A strange fight, indeed.

It was strange to see the cowboy coders and the artisan coders go at it. For those that don't know SO #38 sparked a discussion that has been brewing for some time now. You know you've seen it around the office. That guy who doesn't get why you'd waste your time on using factory pattern instead of a giant switch block to choose which derived classes you should use. Or the chick who is always waxing poetic about the virtues of the current standards. Well these two side have had at it.

The funny thing is that this whole argument about principles in software design/engineering/development/architecture/whatever you want to call it is because of one word, PRINCIPLE. What is a principle? A principle is a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption. OK, so a principle is a law of some sort. And that is where a lot of people stop in the definition. But what about the other words in that list of possibilities. A doctrine is something that is taught or a set of strategies. An assumption is a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted. Those other to choices don't seem as finite as a law.

OK that all fine, well, and good, but why was it such a big deal about five documents that are about 13 years old. Well, other than the misspoken and rescinded statement of one particular developers credentials, a lot of developer seem to resent being told that their programming doctrine is wrong. (Oops, there is that word again) But what they fell to realize is they them selves are the ones that assumed that it was being criticized. No where does it say you must follow these "principles". Even the author of the referenced papers does not say that you have to. He believes that if you are able to craft good, clean code by some other standards then by all means do so.

Well, one last thing. The word principle probably shouldn't have been used in naming these tenants. It was the authors artistic license to do so. It would seem he wanted to emphasize the importance of them. However, they are not principle in the commonly known sense of being a law. Rather, they are principles in that they are doctrine for a certain style of programming. If you don't subscribe to that style of programming then don't worry about them.

Robert C. Martin, the aforementioned author, has likened our craft to martial arts. You have different dojos, with different ways and motivations for doing what they do. Even in the same style, there are subtle differences. There are also differences in the way individual practitioners of approach the style. The true martial artist doesn't criticize other styles they except it as different. So I think that programmers, software developers, code monkeys, whomever put finger to key for the purpose of solving problems through logic should be able to accept the differences in coding style.