Quickie update: Joel has invited Uncle Bob onto the show. I’ll be looking forward to it.
Uncle Bob responding to a podcast conversation between Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood. Besides Uncle Bob’s obvious irritation at the StackOverflow duo, he dropped the quote that’s in the title. I thought that was very pithy because I know I hit a spell about 18 months ago in New York where I stopped learning new things and I remember that scaring the heck out of me when I realized what was happening.
Dear Young Upcoming Developers,
My advice to you is to read everything Uncle Bob has ever written about software design — but don’t stop at memorizing the S.O.L.I.D. acronym. Make sure you actually understand how those principles are applied because they’re all about keeping your code limber so that it can continue to change and provide new value over time. The SOLID stuff is just a description of the properties of a good OO class structure. I’d also recommend you read everything Joel Spolsky wrote before, let’s say, 2002 — but take anything past ’02 from Spolsky with a massive dose of salt.
The last thing I’d say about the StackOverflow podcast is that I suspect Joel purposely misinterpreted both TDD and elements of SOLID just to provoke a reaction — or didn’t particularly give either topic enough thought to speak intelligently on the subject.
