Best Practices Dogmatism

Nothing really wrong with that per se. The problem is if at one point you decide that's just the way to do things and you never learn new approaches. If you want to be a good programmer you have to try different things and learn the pros and cons for yourself. Best practices are a decent jumping off point, but developers often overestimate their own best practices that they've learned while working on certain types of projects. It's especially insidious among very smart developers who work i

One man's anti-pattern is another man's normal coding. Just don't be dogmatic about it.

I recommend to read Robert C. Martin's (Uncle Bob) view on that presented in "The Tragedy of Craftsmanship":https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2018/08/28/Craftsmansh...

The most important point the author is missing is code readability - being forced to write opinionated code is one thing. Having a chance to read somebody elses code (or your own code 3 months later) and avoiding eternal debate on code formatting is priceless. Programming is not about being able to outsmart others, in particular not in a large-scale project.

I'm all for the following the spirit of things, but I also want to take a minute to disagree with the "without being able to explain why" part.I have worked with people who were super booked up on Go4 and all the design stuff, and yet they can be fairly insufferable to work with when they parrot design advice from all this stuff, precisely because they can't explain why in every given situation. Then, on the receiving end of things, most of the criticism people who are exp

I like the way you think. Unfortunately programmers like to either be really against something or treat it as dogma and the only way to do things.

Is this true of experts in other fields? Why are programmers prone to this behavior?

I think _entirely_ ignoring the kinds of considerations it covers is such a typical failure case for inexperienced programmers (or non-career coders) that it's an excellent prod to expand the scope of what enters their awareness when writing code.Ideally folks notice discrepancies between their experiences and the things it recommends and find their taste and judgement that way, though it doesn't always work out.So like, maybe the fact that some of the advice is clearly dreadful

Sometimes experienced devs come with bad habits.

That's quite a common issue when you're trying to emphasize a specific point. Uncle Bob's trying to make software developers care about their craft. He seems dismissive of any other techniques, but I think that's because he really wants people who read his posts and watch his videos to understand that specific point. If you already understand that point, then you're not the audience he's trying to talk to, and you're free to enhance your craft with any tools yo