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Mastering Programming (2016)

tidyfirst.substack.com

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Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#31

Post by sandofsky »

zabzonk wrote: post #5

[flagged]

The initial claim to fame of the XP crowd was the C3 project, an attempt to upgrade Chrystler's payroll system to handle Y2K.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens...

What nobody really talks about is how the project was ultimately cancelled. Reasons for the flop include unclear requirements, and the customer representative resigning due to burnout. That's fine, though many XP proponents sell it as a panacea that lets you respond to any change.

It's just remarkable to me how everyone involved was able to bootstrap careers as thought leaders from a project that failed so bad that Chrysler ended up banning XP.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#32

Post by petersellers »

zabzonk wrote: post #28
petersellers wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your original post, you dismissed the article because you read previous books of his and thought they were bad. That is literally an ad hominem.

no, it isn't. ad hominem is attacking a person. i was criticising his writings.

You are attacking the person's writing capability, implying that the article is not good because they wrote something before that you disagreed with. You're trying to argue semantics here, but it doesn't really matter because either way your argument is fallacious.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#33

Post by bdcravens »

petersellers wrote: post #15
zabzonk wrote: post #5

[flagged]

I find this kind of empty criticism frustrating. Do you have anything constructive to add about this article specifically?

I think the point is that at some point, the "thought leaders" start to lose relevance when they're not day-to-day practitioners. I'm not saying it is or isn't true about Beck (I've always enjoyed listening to him speak), but is critical thinking we should apply to anyone.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#34

Post by bdcravens »

brtkdotse wrote: post #13
zabzonk wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> what actual publicly available product has he ever produced? oh, i remember - a not very good smalltalk test framework. See also, Bob Martin.

In Bob's case, he hasn't helped his case with his public persona. His Twitter these days is mostly grumpy political "get off my lawn" in nature.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#35

Post by elteto »

_hao wrote: post #29
brtkdotse wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what actual publicly available product has he ever produced? oh, i remember - a not very good smalltalk test framework. See also, Bob Martin.

I think Martin has a lot more to answer for as far as the sorry state of software today goes. Watching his discussion with Casey Muratori on GitHub last year was great. Not many people saw it, but boy does he compare poorly to a truly capable and knowledgeable programmer - https://github.com/unclebob/cmuratori-discussion

I started reading this and honestly don’t see the part where he “compares poorly” against Muratori. And disclaimer, I know more about Casey and his work than I know about “Uncle Bob”. If anything, Bob managed to explain himself very well and defend his point of view, which is, “context matters and programmer cycles are more important than CPU cycles in the majority of contexts”. I think this is something we could all agree on, no?

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#36

Post by Scubabear68 »

brtkdotse wrote: post #13
zabzonk wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> what actual publicly available product has he ever produced? oh, i remember - a not very good smalltalk test framework. See also, Bob Martin.

I have watched his journey from early 90s days struggling with OO and C++, to all the nonsense of the 2000’s, and where he is today.

I looked at some of the small amount of publicly available code he has written, and it was frankly horrible. An example of somehow who shouts loud enough getting attention because he can shout longer than most.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#38

Post by GMoromisato »

I was ready to crap all over this--I've seen so many of these kind of posts--but this was (IMHO) quite good. There's a ton of (as the kids say) alpha in each of the bullet points.

I can't say that I practice all or most of these habits, but the points about "calling your shots" and "concrete hypotheses" resonate. For example, when I add a debugging printf/log, I always ask myself, "will this output invalidate one or more hypotheses?" If not, then I need to rethink the problem.

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#39

Post by hyggetrold »

sandofsky wrote: post #31
zabzonk wrote: post #5

[flagged]

The initial claim to fame of the XP crowd was the C3 project, an attempt to upgrade Chrystler's payroll system to handle Y2K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens... What nobody really talks about is how the project was ultimately cancelled. Reasons for the flop include unclear requirements, and the customer representative resigning due to burnout. That's fine, though many XP proponents sell i…

I thought early Twitter took off in part with help from XP?

My understanding was that Jack poached a lot of XP practitioners away from Pivotal Labs to help build both Twitter and Square?

Re: Mastering Programming (2016)

#40

Post by frfl »

manojlds wrote: post #11
zabzonk wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Part way through Tidy First and that's how it feels. Not seeing much value over Refactoring book.

The first two sections are fine, neither bad, neither outstanding.

The last section had the most valuable stuff in my opinion.

Overall it was such an odd 'book'. It was 50% empty, literally. The whole book could've been 3 long chapters honestly.

But it does contain some useful bits.

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