<story><title>The Duct Tape Programmer (Response from Uncle Bob Martin)</title><url>http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/09/24/the-duct-tape-programmer</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gfodor</author><text>All of these types of arguments are at the wrong level of abstraction.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve found that what makes the best programmer is not if they are a &quot;duct tape&quot; programmer or a &quot;architecture astronaut&quot; or whatever, but &lt;i&gt;self awareness&lt;/i&gt;. They can call a hack a hack, and understand it&apos;s impact. They know when and &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt; architecture can be improved, and when it &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be improved. They can take criticism of their work because odds are, the criticism is something they already had an understanding of and can justify, or if not, they are willing to see where there was a gap in their thinking. They have a plan, and can forge a system ahead in a general direction of progress without getting bogged down in the details or taking one step forward and two steps back. You get the idea.&lt;p&gt;Nobody is talking about this, arguments generally deteriorate where someone sets up a false dichotomy and then the internet collectively rips them apart. But they get ripped apart because of the falseness of the dichotomy, not because of the fact that they are looking at the wrong things altogether.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Duct Tape Programmer (Response from Uncle Bob Martin)</title><url>http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/09/24/the-duct-tape-programmer</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mikedouglas</author><text>Uncle Bob seems to be confusing spirit with conclusion. JWZ and Joel are arguing against &quot;[using complex technologies] for their benefits&quot;, where simpler tech would suffice. When you&apos;re designing a browser, C++ and multithreading do have benefits, but &quot;Duct Tape Programmers&quot; would argue that they aren&apos;t worth the design overhead when you&apos;re facing a tight deadline.&lt;p&gt;Same with COM, unit tests, design patterns, etc. Obviously, Joel doesn&apos;t believe these have no benefits and that they&apos;re only used because they&apos;re cool. He doesn&apos;t endorse them because he doesn&apos;t believe they are worth it.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s fine if you disagree with the duct tape mindset, but don&apos;t construct strawmen to show &quot;we all really agree&quot;.</text></comment>