It’s always interesting to observe a couple of strong ideologues debate philosophic tenets in the public limelight. Especially when it relates to development process methodology.
Whether this particular series of incidents merits much attention is anyone’s guess. However, if you hold (1) The Joel Test in any regard (and you should), perhaps this is worth paying attention to.
Joel Spolsky has been around the blogosphere for a long time now and is fairly well renown for his strong views on software development methodology. In recent years I think it is fair to say his views have been met with a mixed reception from the development community.
In recent times, Joel and Jeff Atwood created a web site called Stack Overflow which is a part-Wiki inspired technical portal which allows all kinds of people an opportunity to pose and answer technical (programming related) questions. I’m a bit of a fan, I like the forum and some of the questions take me way back – especially good C/C++ questions.. Ah those were the days.
Anyhow, Joel and Jeff also started to record weekly podcasts in a sort of informal interview style. The recent controversy started when Joel made some comments about Robert Martin’s (2) “Principles of Object Oriented Programming” the notes/transcript can be read on (3) Joel’s blog.
Bob Martin (4) responded, which began the start of a very interesting public spat. Jeff Atwood has (5) responded… meanwhile the whole thing sounds similar to sentiments I posted here on this blog (6) back in 2007.
Finally, here is Stack Overflow (7) Podcast #41 featuring the above mentioned folks.
Is this a topic you can get away with being ‘be on the fence’ with?
Comments.. please.
[ (1) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html ]
[ (2) http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.PrinciplesOfOod ]
[ (3) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/01/31.html ]
[ (4) http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/01/31/quality-doesnt-matter-that-much-jeff-and-joel ]
[ (5) http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001225.html ]
[ (6) http://www.sanderstechnology.net/?p=9601 ]
[ (7) http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/podcast-41/ ]
