
Martian Headsets - dbxz
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/03/17/martian-headsets/
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dbxz
Joel Spoelsky is one of the greatest software writers of our time. This needs
to be made required reading in every software engineering course.

~~~
Darmani
I tend to be leery of any claims like this. It would be nice to be able to
pump infinite knowledge into students in one course, but that's not realistic.

The implicit claim behind such a statement is: X should be a topic covered in
all software engineering courses, and Y is the best explanation of it. And
that is a statement quite easy to punch holes in, regardless of how much you
like Y.

In this case: most intro SE courses need to teach things like good commenting
and committing practice. Anything architectural is beyond most undergrads.

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Darmani
I think the main lesson here is something other than what Joel intended. He
meant it as a defense of why IE had been breaking standards. I see it as a
lucid explanation of the constraints that protocols place on software, and a
reminder that the care needed to design them is usually mich higher than
what's put in.

