

Jeff Atwood Finally Jumps the Shark - kpanghmc
http://www.kevinwilliampang.com/post/Jeff-Atwood-Finally-Jumps-the-Shark.aspx

======
nx
I'm getting a bit tired of these people, they post stupid mindless entries
that make the whole blogosphere shake like they know everything about
programming and their word is holy. They argue with common practices or
beliefs and all of the content can be summarized to: "there's this thing, and
there's the exact opposite, but _you should try be in the middle and take the
best of both worlds_ ". Every single one of their posts boils down to that.
Then comes a follow-up, and a follow-up to the follow-up, and here I am making
a comment about how stupid I think their blogs are.

Come on, there's much more interesting people out there, don't focus on this
nonsense.

~~~
old-gregg
That's precisely why I don't want NY Times or WSJ or Washington Post to "die"
and why I have never believed in "citizen's journalism" and "user generated
content".

Because citizens and users aren't producers nor journalists, they're just
bored programmers dying for a drop of publicity.

~~~
jrockway
> That's precicely ... why I have never believed in "citizen's journalism" and
> "user generated content".

Ah yes, only people with formal training have good ideas. Everyone else should
step aside and make way for The Real Authors.

> Because citizens and users aren't producers nor journalists, they're just
> bored programmers dying for a drop of publicity.

Some people enjoy writing. Not every person who goes fishing on the weekends
needs to be a commercial fisherman. Similarly, not everyone that writes need
be a professional author.

~~~
old-gregg
Who are you replying to? Certainly not to me. My words you've picked for
quotation do not correlate to your responses at all.

I didn't say people with ideas shouldn't be writing and having blogs. I simply
said they aren't journalists and they can't replace a group of professionals,
i.e. folks who're doing it full time and have certain resources unavailable to
a guy with a laptop.

Moreover, I didn't say a word about "formal training". BTW not all
professional journalists have a formal training.

Don't try read between the lines and don't argue with imaginary opponent
please. Besides, how exactly do you picture the world without "traditional"
media? _Links to what_ you're going to be posting to HN or reddit or digg
then?

------
mattmcknight
If you think about programming from the Dreyfus level perspective, in the
manner of the Pragmatic Programmers, the principles are attempts by people
working at the wizard level to try to communicate some of the things they do
intuitively to people at other levels of learning. What Jeff Atwood is
overlooking, is that these are principles, so they are not targeted at the
novice level practitioner, who needs step by step instructions, not
principles. Rather, they are concepts for more advanced programmers to examine
so they can be aware of them the next time they encounter a similar issue. The
question of whether to add a method to an existing class or create a new one,
for example, happens all of the time in programming. It can be helpful to see
how others have approached this problem so that you can use their experience
to form intuitions that reflect situations beyond the ones you have
encountered.

Joel Spolsky's dismissal of these rules is rather insulting from that
perspective...but actually, he has formed his own intuitions and famous little
sets of rules for how things should be done. Complaining that the principles
of OO design, which aren't just Robert Martin's, but come from many sources,
are too pedantic seems hypocritical.

Oh well, like the other people said, it's an offhand comment on a podcast, who
cares? I can only imagine how much stupid stuff would come out of my mouth if
I had to blather on about programming for an hour every week.

~~~
plinkplonk
I agree with your basic point (I upvoted you from zero to one. What's with you
getting a zero score? !!), but

"principles are attempts by people working at the wizard level to try to
communicate some of the things they do intuitively to people at other levels
of learning"

Thinking of Robert Martin (Or Ron Jeffries or most of the agile consultant
crowd) as "wizards" to learn from is hilarious. I've noticed that most of
these people have no "wizard level" code or achievements to justify their role
as "transmitters of wisdom".

A "wizard" should (imho) be able to _do_ magic, not just talk about magic or
write books about (how othe rpeople should do) magic.

When I think of "wizards" I think of people like Linus Torvalds or John
Carmack or Peter Norvig or our own PG. In my opinion, one can learn more form
one page of wizard _code_ than all this abstract talk of "principles of
coding" from people who haven't written any top notch code in years, if ever.

~~~
mattmcknight
"I've noticed that most of these people have no "wizard level" code or
achievements."

I agree in general, but I was talking about Robert Martin in particular. Check
out his code: <http://github.com/unclebob/fitnesse/tree/master> It's really
clean. While the guys you mention have been very effective and productive
programmers (maybe by having better ideas and writing more useful
applications), their code accomplished really new things, as opposed to
finding better ways to do old things.

Norvig wrote some good books, but I never really got the sense of how he
approaches a problem from them, although I did like the AI stuff quite a bit.
Martin's "agile software development" is really good. I don't know why I
benefit more from a little analysis on top of the code reading, but I think it
helps me put a mental framework around stuff more quickly. Anyway, you've got
to love a guy who writes a book called "UML for Java Programmers" that simply
trashes UML...

~~~
plinkplonk
"Check out his code: <http://github.com/unclebob/fitnesse/tree/master> It's
really clean. "

It is decent certainly, but nothing very ground breaking (imo) which is what
"wizard" would imply. In no field of endeavor I know do we call people
"wizards" for mere competence. The term is (imho) reserved for people who do
ground breaking things / display _astounding_ levels of
competence/performance. Iow, someone isn't a "wizard" musician just because he
knows his scales.

You express this much better as "their code accomplished really new things, as
opposed to finding better ways to do old things"). May be we just understand
"wizard" differently, which is completely all right.

"Norvig wrote some good books, but I never really got the sense of how he
approaches a problem from them, although I did like the AI stuff quite a bit.
"

I learned quite a bit from his python code, specifically some of the AIMA
code, and also his spelling corrector (<http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html>)
and sudoku solver (<http://norvig.com/sudoku.html>).

How I learn from such examples is (1) I read the writeup to get a basic idea
(2) I write my own version (in python for the spelling corrector example) and
(3) see what differs between my version and the "wizard"'s.

Specifically to answer your "I never got an idea of how he approaches a
problem from them"

Firstly, I wasn't speaking of Norvig's books but his _code_.

But let us speak of books- Have you read Norvig's "Paradigms Of Artificial
Intelligence Programming"?. The whole book is essentially Norvig programming
"blow by blow" finding mistakes and reversing design decisions and so on. I
found it very useful to get some insight about his thinking and programming
style.

Also Norvig does have some interesting thoughts on how to code in
<http://norvig.com/luv-slides.ps> [postscript] where he talsk about how he
iterates between an english description of an algorithm and (lisp) code till
he gets it right.

All the people I mentioned (PG, Norvig, Carmack, Torvalds) are top level
_programmers_ (vs being people who make living from selling - in one form or
another - programming methodologies telling _other people_ how to code)and
have publicly available "wizard level" code to learn from.

Robert Martin does write publicly available code - as does Kent Beck with
Junit- so all due credit to them but most other agile "gurus" know jack all
about coding at least as evidenced by their publicly available code. That
said, I don't find Martin's code to be particularly inspiring as compared to
the other people I mentioned. I find Martin's code to be _competent_ but not
"wizard level". I agree that this is largely a subjective judgment. YMMV.

As I said in my earlier post, I largely agree with your original point.

------
jerf
One of the coolest things about the internet is how people rush to be the
first to declare that something has jumped the shark.

Wait, that's not cool at all. That's just lame.

Anyhow, alas, it was all for nought anyhow as kevinwilliampang.com has been
beaten to the punch, repeatedly, as a quick Google search will show. '"jeff
atwood" "jump the shark"' comes back with 267 results, not all accusing Jeff
of jumping the shark, but enough to make my point.

Thinking hating on things is cool is for lamers. (Or some phrasing like that.)

~~~
jrockway
I agree with you, but Jeff Atwood is a really harmful influence. He just
doesn't know anything, but continues to make stuff up and pass it off as fact.

He can write his blog the next time he writes some code to go with it. Or does
some research. Right now, the only reason he is popular is because he says
what people want to hear. That's pandering -- not intellect.

Anyway, I guess I don't care. I realized a long time ago that most people are
stupid, and stupid likes to travel in hordes. There is plenty of real
education out there for people who seek it.

~~~
gdee
Is it the form or the substance of jrockway's comment that gets it downmoded?
(pure curiosity)

~~~
jrockway
Incidentally, after you posted that, it got modded up.

Upon further reflection, it wasn't really that great of a comment.

------
blasdel
See this incredibly effective satire of Jeff's daily inanities:
<http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/nothing-to-say/>

~~~
blasdel
I submitted it a week ago when it was published, but it fell right off of the
new page without being voted up: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465886>

------
andreyf
Joel Spolsky: _Yeah. And the worst thing that happens is that you get people
that just stop thinking about what they're doing._

Jeff Atwood: _Rules, guidelines, and principles are gems of distilled
experience that should be studied and respected. But they're never a substute
for thinking critically about your work._

Kevin Pang: _we should be in support of anything that will force programmers
to think more about the code they write, not less_

Aside from brand arguments about "Agile" versus "SOLID" versus "what-would-
Jesus-do" style programming, where, exactly, is the "war" here?

------
StrawberryFrog
Snappy answers to stupid questions:

Q: Has Jef Atwood jumped the shark?

A: Hell no. If you don't like is blog, don't read it. Stackoverflow is still a
great resource.

Q: Is SOLID a good idea that more programmers should read?

A: Hell yes.

Q: So why is he "waging war against SOLID" and saying we shouldn't we follow
these rules?

A: He didn't say that. Solid principles are absolutely worth knowing. But when
you're a master programmer, they more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual
rules. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari>)

Q: do these "Ferengi rulebook programmers" exist?

A: it's rare, but they do.

Q: So Kevin Pang is wrong then?

A: Well, he's wrong about Atwood jumping the shark. He's right that the vast
majority of programmers aren't masters, so Atwood's points don't apply to them
and they should learn the rules. Maybe he's wrong to get into a blog-post-
fist-fight, maybe he's right to stir up debate. Take your pick on how you want
to see that one.

------
GHFigs
_I wonder if Jeff and Joel are secretly just messing with us to see how much
commotion they can stir up._

Is this not what you were doing with this post, by singling out the author
instead of the argument?

------
davidmathers
"Jump the shark" jumped the shark like 5 years ago.

~~~
blasdel
No, it "nuked the fridge"

------
BigZaphod
I hereby announce that I have jumped the shark. I used to be so original and
relevant, but now I just make stupid meta jokes about myself. It's sad,
really, but there it is.

