Whenever I see yet another article by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Martin & co I ask myself - where is the evidence for what they are preaching? What are the graphs based on? What is the evidence behind the proposed rules? These authors are clearly accomplished blog and book writers, but anyone whose software-related accomplishments are not open source or at least well known should have their statements scrutiniz…
I agree. These theories should either be based on empirical evidence, simulations or built up from first principles in a rigorous manner. Otherwise they are about as concrete as philosophical treatises. Which is to say, not very concrete at all.
Whenever I see yet another article by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Martin & co I ask myself - where is the evidence for what they are preaching? What are the graphs based on? What is the evidence behind the proposed rules? These authors are clearly accomplished blog and book writers, but anyone whose software-related accomplishments are not open source or at least well known should have their statements scrutiniz…
So first, you should read their books for concrete code. Martin books, for example "refactoring" or "Enterprise architecture" actually have good code examples. The same apply for kent beck early work on smalltalk (you can look at Junit) or his early work on the HotDraw editor (which was the source of many of the pattern in the Design Pattern book). Kent was one of the first adopter of smalltalk at the early 80 is tec…
I can see 'before' and 'after' code in their books.
How do I know the 'after' code is any better in practice?
I have been building large scale/distributed systems myself and reviewing designs of systems like these being built around me, for years now. I have never come across any of the type of ivory tower architecture that this post and other sofware architects write about. We're talking about real-world systems that are high-load and somewhat novel, with battle-scarred engineers building them. I find it ironic that that ma…
I've been doing exactly the same for the past 16 years, and my experience has been exactly the same as yours. Never seen any of these proposed models work in reality, and never seen these models come from industry or academic veterans.
Whenever I see yet another article by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Martin & co I ask myself - where is the evidence for what they are preaching? What are the graphs based on? What is the evidence behind the proposed rules? These authors are clearly accomplished blog and book writers, but anyone whose software-related accomplishments are not open source or at least well known should have their statements scrutiniz…
Robert Martin seems to cherry pick stats and trends and whatever that fits his world view. In Clean Architecture he cites a study with N=1 as proof TDD works. I have no hope for him.
Whenever I see yet another article by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Martin & co I ask myself - where is the evidence for what they are preaching? What are the graphs based on? What is the evidence behind the proposed rules? These authors are clearly accomplished blog and book writers, but anyone whose software-related accomplishments are not open source or at least well known should have their statements scrutiniz…
For some of these speakers, I’ve literally never seen any evidence that they’ve written a single line of code. Why should we listen to Fowler? What large successful projects has he created using his ideas are there that I can look at? Where’s the data behind his slides? It’s all just talk talk talk. I’d listen to someone like Chris Lattner talk about how to design and write software because I can see whatever approac…
I don't think Fowler pretends to be much of an innovator. The way I see it his work consists in collecting and documenting existing ideas from the industry. You'll find many instances of patterns listed in PoEAA in open-source frameworks. His "refactorings" are also pretty simple ideas that people generally come up with on their own after a bit of work experience. It's just nice to have a nicely formatted book where they're given a name and they're illustrated by diagrams and examples, especially to help junior developers. You'll also notice that for each pattern or refactoring, Fowler generally tries to show its caveats. So it's not like he tries to sell his ideas at all costs. Note that here I'm talking specifically about Fowler, whose work I have found helpful with my real world projects.
Whenever I see yet another article by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Martin & co I ask myself - where is the evidence for what they are preaching? What are the graphs based on? What is the evidence behind the proposed rules? These authors are clearly accomplished blog and book writers, but anyone whose software-related accomplishments are not open source or at least well known should have their statements scrutiniz…
Agree. They talk the talk but don't walk the walk.
So first, you should read their books for concrete code. Martin books, for example "refactoring" or "Enterprise architecture" actually have good code examples. The same apply for kent beck early work on smalltalk (you can look at Junit) or his early work on the HotDraw editor (which was the source of many of the pattern in the Design Pattern book). Kent was one of the first adopter of smalltalk at the early 80 is tec…
I can see 'before' and 'after' code in their books. How do I know the 'after' code is any better in practice?
You use your best judgement based on the context, as you usually do when developing software. The only thing you've gained by applying a documented pattern is a bit of help to write your commit message :-)
I can see 'before' and 'after' code in their books. How do I know the 'after' code is any better in practice?
You use your best judgement based on the context, as you usually do when developing software. The only thing you've gained by applying a documented pattern is a bit of help to write your commit message :-)
> You use your best judgement based on the context
This isn't how science is supposed to work.
I work on programming language performance - when I say something could be implemented in a faster way, people don't just say 'yeah using my best judgement that'll be faster', they ask me to prove it. Otherwise I'm laughed off the stage. Why is it different for these people?
Whenever I see yet another article by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Martin & co I ask myself - where is the evidence for what they are preaching? What are the graphs based on? What is the evidence behind the proposed rules? These authors are clearly accomplished blog and book writers, but anyone whose software-related accomplishments are not open source or at least well known should have their statements scrutiniz…
Robert Martin seems to cherry pick stats and trends and whatever that fits his world view. In Clean Architecture he cites a study with N=1 as proof TDD works. I have no hope for him.
I generally dislike building arguments on top of statistics, rather than on theory which to my eye almost always looks more convincing. With statistics it is as if the burden is passed on to the reader to check the veracity and validity of the said numbers, where as if it is an argument constructed out of theory, the whole of it is present there for the reader to judge intrinsically on its own merits.
Whenever I see yet another article by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Robert Martin & co I ask myself - where is the evidence for what they are preaching? What are the graphs based on? What is the evidence behind the proposed rules? These authors are clearly accomplished blog and book writers, but anyone whose software-related accomplishments are not open source or at least well known should have their statements scrutiniz…