This article by Uncle Bob has generated a lot of debate. I read it for the first time today and, I have to say, I am not impressed.
too many programmers think that schedule pressure makes it OK to do a half-assed job
This is solely blaming the programmer . I have been on software projects where someone is basically told deliver what you can by this date and then move onto something else. Then leave someone else to fix the bugs. This despite the programmer working very unsociable hours and trying their absolute hardest. What does Bob want the developer to do ? Refuse and be sacked, when they have a family to feed? Yes there are lots of lazy software developers in our industry who shouldn't be employed, but this kind of generalisation by Uncle Bob isn't helpful.
Better REPLs are not the answer. Model Driven Engineering is not the answer. Tools and platforms are not the answer. Better languages are not the answer
This is just nonsense. They are not the only answer, but of course they are part of the answer.
I stood before a sea of programmers a few days ago. I asked them the question I always ask: “How many of you write unit tests on a regular basis?” Not one in twenty raised their hands.
I would like him to provide evidence of who these people were and if they have any relevance to the article, as the article's jist is about serious and critical software. Are teams delivering such software really not writing automated tests ? I really doubt it.
Automated testing is great. Test Driven Development is a useful technique which I have in my arsenal. But Uncle Bob's obsessive focus on this can cause issues too. I once worked with a developer who had to write everything using TDD and apply EVERYTHING based on Bob's videos. It was too much. APIs weren't designed, data models weren't sensible and there was too much code (methods like isOpen, isNotOpen everywhere). It was clean code taken to the extreme. And not a good extreme.
I am not defending software developers as a whole. The levels of professionalism shown by some in our industry is at times scary. But a silly article like that which Uncle Bob originally wrote isn't helpful.