
Debunking the Duct Tape Programmer - nreece
http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/debunking-the-duct-tape-programmer/
======
pvg
Joel Spolsky, like all frequent writers, can be full of a great deal of hot
air but the case study in his piece is 'a guy who was instrumental in writing
and _shipping_ the first widely usable web browser'. The 'debunking' is
supported by someone's comment on twitter and a reference to a guy who writes
books rather than software. Spolsky might have oversimplified, glossed
intricacies over but you're hardly going to refute his point by
oversimplifying further, digging through your tweets or summoning the
persuasive power of a popular methodology to your aid. Because, you know, the
other guy wrote Netscape.

~~~
LSalin
Kent Beck and Robert C. Martin are both programmers. They don't just "write
books rather than software" so their input is valuable. On the other hand,
this blog post was written by by someone employed by a software consultancy
company that prides itself from their Agile practices. So I can hardly blame
him for defending his employer's practices.

~~~
rdrimmie
The article includes a quote "never take software advice from a bug tracking
system salesman", and I think the same entertaining aphorism holds true for
methodology consultants.

Both have too much invested in you listening to their advice.

------
tptacek
It'd be easy to take this post seriously if the author's resume talked about
shipping product, as opposed to 2 paragraphs of methodology and certifications
and passing mentions to two not-very-good open source ASP.NET projects
("CodeCampServer", featured in his bio, is hosted at Google Code).

~~~
j_baker
This is an ad-hominem argument. Consider his arguments for their merits. Not
because you don't feel he has a good enough resume.

~~~
tptacek
I know you read about Ad Hominem Arguments on several Important Internet Web
Guides To Arguing, but in the real world the credibility and authority of an
author does bear on their persuasive power.

If Michael Arrington, Steve Ballmer, or Ashton Kutcher wrote an article about
"duct tape programming", you'd have no trouble recognizing the dissonance. You
only have trouble with it here because it hits close to home: you don't
yourself want to be disqualified from the discussion. Which, nobody is going
to do that, so relax.

Besides, fully expecting at least 2 HN'ers to jump out from the bushes
shouting "ad hominem!", I made some effort to keep my criticism relevant: it's
not that he hasn't shipped real product, it's that he has a bio that makes it
clear (to me) that he doesn't think shipping is as important as methodology.

~~~
dschobel
While you guys sort out whether the source of information _should_ matter vs
_does_ it matter to us humans, it should be pointed out that the article
itself endorses a quote which hits out against Spolsky for being a "bug
tracking system salesman".

Although, I'm writing enterprise code in MS technologies all day long so I'm
clearly not to be trusted.

~~~
tptacek
But that quote was, at least, funny!

------
tsally
This type of "programmer" makes me want to jump off of a bridge. The guy gives
the acronym for standard operating procedure in the last paragraph of his
post. Acronyms are for efficiency, but apparently this guy is using them to
try to look smart. Also, the fixation with software development methodologies
is very telling. How often do you hear master writers talk about the 5
paragraph essay? I know I'm being a bit harsh, but it's programmers like this
that kill programming as a craft.

I think I'll take the word of Peter Norvig on this one: "One of the best
programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of
great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to
buy his own nightclub."

<http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

------
lamby
I think he's actually agreeing with Joel, but he's just decided to ignore
blatant conditionals in the original article.

For example, claiming that "misapplying duct tape solutions in serious
software development [ends up] creating unnecessary additional complexity" is
in no way antithetical to Joel.

And inserting stuff like "i've said it before, @jbogard : never take software
advice from a bug tracking system salesman" has zero shock value anymore and
hardly makes readers sympathetic to your argument.

~~~
jbellis
> inserting stuff like "i've said it before, @jbogard : never take software
> advice from a bug tracking system salesman" has zero shock value anymore and
> hardly makes readers sympathetic to your argument

Yeah, much better to take advice from people parroting methodology
consultants. :) [Beck et al]

------
gte910h
While Joel writes for "hits", I honestly think he also believes in the DTP. I
mean, they write in a custom language which compiles to a lot of other
languages.

For many shops, DTP is VERY important. For other shops, it's a very bad idea.
For my company, DTP is good for some products, but not for others.

Like all tools, it's important to use it when it is the right tool for the
job. Joel unfortunately did not specify when that is.

------
davidmathers
Oh god. When will it end?

~~~
dschobel
The meta-discussions and navel gazing? Never.

As an aside-- do you think Accountants sit on forums and blogs all day and say
"there are two kinds of Accountants in the world..." or is this something
unique to software people?

~~~
raganwald
_do you think Accountants sit on forums and blogs all day and say "there are
two kinds of Accountants in the world..." or is this something unique to
software people?_

I think almost every profession gets together and starts a conversation "There
are two kinds of ___ in the world," however nearly all of the others are
introducing a self-deprecating joke whereas programmers seem oblivious to the
ridiculousness of trying to classify such complex activities, teams, and
people on such simple lines with so few discriminants.

~~~
BigZaphod
A programmer's primary job is the act of classification. Encoding a range of
behaviors into functions/methods/objects in a way that we can keep track of
and use over and over is what we do. So it's not too surprising that in our
profession the notion of every idea having a "correct" box to fit into is so
pervasive.

~~~
dschobel
It's an interesting point you make.

You think we'd learn from the Google example where they came in and blew away
the guys trying to create a massive ontology of the web (Yahoo).

ref: <http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html>

~~~
teeja
Good article.

A good example of the ontology problem is the Venn diagram. Unspoken in every
Venn diagram is the white space that stretches as far as the eye can see.
That's the world that isn't categorized yet. Anything could lurk out there.

The more Venn circles you draw, the harder it is to introduce new territories
that intersect with all the territories they need to. Along comes the purple
Malaysian wolfhound with an eyepatch and the scheme falls apart.

And that's with true/false categories. What authority can decide what's music
and what isn't?

