment "I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, .. and so on." when you say that you've "seen FitNesse in the past". Did you not know that he is part of the project?

Have you looked to see what projects they've been on?

FWIW, I don't think Fitnesse is well-written. When I looked at it about 8 years back there were several security holes in it, including no protection against directory traversal attacks.

It was clear that the developers had no experience working in an untrusted environment. Which, to be fair, is the security model for a FitNesse deployment.

(FitNesse.org is served by FitNesse-v20160618, so that's not 100% true.)

I don't trust Martin's views. I think he's full of bluster, and makes assertions far beyond what is justifiable. For example, he did a Prime Numbers kata some years back where it was clear he was gaming the problem - unknowingly, I think - so that his cute but inefficient two-liner would be an acceptable answer, while poo-pooing those who immediately thought to use a sieve variant.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#85

Post by falcolas »

gregmac wrote: post #59
wasted_intel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're advocating removing the "make compiler happy" step and you think that will lead to greater discipline? If the tool automatically fixed it, you'd have a point, but most if not all of the static analysis tools I've come across simply point to the error and leave it up to the developer to fix, which is the right thing to do, reinforcing good habits.

Not OP, but I interpreted that as implying your goal should not be "make compiler happy" but "think about and write reasonable code that also of course compiles". If one's assumption is that because of a type system and other built-in protections a successful compile means no bugs, then that person is doomed to fail.

Pretty much exactly this. You can't keep throwing tools at a job and expecting them to compensate for poor developers. You also need to keep with currently good developers to ensure that they don't become lazy, relying on the tooling instead of critical thinking.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#86

Post by vkuruthers »

bad_user wrote: post #63

My problem with Uncle Bob's opinions is that they are pretty common within the industry, even if "discipline" really isn't the issue and all those negative feelings people allude to are warranted. In general, people are made to feel guilty for not being able to use the shitty tools and techniques we are given. Lets take for example ORMs and Hibernate in particular. I can't tell you how many times I've seen horrors re…

I agree with this comment. OTOH it's very hard to have and enforce discipline in commercial SW development in the US anyway. Managers just want solutions hacked out as quick as possible, so no real time for properly crafting solutions in most cases. Scrum etc. also drives this type of mindset.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#87

Post by thomascgalvin »

bad_user wrote: post #63

My problem with Uncle Bob's opinions is that they are pretty common within the industry, even if "discipline" really isn't the issue and all those negative feelings people allude to are warranted. In general, people are made to feel guilty for not being able to use the shitty tools and techniques we are given. Lets take for example ORMs and Hibernate in particular. I can't tell you how many times I've seen horrors re…

> Lets take for example ORMs and Hibernate in particular. I can't tell you how many times I've seen horrors related to ORMs / Hibernate ...

My teams don't use ORMs anymore. I've found that all of the time we "save" by not hand-writing SQL is instead lost fighting with the ORM, and problems with SQL are a lot easier to Google.

I've also found that the ability to swap databases quickly is almost totally unimportant. 100% of the time we're targeting SQLite and PostgreSQL. I don't need a few extra thousand lines of code so I can theoretically support SQL Server running on a toaster in some kid's dorm somewhere.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#88

Post by chrisseaton »

eesmith wrote: post #84
chrisseaton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I didn't really mean about reviewing the code - I meant being able to see the successful project. I listen to Torvalds when he talks about how to write his software, because his software is a massive success. I'd listen to NASA because their missions were a success. Why should I listen to other people like Robert Martin? I had seen FitNesse in the past, and while I'm sure it's a useful and well-written bit of s…

Ahh, I apologize. I misunderstood your original comment. I'm still a confused off by your comment "I have no idea what they have ever written at all. Robert Martin, .. and so on." when you say that you've "seen FitNesse in the past". Did you not know that he is part of the project? Have you looked to see what projects they've been on? FWIW, I don't think Fitnesse is well-written. When I looked at it about 8 years bac…

I had forgotten about FitNesse but I remembered it when you mentioned it.

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#89

Post by _wc0m »

bad_user wrote: post #63

My problem with Uncle Bob's opinions is that they are pretty common within the industry, even if "discipline" really isn't the issue and all those negative feelings people allude to are warranted. In general, people are made to feel guilty for not being able to use the shitty tools and techniques we are given. Lets take for example ORMs and Hibernate in particular. I can't tell you how many times I've seen horrors re…

Completely agree with this. The post where Martin derides modern, type-safe languages (Kotlin and Swift) [0] was just unbelievable to me.

"Ask yourself why we are trying to plug defects with language features. The answer ought to be obvious. We are trying to plug these defects because these defects happen too often.

Now, ask yourself why these defects happen too often. If your answer is that our languages don’t prevent them, then I strongly suggest that you quit your job and never think about being a programmer again; because defects are never the fault of our languages. Defects are the fault of programmers. It is programmers who create defects – not languages."

Arrgh! Until we get out of this ridiculous, macho, victim-blaming mindset, software development will be stuck in the relative dark ages. More, better, safer languages, please!

[0] http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/01/11/TheDarkPath....

Re: Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets

#90

Post by chrisseaton »

tptacek wrote: post #36
chrisseaton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

No, Spolsky didn't lead Excel development. He was a PM. I happen to like Spolsky a lot but most of the career success we've actually seen from him is managerial, which is not unimportant, but it's not the same as being a dev lead on Excel. On the other hand, Spolsky's programming advice is much more broad-spectrum and rooted in common sense. I'm not sure you've ever seen Spolsky dismiss a whole category of languages…

Isn't the PM the one who leads project? (I don't work in a team that uses these terms so genuinely asking.)
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