The Pragmatic Programmers Interview (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

O'ReillyNet interviews Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, the authors of The Pragmatic Programmers. "Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas are The Pragmatic Programmers, two experienced and intelligent software developers with impressive experience, including the authoring of the popular The Pragmatic Programmer and the well-regarded Programming Ruby. Recently, they launched their own small publishing company to produce books on agile and pragmatic software development. Andy and Dave recently agreed to an interview with the O'Reilly Network."

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The Pragmatic Programmers Interview (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jun 26, 2004 17:35 UTC (Sat) by Odysseus (guest, #11518) [Link]

I don't know what the fuss is, most of their advice is stuff you should be doing & have done anyway.

And my personal peeve with them - one of their rules is to learn a new language every year.

Yet in the last 5 years it's

"Ruby this, Ruby that, Ruby Ruby Ruby,
All Ruby radio, no talk, no rock, just Ruby.
All Ruby All the time."

You'd think their rule was actually "learn a new language every year, as long as it's Ruby."

And Ruby and Java are the only 2 languages in the universe.

Pragmatic means facing the actual situation

Posted Jun 26, 2004 19:38 UTC (Sat) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

> I don't know what the fuss is, most of their advice is stuff you should be
> doing and have done anyway.

Well, strangely enough, there are still the odd few who persist as is their unenlightened wont:

> Now some 40 percent of teams in the U.S. don't use version control at all.
> 76 percent don't unit test, and 70 percent don't have a daily build.

And things are much the same here in the UK, see www.leshatton.org , e.g. the presentations collected here. If you don't laugh, you'll cry.

Pragmatic means facing the actual situation

Posted Jun 26, 2004 23:06 UTC (Sat) by Odysseus (guest, #11518) [Link]

I agree with your point

AND the natural questions that occur to me are

"if they're not using version control already, how likely are they to pick up a book like this?"

On the off chance that they get this book, "if they're not using version control already, how much motivation will they get just from reading 'hey, you should be using version control'?"

As far as that type of shop is concerned, this book is very short on dealing with what REALLY matters, politics & institutional inertia & other such issues that are the real impediments to getting good procedures in place.