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Top Ten Gripes for the Day

Ovid on 2005-10-08T17:20:59

Here's my list of "Top Ten Gripes for the Day". Some of these apply to me.

  1. It's OK to use an object as a glorified struct if all you care about is the data domain.
  2. Stop talking about "strong and weak" typing. Most programmers (including me) don't know what those mean anyway. Talk about "typing the variable" versus "typing the data".
  3. If you use words like "always" and "never", you're probably wrong.
  4. Don't casually dismiss languages and paradigms you haven't programmed in.
  5. Don't create a specification "variant" if you can't correctly explain why the specification doesn't suit your needs.
  6. Don't say "that's not OO". There are too many conflicting viewpoints of what OO is for you to have the hubris of saying all others are wrong.
  7. Java is not as bad as non-Java programmers make it out to be.
  8. Same goes for Perl.
  9. Don't tell me why you're violating third normal form if you can't explain what third normal form is. (This is a special case of #5 because it really scrapes the frosting off my Pop-Tart).
  10. Maybe you think they're stupid, but people have reasons for their opinions.

Add your own!

Yay, Gripes!

chromatic on 2005-10-08T18:56:31

11. Don't use the words enterprise or scalable as if they mean anything significant. They don't.

Re:Yay, Gripes!

luqui on 2005-10-09T07:46:01

12: If you're arguing with someone, address all of their major points when you reply. This might make you end up "losing" the argument. But if anybody cares about what you're saying, you probably weren't there to "win" in the first place.

(I say this because Damian violated it to me, which caused me to notice that I had been I violating it to many others)

Java...

Dom2 on 2005-10-08T22:14:02

Java's not that bad. It's just not that good either. I've been finding myself using it recently and the good bits are along similar lines to Perl: the open source stuff. Things like Lucene are just so damned useful, it's a good case for using it.

-Dom

What is correct?

Adrian on 2005-10-09T10:53:24

Don't create a specification "variant" if you can't correctly explain why the specification doesn't suit your needs.

Define "correctly" :-)