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Comment by trentnix | Hacker News Reader

While "Uncle Bob" certainly hasn't uncovered any silver bullets, I find the criticism of him to be generally unfair. It's the same type of criticism that commonly targets anyone that actually sticks their neck out far enough to make concrete recommendations.

So many teachers, careful not to invite the ire of the armchair critic and ACKCHYUALLY know-it-all, will hem and haw, leading you into analysis paralysis regarding "best practices". That then leads to exhortations to "find what works best for you", acknowledging there are many "right" ways among all the wrong ways.

As I've gotten older, I appreciate teachers like Uncle Bob who provide a specific prescription and says "try it this way". I've discovered I learn faster starting somewhere concrete.

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> While "Uncle Bob" certainly hasn't uncovered any silver bullets

Which is compatible with Brooks, who famously had to point out that there are no Silver Bullets.

Anyone who is reading these kinds of things and expecting to find that the authors uncovered a Silver Bullet will be regularly disappointed. But that doesn't, as you point out, negate the value of the learned experience that they are trying to communicate. Even if there are no Silver Bullets, that doesn't mean that there are processes and methodologies that can make things more predictable, robust, reliable, and enjoyable.

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

I think the problem I have with Bob is that he doesn’t say "try it this way". He says “you must do it this way, and if you don’t do it this way you are a disgrace to the profession”. Its obnoxious.

Even worse, his cultish followers who blindly believe everything he says without understanding it. “Why must it be done this way?” I ask. “Because Bob said so”. Without comprehension, his advice becomes toxic.

If you’re new and you simply don’t get it yet, that’s fine. If you think you’re now an all knowing being because you listen to Bob, please calm down.

All non-political critiques which I have seen (here and elsewhere) always seem to turn out to be based on misunderstandings or exaggerations of what he actually has said or written (sometimes wildly so). Or, as it sometimes turns out, people hate him not for anything he has said, but because of how other people has misunderstood and misinterpreted him.

From what I have seen, every time he has been criticized sincerely, and he has become aware of it, he has engaged his critics in open debate, and they have come to amicable results, with him sometimes altering his views.

What you describe is apparently a common impression of what he writes; I have seen many people express it. But I have not seen an actual quote to prove it. I think some people may feel so threatened by someone who says that what they do may not be very good, that cognitive dissonance kicks in and they instead elect to take offense at the tone of the message (and re-interpret what he says in the worst possible way in order for that to make sense).

From the linked article:

of course one of the disciplines I’m talking about is TDD. Anybody who thinks they can go faster by not writing tests is smoking some pretty serious shit

That is not some made up stuff - smoking shit - is literally saying one is a disgrace if he is not doing TDD.

I call your reading comprehension into question. What it literally says is that you will not go faster by not writing tests, or, conversely, that writing tests will not make you go slower, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. You are imagining an insult in order to feel outrage, probably so that you can then avoid the actual issue.

I read it as useless exaggeration used to incite the outrage.

It feels correct for young, starry eyed devs.

But then I have to deal with bunch of assholes in workplace who read that kind of shit and think they have to be edgy and always right and only “right things” have to be done.

That is the whole context you should read here and why people don’t like Bob’s stuff.

Other thing was Linus and his code reviews - I had at least couple of guys thinking they were Linus when what they worked on was yet another off the mill CRUD app. Good for Linus he finally understood what toxicity is and toned down.

If you insist on discussing only the tone, not the argument, you have to consider that the blog post you are commenting on is more than 10 years old. Would he write it in the same way today?

The tone is part of the message. In this article he describes the kind of strawman engineers he is disagreeing with as egotistical fools who believe “stupid” things. Elsewhere he’s writing oaths for programmers that say you should only build software according to his principles. It’s all very high and mighty.

If you are attacking the tone in order to avoid engaging with his actual arguments, then you are exhibiting the exact behavior which I described.

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